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Hands on with Twitter for iPhone

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:09:03 +0000

Twitter announced several changes on Thursday, both to its website and to its mobile apps. The iPhoneversion is already live in the App Store, and there’s an updated Android client in the Android Market. Here’s a look at how the new Twitter for iPhone looks and works, and how it compares to the version it replaces.

Simplified

The new app has a less complicated interface than the old one, in terms of having fewer buttons across the bottom bar, and fewer interactivity options for your main stream of tweets. It makes the experience and layout cleaner, but it also irks in some regards, especially for someone like me who manages multiple Twitter accounts. That’s because the ability to switch accounts is now located unintutively behind the “Me” tab, and takes two steps to get to from the home stream instead of just one, like the old “Accounts” button did. You can switch accounts by swiping left on the Me button, too, but it seems a little hit-or-miss.

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The DM button is gone from the bottom bar, having been moved to the “Me” section, but once again, it introduces more steps, not less to get there. You can swipe up on the Me button to access your DMs from any screen, however. In the case of both changes, I can only assume Twitter found the average user wasn’t using either feature very often, and so they were better off out of the way.

The change to the tweets that appear in your home screen seem unnecessary even from that perspective, however. You can no longer access a quick menu of functions for each tweet on the home screen like you could before. Now you have to tap through to the post itself to reply, retweet or favorite the tweet.

Interactions

The new Connect tab features not only @mentions, but also a new “Interactions” section that details both your conversations and tells you about new followers, much like Google+ notifications inform you of new connections, in groups divided by days. It’s a small, but welcome, addition and should mean more users can turn off email notifications of new follows and still keep on that info.

Discover

One definitely positive change is the “Discover” section. It includes the ability to search Twitter, but also introduces more information and context for #hashtags and trending stories. You can see information about each popular “Story” listed, and then tap through for tweets that mention the subject, armed beforehand with some useful information about what the story actually means. It’s a big improvement for Twitter’s trending topics, and one that should serve the service’s efforts to appeal to marketers, and average users, well.

Better overall? Depends.

Overall, I’m seeing a lot of positive reaction to the aesthetic changes made to the iOS Twitter app on Twitter, and it definitely feels truer to Twitter’s brand than the previous, mostly generic incarnation. I’ll miss the in-stream ability to interact with content, however, which for me emphasized Twitter’s prioritization of communication above all else. Plus, it still doesn’t address the issue of the notification badge count remaining at one, and there’s still not a way to mark all your DMs as read at once. Despite its failings, I’m betting for the majority of casual users, with the addition of Interactions and Discover, this will probably be considered an improvement.

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Facebook Video Calling will replace Skype client for most Mac users

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:27:17 +0000

Facebook launched a bunch of new features Wednesday, including group chat, a redesigned chat user list, and the biggest of all, video chat via a partnership with Skype. It’s this last one that will have the biggest implications for most average Mac users.

I used Skype video calling approximately three minutes after it launched (with pal and web developer Wes Bos), and it worked perfectly. Installing the plugin on my iMac required a tiny Java app download that’s virtually foolproof to use, and making and receiving calls is as simple as clicking a few buttons and confirming you want to share video.

Video chat doesn’t appeal to everyone. It works well for people who have close relationships with one another (like parents and children) and who live far enough away from each other that face-to-face interaction is rare. But when you add the complication that both parties have to install a dedicated app and have that app open and active, the pool of people who’ll actually use it are even smaller. With Facebook chat, if they’re in your network, they’re potentially available for video calling. No Skype registration, no calling people ahead of time to tell them to open the Skype client so that you can call them, since people are much more likely to be Facebook users (there’s 750 million of them, Facebook announced today) and online at any given time on that site.

Skype’s Mac client also isn’t winning over any fans in terms of its design, mainly because that design feels unnecessarily cumbersome. Facebook’s Skype integration is the opposite of that: It’s invisible, blending in with Facebook’s web presence without drawing too much attention to itself or changing the Facebook experience that users are comfortable with.

