What software can play FLAC files and has basic playlist support?

I hope you have a secondary storage solution for FLAC audio files. I do :). I understand the allure of FLAC, I do everything I can to get my media in FLAC or at least some lossless format that I archive. There are a lot of benefits to keeping lossless files around, but playing them via any conventional player is (in my own opinion, of course) not one of them.

I use Max to convert my FLAC files to Variable 256Kbit AAC audio.

Once that's done, I archive the FLAC files elsewhere, and import the converted files into iTunes. Sweet, compatible, bliss.

Apartment Therapy has a decent roundup of non-iTunes music players for OS X. Unfortunately they don't seem to be updated terribly often, so you may not have much luck finding any with Retina support. iTunes' prevalence sort of crushes the rest of the market for music players, so the options are fairly limited.

An alternative would be to use X Lossless Decoder to convert from FLAC to Apple Lossless, which would allow you to use iTunes (not to mention any other Apple device). The beauty of lossless formats is of course that you can convert without any degradation, so why not take advantage of that?

I use VLC. It's free, supports a long-list of file formats (including FLAC), has a decent interface and will allow you to create playlists.

This is a list of currently supported file formats:

VLC playback Features

Although it isn't updated much I'm using Cog.

More specifically a nighty build.

I find it very stable, simple and refreshing when you compare it to iTunes.