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All Articles Tagged twitterrific
Twitterrific is looking to be the Alpha and Omega of iPhone Twitter clients. As it was first (before there was even an official SDK!), so it is also now the most recent — in snazzily updated 2.0 form.
So what’s changed? Nothing. And everything. Cliched, maybe, but Twitterrific was originally born from the Iconfactory’s passion for a graceful, gorgeous Twitter reading experience. But then came a host of other Twitter clients that banged the uber-functionality drums and while it seemed like every celebrity with an iPhone clung to the grandaddy goodness of Twitterrific, the unwashed tech-masses wandered elsewhere.
Well, with Twitterrific 2.0, many will wander back. It somehow manages to keep that quick, clean experience but — through UI wizardry — neatly tucks away most every power-user feature imaginable beneath the covers.
Old awesomeness remains — I’ve always loved the ability to quickly, and at any time, change from new tweet to @reply to direct message (dm) at the touch of a tab. New awesomeness is introduced — now I can also tap the “eye” icon to see the tweet I’m replying to for reference, to add another @username to the reply, etc.
Yes, in Battlestar Galactica terms, if Twitterrific 1.0 was the Cylon Centurian, Twitterrific 2.0 is the red-dressed Caprica 6. It has evolved. (And definitely has a plan).
Speaking of which: there’s inarguably the feature-equivalent of an arms race going on among iPhone Twitter clients, and it’s one that greatly benefits users. If the first Twitterrific was a board with a nail in it, and subsequent Twitter clients went from sword to gun, this is our first plasma cannon. And I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Note: Twitterrific 2.0 comes, as it always has, in two versions. There’s Twitterrific (Free with ad support - iTunes link) and Twitterrific Premium ($3.99 - iTunes link). I bought the original Twitterrific Premium and was startled to see Twitterrific 2.0 come to me as a free upgrade. I would easily have paid another $10 for this, much less $3.99. Donation button please?
Full gallery after the break!
Nowhereelse.fr (French language) got their eyes on the Iconfactory’s Gedeon Maheux at the Triangle Tweetup as he walked through a demonstration of the upcoming Twitterrific 2.0 Twitter client for the iPhone. Mashable sums up what we see:
So what’s new in Twitterrific 2.0? Multiple account support, filters for mentions, DMs, favorites, and marks (which are like personal favorites), trends, search by keyword, person, or location, saved searches, notes on users, retweet, conversations, custom shortcuts, the ability to follow/unfollow/block, expanded and condensed views, shrinkable text, and complete Twitter bios. Whoa, we’re out of breath just listing all that’s new, but we likey!
Twitterrific 2 should be available as soon as the App Store approval process runs its course. Let’s just hope Apple’s improved things since the last time a Twitter app tried to update…
File this under frivolous Friday fun — or just shake your head, think less of us, and move along. Either way, if celebrities on Twitter (like Ashton and Demi) is the new black, this must be the new… flashing neon hidden away beneath a plain brown wrapper?
In any (every?) event, COED Magazine has compiled a list of 10 Ten Porn Stars Who Twitter, and a surprising number of them seem be doing so using the iPhone and Twitterrific. (No little blue bird jokes, we swear!)
Is it the trendiness? The ease of use? The multimedia (or multitouch!) functionality? Adult industry adoption is often seen as a technology bell-weather…
(Via @LeoLaporte)
Craig Hockenberry and the Icon Factory are among the earliest and most well respected iPhone developers in the community. In addition to their amazing design work and Mac and Windows software, they created the highly popular Twitterrific and Frenzic for the iPhone.
TiPb: We’ve been spending a lot of time lately discussing the App Store and what business model(s) it will evolve From launch, you took the route of having both a premium paid version of Twitterrific and a free, add-supported version. What made you settle on that idea, and how effective has it been for you?
Craig Hockenberry: The desire to have both a free and paid version of Twitterrific came from our experience on the Mac. It’s the best of both worlds for everyone: we get some funds to pay for the development of the product, and users get to choose how they want to support us.
We decided on having ads before the final details of the App Store were revealed. Since there are no demos in iTunes, the ability to have a free version for people to evaluate has been a big benefit. A lot of my fellow developers are now looking at this model.
Back before my iPhone was torn from me (sniffle) for the Round Robin, Twitteriffic was (and will be again) my mobile Twitter client of choice. Since TiPb has also been looking into App development and iPhone UI lately, this all added up to make Craig Hockenberry’s post today on furbo.org especially interesting. Hockenberry talks about the importance of making choices in development, about what features to add and what to leave out, and perhaps most importantly to us, in variety of different approaches:
There will always be more than one way to solve a problem: a developer’s personal preferences will inevitably seep into the implementation. Having many choices for a Twitter client means that developers don’t need to create a “one size fits all” solution. In essence, users get to choose a developer whose preferences match their own.
If you’re at all interested in a behind-the-curtains peak into what makes a good app great, be sure to read the whole article.
Also, let us know if you’re currently using Twitterrific, if what he mentions was already obvious to you, or if you’re using another Twitter client, what you’re using and why you prefer it?
Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, oh how I love thee. Now I can really love thee with Twitterrific for the iPhone! If you are a fan of the very popular microblogging service Twitter, you are in for a rare treat with Twitterrific for iPhone from The Icon Factory! This application comes in two flavors: a free version with a very unobtrusive banner at the top or a paid version for $10 with no banner advertising and an extra theme.
The iPhone SDK will not allow 3rd party apps to multitask or run background services. We’ve previously covered both initial developer Twitter-rage at this, and pundit counter-points. We’ve also covered Craig Hockenberry before — the man who (perhaps poetically) develops Twitterrific for the Mac and jailbroken iPhones, and is now bringing it to the SDK.
Hockenberry, via his furbo.org blog, shares his experience on iPhone development and his views on the multitasking (non-?) issue.
To be blunt, I’ve never seen so many experts without a fricken’ clue. If you haven’t written code using the jailbreak tool chain, your opinions on the iPhone SDK, based entirely on what you see in a simulator, just aren’t relevant. You might as well be explaining the nuances of brain surgery.
Wha-wha-wha-what? Please, allow Mr. Hockenberry to continue:
Twitterrific on the iPhone could definitely make use of a background process to gather new tweets. In fact, a prototype version of the software did just that. And it was a huge design failure: after doing XML queries every 5 minutes, the phone’s battery was almost dead after 4 hours. In fact, the first thing I said after giving Gruber this test version was “don’t use auto-refresh.”
Hockenberry goes on to discuss the power demand problem of the radios, both EDGE and Wi-Fi, and the danger of even well-intentioned developers getting individually reasonable but collectively overwhelming access to background services. He does, however, expect that in a future release Apple may include some method of notifying network apps that the radios are being used (for example, by MobileMail Touch), and allowing brief TCP/IP connections during that period. Bottom-line, at the OS’s discretion, not the individual apps’.
Sound reasonable? Sound crazy? Should Apple give unfettered access to everyone immediately an trust users to sort through it themselves? Or should Apple be as strict as possible from the get-go? What do you think?