For both the above reasons, I think Facebook Video Calling will unseat Skype as the video chat option of choice for Mac users, at least when it comes to consumers. Pro users might need the advanced Skype features offered through the dedicated Mac app, but some of those might make it to Facebook eventually, too, it was suggested at today’s press conference. And things like calling out to landlines and cell phones might be better handled through Skype’s smartphone clients anyway.

Facebook still has to bring video calling to groups and mobile, but the groundwork is laid for that to happen, and while some are saying Google+ is still in the lead thanks to its Hangouts group video chat, I think that’s underestimating Facebook’s advantage in terms of its huge network size lead.

I’m seeing a lot of negative reaction to this announcement on Twitter in general, but I think it will do wonders for the adoption of video calling among less techie users. What do you think?

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Facebook reportedly working on an iPad app

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 13:27:47 +0000

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s rumors that Facebook would be launching an HTML5 App Store competitor and Facebook’s response that claims native apps and the web aren’t in direct competition, the New York Times reports that an official iPad app from the social network is in the works and should be coming soon.

People “briefed on Facebook’s plans” told the NYT that the new app, which would be introduced in the “coming weeks” for free in the App Store, would feature redesigned Facebook Chat and Facebook Groups features, along with a touchscreen interface created specifically for the iPad. The report further asserts that Mark Zuckerberg personally had a significant role in the redesign process, according to a person who works with Facebook.

The app will also supposedly take advantage of the iPad 2′s camera, allowing people to snap photos and upload them directly to Facebook albums. Photo browsing will offer full-resolution images, along with full-screen browsing, too.

That Facebook would be engaged in developing an iPad app does agree with what the company said yesterday in a brief statement regarding the Project Spartan HTML5 app store it was said to be creating. Specifically, Facebook had this to say about the website versus app debate: “We don’t expect developers to choose between HTML5 and native apps. We expect they will choose both, just as we did.”

Facebook has not provided any indication that it has been working on an iPad app since the device’s release. In fact, Zuckerberg even stated that he didn’t think the iPad was a mobile device, leading many to believe that the company thought its cross-platform website was a good enough client for the Apple tablet. The success of paid and free third-party iPad applications that plug into Facebook services, like My Pad and Friendly, seems to suggest that iPad owners feel otherwise.

Facebook declined to comment on future products when asked about the iPad application. I do think we can expect to see a native Facebook client, however, since continuing to ignore that growing segment would leave a lot of potential traffic and engagement on the table. Also, the Facebook experience on the iPad right now is pretty much defined by third parties. The social network probably isn’t crazy about potentially having part of its brand image resting in the hands of outsiders. Do you think Facebook will finally bend to user demand and introduce an iPad app, or continue to point Apple tablet owners to the web?

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Sparrow Review: A Gmail Client That Feels at Home on the Mac

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 19:00:03 +0000

I’m a known devotee of Apple’s Mail.app, despite its failings, so it’s rare that a Mac mail client will tempt me away from it. Postbox is my client of choice when I’m depending on the kindess (and Macs) of strangers, but Sparrow could give both a run for their money when it comes to Gmail.

Sparrow has been available in public beta for a while now, but as of Wednesday, it’s available in the Mac App Store as a proper 1.0 full version release. The polished shipping version brings with it a new price tag, so here’s what you should consider before deciding whether it’s worth your $9.99.

Is This a Twitter App?

The first thing many will notice about Sparrow is that it doesn’t really feel like Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird or any other desktop mail client for the Mac that’s come before. Instead, its developers went for a much cleaner, minimalist approach that more closely resembles the UI of recent Twitter apps like the official one and Echofon.

In fact, with the message reading pane collapsed (which is how the application opens by default), Sparrow is just like one of those apps, listing your accounts (identified by pictures of your choosing), inbox, starred items, sent folder, drafts, trash and search in a vertical toolbar on the left, and a list of email messages currently sitting in your inbox on the right. As in the iPhone or iPad mail applications, each message lists its sender, subject, the time it was received, and a brief excerpt of the body of the email. Sparrow also supports threaded conversations, so if you’ve been going back and forth with replies, a number will show you how many emails you have in that particular chain.

