Today sees the public launch of Tweetie for Mac, the desktop-based big brother of what many (myself included) consider to be the iPhone’s best Twitter client. I’ve been playing around with a beta version of the app for the last few days since my initial preview last Thursday, and I’m happy to say that my enthusiasm for the application hasn’t waned. It’s sleek, it sweats the small stuff, and it’s going to be my Twitter client of choice for the foreseeable future. But it isn’t perfect, yet.
First things first. If you’re one of the so-called ‘power users’ who rely on TweetDeck’s custom grouping features, Tweetie probably isn’t for you. The application goes well beyond most basic Twitter clients in terms of functionality, but it isn’t an uber-dashboard that’s going to take up an entire monitor. If you’re okay with that, read on.
At first glance, Tweetie is deceptively simple. The client consists of a single column displaying your latest stream of incoming Tweets, with four icons arranged on the left side where the majority of navigation takes place. Each icon is self-explanatory for anyone who has used the service before: an ‘@’ symbol represents replies; an envelope is for direct messages; and a magnifying glass for search. Navigating beyond this main menu, everything is intuitive – double clicking on a user name takes you to their most recent tweets, clicking on a hashtag runs a search for it, and so on.
The application’s real appeal lies in the details. Every time you click to open an image from services like TwitPic, the app displays the picture in a nifty popup rather than opening a full web browser. To post one of your own images, you simply need to drag and drop it from the desktop into the Tweetie window. The app also supports global hotkeys (you can activate Tweetie with a shortcut even if you’re working in a different application). And from an aesthetic standpoint, everything looks great: navigating between sections activates a smooth transition, you can ‘endlessly scroll’ through tweets as the app continuously downloads new ones, and the interface is very clean. Also a big plus: Tweetie supports multiple accounts, which even some of the ‘power’ apps don’t do properly.
And while the app doesn’t offer a true columned UI, it does offer a compromise: Tweetie allows users to break search queries into their own windows, which I actually prefer to having one giant unwieldily window taking up my screen. That said, a few of the navigation options are a little awkward, and the application will feel foreign for the first few days that you use it, especially if you’re coming from a multi-column client like TweetDeck.
Aside from the initial foreignness, Tweetie does have some issues that may confuse new users. For one, while the app allows you to create as many new windows as you’d like for searching, they’re confusing to activate (you need to click the search button, then go to the menu bar and hit ‘open new window’) and there’s currently no way to pop out the ‘@mentions’ or ‘direct message’ columns into their own windows (this is coming in version 1.1). The option to ‘follow’ a user is tucked away in a drop down menu when it should be more prominent. And there’s also apparently no auto-complete for Twitter handles, which can make responding to friends frustrating. Minor gripes to be sure, but in an app with this much polish they stick out.
For a long time I’ve been looking for a Twitter client that felt like it actually belonged on the Mac, and frankly I haven’t had much luck. Twitterific offers a native client, but it is fairly basic. So I turned to more robust clients like TweetDeck, and more recently Seesmic Desktop, which are both very powerful and have a dizzying array of options. But my fundamental issue with both of these apps is that they’re built on Adobe’s AIR platform, which seems to invaribly lead to excessive resource usage on my Mac, not to mention weird UI quirks. I’ve hardly been suffering, but they’re nuisances that have continuously irked me and I’m glad to be rid of them. Tweetie isn’t for everyone, but I suspect its mix of power and simplicity will appeal to quite a few people, particularly those who find other Twitter clients intimidating.
Tweetie is available for free with advertising, or for $14.95 for an ad-free version (it will jump up to $20 in two weeks). If you are on a Mac and crave your multiple columns, be sure to check out Nambu, which I’ve also enjoyed using for the last few weeks.
The best one for sure! But it really needs a way to hide the icon and a Growl support.
NatsuLion is a good option as well for a twitter desktop client
You are dead on about Adobe Air. Tweetie is very promising and slick.
True!!! Looks very trendy too!
it is very good for twitter client it is best
Great product. But Tweetie Mac could have avoided the “issues” – I wish the ‘Follow’ option was more prominent. Anyhow, on the whole, it looks like Tweetie is going to charm Mac users.
Agreed. I suspect the next revision or two will be released soon and will fix these omissions.
I’ve been using it myself at the moment and it looks pretty slick. You can also watch the Wakoopa Tweetie page to follow the adaption and reactions of Tweetie.
Maybe the reason I’ve not been able to drink the Twitter Kool Aid is because I’ve not found the right client yet. Hopefully this will do it.
Hey, I see myself in that image!
Hey, it´s not for free. I have to buy that tool.
What´s the big value, that makes Tweetie better than the free ones?
At the moment, I use some different Twitter gadgets and widgets. And life works without Tweetie. Tell me, what´s better on Tweetie…
Tweetie is free with ads provided by http://fusionads.net
I use Canary which is native. It’s the first release but works good enough. And it’s cocoa+free.
This is an awesome piece of software but am I the only one who thinks that this is a little steep at $15 when there are some great free competitors? Don’t get me wrong, developers deserve to make money. Perhaps a discount for a tie in if you have purchased the iphone/ipod touch version?
