Tweetie for Mac – My First Impression

Tweetie released a couple of months back but I had the chance to test it on my iTouch and Macbook only a week ago. However, I was impressed with what it had to offer. The strongest feature of Tweetie for Mac application is its aesthetic quality User Interface, which just “looks” good. This feature alone makes it way better to the other Twitter desktop clients, I don’t think this feature is sufficient to make it the best Twitter app for Mac. Tweetie still isn’t there yet. I’m waiting for some updates.

Some Initial things I found were:

5. Not a Compact Layout

It’d have been great if one had the option of using a more compact layout. By resizing the window, the smallest size you can get to is 355×422 px. It is difficult to keep Tweetie from dominating your screen, since you see only 3 to 4 tweets with the smallest size.

Tweetie’s User Interface is awesome, the app is stable, and it’s also very usable.

4. Heavy Usage of API

I found Tweetie taking up a lot of memory. It seems to make a lot of calls back to Twitter’s API service due to which I’ve been locked out of using Twitter twice so far. When such a thing happens you need to just wait for an hour before you get your service unlocked and you start to receive the tweets again.

3. Saved Searches Not Possible

This feature is present in only on the iPhone version of Tweetie, I really like this feature.

2. No Find Nearby Tweets Feature

I’m not sure if Apple’s desktop come with CoreLocation framework integrated with it, but this is one feature that I truly look forward to. I reacently met few really amazing people in Singapore Airport through Tweetie for iPhone. I have even met a few over a coffee. Its really amazing to connect to people that way, I’d love it if that feature were to be integrated to Tweetie for Mac that could serve me the same purpose.

1. Not Integrated to Growl

Most of the well known apps of Mac already have integrated to Growl and are taking the advantage, but Tweetie for Mac forces you to have your Twitter app in the foreground for you to see the tweets as they come in. Growl is a notification system at the system level that lets you customize how various apps get your attention. Not integrated to Growl can change my decision about Tweetie. I already have tons of application windows open for my Stock market trading along with SAP applications that eat up a lot of my screen space, it becomes really difficult to keep tweetie window active in such cases.

I’m currently using Twitteriffic on my Mac but I won’t say I’m contented with it. I’m completely dependent on it’s integration with Growl. I’ve also tried TweetDeck and other Mac desktop clients for Twitter, each of them have wonderful features but also have their downsides. I personally dont prefer the Adobe Air Apps, those dont give me the feel of a mac application. I would prefer a Twitter client that behaves like a Macs do even if it comes with showing ads for free users; I certainly would pay for a good software. Tweetie for Mac’s great looks reminds me of Things.

I hope they soon come up with some of the features that I require.