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Sunrise's social calendar app reaches the Mac

Sunrise has quickly become the calendar app of choice for some people, and for good reason. Besides its straightforward interface and support for all your social networks, it's one of the few truly multi-platform schedulers you can find -- as of this May, it can run on Android, iOS and the web. It hasn't had a native desktop app, however, and the company is rectifying that by launching Sunrise for Mac. Not surprisingly, it's more than just the iPad app writ large. In addition to all the advantages that come with more screen real estate, you get both a mouse-friendly interface and native OS X notifications; there's also a complete offline mode if you need to review your itinerary on a flight without WiFi.

As before, the big deal is integration with a slew of content providers. Sunrise's Mac client handles both the standard calendars from Facebook and Google as well as a raft of features from online services that rarely show up in this kind of software. You can see your Evernote reminders and Foursquare check-ins, for instance, or use LinkedIn to find out more about the attendees at your next meeting. This won't necessarily supplant either Apple's stock calendar app or web-based tools, and Windows users are unfortunately out of luck for now. But hey, it's free -- if you're interested in a Mac-friendly life organizer whose usefulness extends well beyond the desktop, it won't hurt to give Sunrise a spin.