App Review: Tweetie

Tweetie for mac is the follow up to Atebit’s popular mobile predecessor with the same name. If you use twitter you know the problem with twitter is that it’s slow, buggy, and sluggish. A website that is buggy, leads to many problems, which is what tweetie aims to solve. 

It’s design is fast and slick. It’s ease of use is amazing plus it’s high amount of customization is an outstanding feature! 

Let’s cover the menu bar! The, menu bar includes many keyboard shortcuts, which adds to the ease of use. Prefernces is the first major feature here. Major items, that can be customized in the prefernces are the url shortening service which can be switched from your run of the mill url shortener to the digg bar! The image service can also be changed from yFrog, to such picture services as TwitPic. Another neat feature contained in the menu bar is support for more than one account, which can be changed easily when tweeting with-in the application. Under the menu bar you can also perform functions like re-tweeting and direct messaging. 

Now that we covered the menu bar let’s take a look at the core application. I said it before and i’ll say it again the design is fast and slick. The application takes up about 25% of the screen. On the left side of the screen their is four buttons, the first shows all of your friends latest tweet’s. The second button, shows all of your mentions.

The next shows direct messages. The final allows you to search. Your friends tweets are updated in the background. Your friends messages contain the actual tweet, when the tweet took place, and a reply button. Double clicking on tweets take you to the converstation if the tweet is directed at another user, and if not it takes you to the tweet in a solitary window. Here you can take action such as re-tweeting.

Next let’s cover Tweetie’s convenient keyboard shortcuts and how to actually send out a tweet. Hitting Cmd+N, opens up a new tweet bubble, in a very slick manner, may I add. Simply enter in whatever you wish to tweet and click post! The interface is similar for sending a direct message. In tweetie you can also repost which is re-tweeting in a different form. Retweeting, is never done in a specific way, although many go about it like this: RT @User User’s message. In Tweetie it is done like so: User’s message (via @User). Their is no way to change this as of now. 

Profiles, are an important part of twitter their would really be no point in having a twitter profile if you didn’t view anyone’s tweets. In Tweetie profiles are handled flawlessley! 

When viewing a user’s profile you see their profile picture, a button to see their latest tweets, all of the user’s mentions, his or her’s favorite tweets and some information about the user! Profiles load fast and give you all the information you could think of, in a convienent location. 

So what are the cons of this application? Although I have been giving this application nothing but compliments I do have some problems. One, is the fact their is no sound effects for new tweets, the notification is a blue light which is not enough espicially as it is a application likely to be running in the backround. Another con of tweetie is no support for replies to multiple users, for example if I wanted to see: @kevinrose @alexalbrecht @glennmc @dlprager when will diggnation be out this week? I would have to manually type in the last 3 usernames. These are the only cons that affect me, I know some people don’t like the fact their is no support for groups, growl notifications (coming soon), and some would like an option to hide the dock icon.

All in all, Tweetie is one of the best twitter apps out their, it’s fast, slick looks great, it’s easy to use and it makes tweeting fun! 

Tweetie is developed by atebits, and offers a free version (ad-supported) and a paid version which costs 14.95.

Comments

[John Costa]

Hey Daniel,

I wasn't aware that you had posted a review on this product before me. I'm new to the social blog as of May 1. I'm sorry and didn't mean to step on your toes.

-John