Until now, if a Mac owner wanted to read a Kindle e-book on his computer, they were out of luck (or used something like Parallels and had the Kindle for PC app running on Windows). But that all ended today, with the release of Kindle for Mac.

Not shockingly this release comes with only a few weeks to go before the release of Apple’s iPad tablet thingy. Amazon reportedly views the iPad and Apple’s iTunes bookstore as a huge potential threat to its overwhelming market share in the e-book biz. According to the NY Times, Amazon is trying to leverage its large Kindle store and audience to get publishers locked into 3-year agreements stating they won’t offer e-books for a lower price than they are being sold for on Amazon.

The release of Kindle for Mac can be seen as an attempt by Amazon to snag Mac owners into becoming Kindle fans, or at least fans of the Kindle store. There is a Kindle app for iPhone, though it’s not yet known when/if there will be a Kindle app for the iPad.

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