I am a bit of a Twitter addict, love it in fact. I am not a prolific tweeter by any means, more of a reader of my various interests (#twitterblades being the best by far – those guys&gals rock). I have never really gotten on with the website as I like to retain a last position on my timeline – that just suits the way I use Twitter. Since getting an iPad last year my choice of Twitter client was a major consideration as I knew it would an app on which I would spend a lot of time.
After using the free Twitter-produced app for a while I knew that I wanted a bit more functionality. I had been using Tweetlogix and nothing else on my iPod, as it was one hell of a good client (and still is – if you have iPhone I can highly recommend it). It has lots of good features and just works smoothly and quickly. However, they do not do an iPad or universal build and are not (according to a reply from the developers) planning one either…a real shame.
So I did a bit of research, Lite try-outs and purchases and here are some very brief opinions on the three best ones (I know opinions differ) I have come across:
‘Official’ Client
OK, so it has notifications which is a big feature for some. However, the interface is set in stone and you cannot tweak it one bit; I prefer a smaller font to get a bigger timeline for one. There are little tweaks/settings at all in fact, so what you see if what you get. Trending topics are either US or worldwide (who knows?), but unless you need a constant reminder of the fact that hashtags containing the word ‘bieber’ are ever-present, what’s the point of trending anyway? The conversation view in DM’s is quite nice and I suppose the swiping to drill down and back is kind of iPad-tastic. However, the toolbar takes up some serious real-estate and is waste of screen use. Basic functionality, but it does what is essentially needed. Overall: 6/10
Osfoora HD
I used Osfoora for about 6 months without even looking elsewhere – this a very decent effort indeed. Even more so when you realise that it’s produced from just one guy! There is a ton of flexibility with its settings, a very nice dark theme and neat extras such as Instapaper and a Safari bookmarklet. The toolbar is very small in portrait view so that the timeline is the interface and there are lots of useful options to embed into new tweets and a draft manager too (essential). As with many apps along these lines, more options are much better than few – you can use/ignore what you wish. It is fast, smooth and has nice touches like colouring tweets that are mentions so they stand out. Apart from crashing nearly every time a list is updated, and there being no notifications – not an issue for me – I think it’s a cracker. Overall: 8.5/10
Tweetbot
I think I tried out a free version of this on my iPod a while back and thought nothing of it, but a new release described on Zite (the best newsreader on the iPad – get it!) made me take a serious look. I bought it pretty quickly and have never looked back. In a word – incredible. The interface looks great: well-designed, an unobtrusive toolbar and all requirements are usually a single tap or swipe away – and this is the killer aspect. For example, tapping a tweet brings up options to reply, retweet (BOTH styles), favourite, common action or see the details. You can right-swipe it to see the conservation view and left swipe to see any replies. Nice.
The configuration options are varied, so much so you can even set service settings per twitter account. It does offer notifications too, and in-app notifications of new tweets and mentions are clear, but subtle. You can mute users and hashtags just by pressing them, very useful if you don’t want to unfollow (and you can even set an unmute duration too!) One of the most useful features is the ability to set any list as your timeline with a button at the very top; this has certainly made lists become more of a regular option. In fact there are tons of good things about this app that all I am going to say is… Overall: 9.5/10
For a client to get 10 in my book, they need to include a really good list management option – none do this to any decent degree although Tweetbot is by far the best I’ve seen.
Others I looked that, but didn’t get more than 5 minutes of a look in for a variety of reasons (mostly because I thought they were poor!):