I really like that if I don’t expand the viewer window (which can be done using an icon in the bottom right of the Sparrow interface), I don’t have to see anything else. I can use the arrow keys to scroll through my messages, archiving, labelling, deleting and replying as necessary. If I need to dig deeper, there’s always the option to expand the message preview pane or just hit enter to see the full message, but the beauty of Sparrow is that you’ll often find it isn’t necessary. In terms of both looks and navigation, Sparrow feels like a Twitter app, which for my relatively light Gmail usage is a good thing.

Everything You Need, Unless You Need a Lot

Sparrow isn’t a power email client. None of the frills like image and attachment indexing and filtering that something like Postbox offers is available here, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If what you’re looking for is an out-of-browser experience for Gmail that’s light, fast, responsive and looks great alongside your other Mac apps, this is the client.

Maybe Sparrow’s greatest strength is the fact that it keeps everything contained. With the message preview pane expanded, you can reply to emails without ever opening a separate window. You can drag and drop attachments to the same window, quickly add labels and switch between accounts with a click or keyboard shortcut. Sparrow may not be as versatile or deep as other clients, but by reducing visual clutter and simplifying the email experience, it could help to save your sanity when dealing with an inbox avalanche.

Mail’s Misses Are Sparrow’s Gains

Sparrow does two wonderful things Mail doesn’t. It provides Growl notifications out-of-the box (provided you have Growl installed), and it provides Menu Bar access and notifications without the need for any third-party extensions. I love that Sparrow provides the option to only use a Menu Bar icon, so I can keep my dock clutter free and have the option to receive only subtle visual notifications if I’d rather turn off Growl notifications for some extensive, head-down working sessions.

Gmail for Now, Everything Else Later

For the time being, I’m happy to use Sparrow as a dedicated Gmail client, which is good because the current version of the app only supports Gmail accounts. Sparrow 1.1 will support IMAP email from a variety of sources, including Yahoo, AOL and MobileMe. Even when that support comes, I doubt I’ll ever retire Apple Mail entirely, since it works so well with MobileMe, but Sparrow will definitely be a permanent fixture for all my Gmail needs.

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Twitterific 4: The Tweetie Replacement We’ve Been Waiting For?

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:28:50 +0000

I use Tweetie on the Mac as my primary Twitter client, despite its long period of neglect. But now that it looks like it might actually become vaporware (despite assertions to the contrary), I’ve started to look elsewhere. That’s why I was thrilled when I saw the Iconfactory’s blog post today previewing Twitterific 4.

I’ve used Twitterific in the past, both on the iPhone and on the Mac, and I always appreciate the attention to detail Iconfactory puts into its UI design. But the app never felt robust enough for me, especially as a user who needs more features for managing multiple accounts. However, I’m not a fan of TweetDeck, which, though powerful, frankly just seems ugly and cluttered.

There are other candidates when it comes to Mac Twitter apps, including Nambu, Kiwi and Socialite. While each offers a decent experience, they all either lack the polish I’ve come to appreciate from companies like Atebits and Iconfactory, are missing key features, or just aren’t focused enough for my purposes.

Tweetie’s questionable future means that there’s a space to fill in the Mac Twitter arena. While there’s no firm release date for Twitterific 4, Iconfactory clearly wanted to stake its claim on that spot. And it looks like a strong claim, too. The screenshot they’ve released (yes, there’s only one) shows a window that looks clean and minimalistic, but seems to have multiple account support and easy access to all your basic features.

I’d still prefer a sidebar to a dropdown for account switching, but there’s no way of saying whether or not that might simply be an option not pictured. Either way, it looks promising, and it should at least be much more current in terms of Twitter’s recent changes to its API and features.

Twitterific is a promising start, but it’d be great to see others enter the arena. The gap left by Tweetie’s long hibernation could be the means by which another up-and-coming Mac dev studio makes a name for itself. Neither Twitter nor the Mac are markets lacking in growth potential, after all.

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Twitter App Updated for iPad

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:21:35 +0000

Until now, the state of Twitter on the iPad hasn’t been great. There were a few pretty good apps (I’ve been using Tweetdeck), but the field needed a champion. Enter the official Twitter for iPad app.

