Twitter for Mac Review
With the launch of the Mac App Store today, the first thing I did was to download Tweetie 2 which has been my favorite Mac twitter client since the day of its initial release. I loved how simple it was and now the new version named Twitter for Mac is finally here.
To get the new app, you'll first need to ensure that your Mac is updated to OS X 10.6.6. With the new Mac App Store installed, you can download the updated app for free on it.
Twitter for Mac features a brand new and clean user interface. It looks like a revamped fresh version of Tweetie, the most obvious change is the modified sidebar, a black translucent sidebar along with two new icons - offering access to your lists and profile info. Back to timeline, it looks like the iPhone/iPad one but you can't swipe to reveal an action menu. So what's new here? One of the biggest annoyances of the original Tweetie was that you can't get anything done with tweets unless you either selected one and hit a keyboard shortcut or invoked a contextual menu with right click. Now, you can just move your cursor over a tweet. From the overlay icons that appear on a status update, you can show a conversation view, reply, mark as favorite and native retweet (finally!).
Twitter for Mac is fast, really fast and snappy. The first thing you're gonna do after authorizing your account will likely be a quick tour of the timeline and sections, I'm sure you will notice the difference. Also, the app supports live streaming for tweets but only in the timeline.
The new tweet window is very simple. Remember in Tweetie when you wanted to tweet with a long URL? You had to click the 'Shorten URL' button. In Twitter for Mac you can just paste in any URL, no matter how long and it'll do that work for you. The displayed character count for your tweet will already acount for the URL being shortened. But there doesn't appear to be a way to turn auto-shortening off, this might be an issue.
There also are a bunch of new features like delete tweets and block users within the app, trending topics, drag and drop tweets and a bunch of new shortcuts. I think Twitter for Mac is an app that brings Twitter to the Mac in a way that most users won't need to open Twitter.com anymore.
I have to say that I'm really loving Twitter for mac and I hope you'll like it, too. If you've just installed the Mac App Store, make this your first download as well as I did.