The app is free with nicely placed ads. Indie developers do deserve to be paid especially when they make fantastic applications which you will use day in and day out.. I for one will gladly (and have) purchased this app as well as other indie software… usually before I will break down and buy stuff from the big boys.
“for the masses” is not a term I would apply to a mac only app that is not free…
seconded (and I’m on a Mac)
It’s free if you can handle a few ads. Point taken about the Mac, but for those people who are using Macs I suspect this will have a much broader appeal than TweetDeck and similar ‘power’ clients.
I much prefer Nambu over Tweetie.
Agree. Nambu is better, especially with the group support.
I found Nambu to be too heavy and slugish.
Agree, Nambu is the best
NAMBU FTW!!!
Great app. Started using it this morning. Tweetie for iPhone was awesome so tried this. VERY happy. And as a developer, I am very happy to pay them their fifteen bucks.
This is the best Twitter client for Mac ever. It is completely Mac Style and totally unobtrusive.
jason – have you heard anything about Tweetie going to come out with “grouping?”
i hear great things about tweetie but grouping saves me so much time on twitter.
if you hear anything let us know please.
thanks for your review
I’ve been using EventBox for a few weeks and really like it so far. It uses a sidebar based interface similar to iTunes and Finder which feels much more “Mac-like” to me than the panes in Tweetie or TweekDeck. Saved searches and smart folders provide the functionality of TweetDeck’s panes, but sit in the sidebar. Very slick interface. Also supports Facebook and others. It’s still beta and has some bugs – but shows promise so far.
I use EventBox also. I like it.
Glad they made also an iPhone app , looks great on my Mac this little Tweetie…
This is already really smooth in a lot of ways – the conversation functionality, automatic link shortening and continuous tweet streaming are really cool. If you get into the keyboard shortcuts a little bit, they’re very elegant.
On the downside, the composing functionality is awkward at this point. On a desktop client, I prefer that some kind of dedicated “compose tweet” window be visible at all times, preferably with some kind of button to share images.
Looks like a great app but based on comments on Twitter, it does not use SSL to make any of its requests or login which makes it insecure especially for all the people out there that use the same password for their twitter account as their Bank Of America account.
Makes you wonder why the developer did not use SSL…
Looks like a great app but based on comments on Twitter, it does not use SSL to make any of its requests or login which makes it insecure especially for all the people out there that use the same password for their twitter account as their Bank Of America account.
Makes you wonder why the developer did not use SSL…
Not sure what the story is on SSL in the client, but I wouldn’t recommend using the same password on Twitter as you do for your bank. Given how many third party services ask for your Twitter credentials and don’t yet support OAuth, this seems like a bad idea.
Jason,
I completely agree with you.
As a company, though, I think that Twitter itself should not allow authentication in anything that is not secure given the amount of users and data that pass through its systems. I still have no idea why companies today still allow cleartext and non-secure methods of authentication.
Update: A new version was released that uses HTTPS by default.
Nice work… now I can work from my mac as well…
Although I must say – in most of the cases the simple web site of twitter is fine (when it’s working).
I still like TweetDeck. The group support makes Twitter much more usable for me. I tried Tweetie and noticed the lack of group support, so deleted it. If that were added in, I’d consider switching to it.
Another minus on adobe air would be the incessant updates they push at you. Its worth $15 to get away from that alone.
The popup for picture works for profile pictures if you are viewing a user profile. Also the conversation view (like an adium chat) when you click on tweets is awesome. You can also view trends from the search bar
http://www.manu...icks-guide/250/
It is nice and clean but I prefer thwirl.
Any native client wins out over that Air tosh for me. Nambu gives you the multi-column approach. Tweetie is feature rich and uncluttered. I’m favouring Tweetie right now
Cool new app, I use Tweetie on my iPhone. Giving it a spin on my Mac now.
Almost as cool as the Twitpic of that cute kid with the Star Wars Lego!
is there any goodness associate with using with the iphone and desktop?
Why do you keep blaming the AIR platform for resource management issues? It’s not AIR, it’s the developer who built the app. That’s like blaming the iPhone because some of the apps you use crash due to poor resource management. It’s not the iPhone’s fault, it’s the developer.
And then BigMac blams AIR because an application he is using built on AIR has a lot of updates. That’s like blaming OSX because some 3rd party application you installed had a lot of updates. It’s the developer of the app who is pushing out updates, not OSX.
And what a weird thing to complain about, too. You’re actually complaining because the developer of the application you’re using is fixing bugs and/or adding new features on a regular basis? Some people never cease to amaze me with the types of things they complain about.
is this worth the $15? I love it for the iphone..
My initial joy was canceled out when I had disappointment with the lack of elegant grouping capabilitiy
This app is not “for the masses” it’s for everyone running 10.5.
Um, can’t get it to install on my machine. Hmm….
I can’t get it to install either. What am I missing?
Is it because I’m running 10.4.11 that it doesn’t install. Double-clicking on the Tweetie icon has no effect.
Your seesmic link, links to Tweetdeck.
I’m successfully using Twit Menulet on a Mac running 10.3.9. It is cut from a bit of a different cloth but I like it quite well. No TwitPic goodness yet, unfortunately! If anybody wants to help gang up on the developer I’d appreciate it
Must say… this is one of the best desktop Twitter clients I’ve used. Appreciate the info!