Early this morning, Twitter for iOS was updated as a universal app, bringing a new iPad-specific format to the existing iPhone one. Loren Birchter, the man behind the Twitter app, and Twitter itself has long heralded its arrival. So is it worth the wait?

Well, Twitter definitely has the right idea with this app at first glance. Unlike some other third-party clients I could mention, Twitter for iPad takes full advantage of the iPad’s generous screen space, and does so creatively. You won’t find the same sort of columns that Tweetdeck uses, but you will find a modular, multi-pane layout that pushes new content to the right allowing you to navigate through threads of tweets without losing the thread of where you’ve come from and how exactly you got there.

You can also use two nifty new multitouch gestures. Pinching a tweet will show you the user profile of the person who tweeted it, and pulling down with two fingers will open up a view of the entire conversation related to that tweet, if there is one. Video plays inline, or you can expand it to take up the whole screen. It also continues to load in the background if you want to keep navigating through your stream or open panes.

In terms of the differences between landscape and profile view, there really aren’t any, other than getting to see more of your history in landscape, and more of your timeline in portrait. Users of the OS X Tweetie desktop app will recognize the left-most account overview column, and it works equally well on this platform for switching between multiple Twitter profiles.

So, while some power-users might still prefer Tweetdeck’s columns, Twitter’s iPad app is a much better choice for the rest of us. It’s clean, simple, but powerful when it needs to be, and I’ve yet to run into any bugs. Plus, it’s free. This is by far the best Twitter app out there for the iPad platform.

Users who haven’t yet updated to iOS 4 on their iPhone devices might want to hold out updating for now, though, as many negative reviews in the App Store indicate that the new version crashes on iOS versions 3.1.3 and earlier.

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Tweetie 2.1 Update Brings List Support, New Retweet Implementation

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:00:38 +0000

Not one to be outdone by Twittelator Pro’s most recent update, atebits’ latest update for Tweetie 2 (iTunes link) brings implementations of the two newest official Twitter features: Lists and Retweet. As someone who isn’t particularly crazy about the official retweet implementation, I’m not so excited about that, but there’s still a “Quote Tweet” option as well, which lets you do things the old way.

There’s a lot of other new features and improvements, too, including tweet geotagging, spam reporting via the official Twitter API, What the Trend explanation of trending topics, and more. Once again, Tweetie has returned to the top of the heap, in terms of both functionality and UI.

Lists can be created, edited, managed and viewed, all from within Tweetie 2 now. That means if users post links in the “@user/list” format, you’ll be able to just click on it to view said list. Your own list management and creation features are accessible via the ellipsis (…) icon. I still have yet to create any of my own lists, but testing this out with the lists of others, it seemed to be well-implemented.

New video upload and hosting options are also available. You can now select from Posterous, Mobypicture and Vid.ly, in addition to TwitVid and yFrog. Maybe best of all among the UI changes, you can now disable automatic browser rotation, which is a feature every landscape-capable app should have, speaking as someone who often browses lying down in bed or on the couch.

Lots of other smaller changes and a long list of bug fixes are also included as part of the 2.1 update. The update is free for all Tweetie 2 users, but if you haven’t yet made the leap to the newest version, the $2.99 price tag is seeming incredibly reasonable right about now.

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Twittelator Pro Update Brings List Support to the iPhone

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:51:15 +0000

An update recently went live in the App Store for Twitter client Twittelator Pro that brings, among other things, support for the new Lists feature. Lists, which Twitter implemented only a few weeks ago, allows users to create and subscribe to lists of users, which Twitter users can organize however they see fit. For example, TheAppleBlog offers a list of TAB writers, and one of developers.

Twittelator Pro is the first iPhone client to use the new Lists API. Using the app, you can now create or edit your own lists, view the lists of other users, and follow or unfollow lists. It’s a nice alternative to client-based groups, and it’s especially convenient on the iPhone platform, since it makes Twitter’s information glut a little more digestible.

