I’ve said this on Twitter and it remains true: There is one glaring thing wrong with every single Mac desktop client I have tried. Yes, ALL of them. I realize I could be alone in this, I looked for a stat and found that as of June 2009 the average Twitter user has 126 followers (this minute I’m at 2,416 following me, and I follow 1,413 as of today.) and of all Twitter traffic 80% is from the API (meaning programs that post to Twitter, not the website itself.) I keep trying apps and finding flaws and making do. I kept threatening to blog this so here goes: I’m going to list my problem with each of these apps. Usual disclaimers apply: Kelly is the exception, Kelly is not the rule, your mileage may vary, close cover before striking, do not fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate, not to be rebroadcast without the written permission of Major League Baseball.
Here is the list:
Twitterrific from the Iconfactory. I am a super Iconfactory fangirl. I love them love them love them. They were one of the first with a desktop client and I bought it after about 10 minutes of use. It squishes up really small, doesn’t spend a lot of UI on fancy junk I don’t need, has awesome keyboard commands, and just works. I also use Twitterrific on my iPhone and adore that too. This is what I want to be my first choice, and it is about half the time. But it’s lacking.
FLAW: While I like that it caches some of my recent replies and DMs, it does so at the bottom of the stream when I launch the app. After seeing how iPhone apps and other Mac clients do it, I want separate panes for replies and DMs, it’s easier to keep track and make sure I’m not missing anything. (I also have zero user management within the app: If I want info on someone I have to view the web page and do everything that way.)
Nambu. Nice layout, has a little “info” pane to show multiple accounts, mentions, DMs, all the stuff I want.
FLAW: There are “read” and “unread” tweets, and in the zeal to mark things read or unread I end up lost and overwhelmed SUPER fast. If new tweets load, it doesn’t save my place, and (if the option is checked,) simply scrolling marks things read so if I bounce back and forth to find my place I can’t rely on the indicators to show where I left off. If I turn off the scrolling = mark as read option, I still can’t find my place and now I have to select every single tweet as I go by so it’s marked as read.
Tweetdeck. This is the one most of the “power users” I know are running. They adore it. I went up a wall trying to figure it out. It’s also an app that runs on Adobe Air, so if you want to run this you have to install that first.
FLAW: Updates. After you install and launch it, Tweetdeck thinks you have no followers until they tweet. Eventually it learns who they all are. EVENTUALLY. I ran it for more than a week and it still wasn’t finding everyone. Even after they had updated a couple of times. I wanted to use the groups and the filtering but I lost my patience and ditched it when the easiest things I wanted to do (reply, dm, look up users) were hard to find and do.
Seesmic Desktop. Another Air application. I wanted to like this one too. Nice info pane, multiple accounts, etc.
FLAW: Conversation fail. If I want to retweet someone, reply to someone, or send them a DM I have to mouse over their user icon in a tweet, click the right one of the four options that pops up, and then try to actually do what I want to do. Icons aren’t clear, and I’m on a 13″ screen so my resolution is up as high as I can get it. I need all that room and making me pick a tiny little icon is aggravating. Since I can’t find any keyboard commands there’s no way around this.
BONUS: This sounds dumb but the scroll is super herkyjerky because it scrolls one tweet at a time, you can’t leave it “between” tweets at the top of the screen. And the readability issues with Nambu are similar here: No preservation of where I left off and new updates shift my position so I can’t keep track easily.
Tweetie:Mac. This is the one I’m currently using about half of the time (I alternate between this and Twitterrific), even though the flaw drives me nuts. User info and management is nice, reply and DM panes exist, along with search. Keyboard commands are handy.
FLAW: Reply and DM panes are FULLY threaded. Meaning if I have four replies, and I go to the oldest one and answer that, my reply makes it the newest in my list even though the incoming message (the part I care about) is the oldest one. WAY frustrating.
So there’s my complaints. If I’m wrong on this stuff or missing a preference or something PLEASE let me know! Or you know, if you are at the Iconfactory and want me to beta test your new glorious Mac version, let me know. I’d LOVE to have a client I can tell the whole word to go get.