The update also brings some more list-centric new discovery tools, like suggestions, featured, random, and list searching so that you can explore beyond your own network. It’s actually got me looking around at lists, which is more than I’ve done since Twitter implemented the feature. As a way of finding new people to follow, or of locating good thematically grouped news sources all in one place, the search function is especially helpful.

Here’s a list of some of the other new features introduced in version 3.4:

Reply All – Tap the user avatar next to the tweet to reply to all mentioned.
What the Trend? – Provides an explanation for why a topic is trending.
Search Nearby shows avatars on map pins
Emailing a link uses the web page title as the message subject by default
Much faster download times

Twittelator Pro sells for $4.99 in the App Store. It’s a very feature-rich piece of software, but a little too busy for my tastes. If you’re a TweetDeck desktop user, it’ll probably be more to your liking.

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Anachronistic Twitter Client Released for Classic Macs

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:00:28 +0000

If you’re still running an old Mac PowerBook 550c or something similar, it must be really annoying to not be able to use Twitter via a native client. That’s probably your No. 1 concern, in fact, on your OS 8.1-running machine. You could always use the web interface, but that’s not really a fair solution, is it?

Now, thanks to Grackle68k, Mac users who are still running Macintosh System 6, 7, 8 and 9 can have a dedicated Twitter client of their very own. Personally, I think the release of this app was just timed to steal the spotlight away from Seesmic for Windows. Obviously this is much bigger news!

Twitter is available to pretty much any platform, and that’s no accident. The technology behind it is relatively lightweight, with clients only really needing the ability to make API calls to be completely functional. The memory footprint of clients differs depending on what developers choose to add on the client side of things, but little is needed to make one actually functional.

That’s the idea behind Grackle68k, a labor of love for a small group of programmers who realize that there’s still quite the classic Mac enthusiast crowd out there who actually use their well-aged machines for some basic tasks in addition to just keeping them running (myself included). The program lets you tweet, but if you want it to remember who you are on each startup, you’ll have to break out the ResEdit and make a change to a resource by adding your login information. It’s an added step, true, but a fun one that should bring back memories, so hey, I’m not gonna complain.

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Incoming! New Twitter App for Mac That Only Lets You Search

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:00:20 +0000

At first, I thought this sounded like only half an idea. There are already some great Twitter clients in the Mac software space, most of which have integrated search functions built right in, so how does Incoming! carve out a niche by offering search alone? What I found out was that depending on your Twitter habits, it might actually be the only app you need.

What it offers is a very robust search manager, well above and beyond what the average built-in Twitter search in other clients provide. You can filter results by matching exact phrases, finding any or all of multiple terms, or by exclusionary keywords (so that I can search for “Apple” but exclude “Pie,” for instance). You can even specify positive or negative attitudes (which just searches for a smiley or frowny emoticon, but it works), or specify that you want only questions.

The interface also provides lots of options for filtering your tweets and navigating between searches and trending topics. On the left, your searches appear in the sidebar, and are only removed when you click the “Remove Search” button. Below that list is a pane containing trends. Double-clicking on any trending term will automatically create a search for said term. On the right you have your list of results and the actual tweet-viewing window. You can filter results by influence, username, following/follower count, updates and date.

At no point during any of this do you log into your Twitter account or post any tweets of your own. Some users will no doubt find this bothersome, and question the app’s usefulness, but if you use Twitter for research as much as I do, the arm’s length passivity of Incoming! is just what the doctor ordered. It might also appeal to people who don’t yet want to take the Twitter plunge themselves by signing up for an account, but want access to all the content that’s available via the service, in a much more manageable package than Twitter.com’s own search page.

For those who absolutely need to reply and retweet, you still can; Incoming! just opens the native Twitter web interface to allow you to do so. The application also has some nice extras, like allowing you to export your results to a CSV database file format, providing “Translate” and “Translate All” options, and allowing you to instantly see all of the links and images your search has returned taken out of their individual tweets. It’s the closest thing to a Google for Twitter I’ve yet come across.

The software is currently in beta, which I think explains why the auto-refresh function wasn’t working for me. It’s free, so long as you only want to run three searches at once. Registration removes the search limit cap, and costs $14 while the beta is on, or $24 after that.

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