If you know and love the official Twitter client for iOS, you’ll be right at home in Twitter for OS X. It’s the same slick application, right down to a striking fresh-from-the-iPad appearance, but now sporting a host of Mac-specific tweeting tricks. Unfortunately, it’s still no replacement for twitter.com when it comes to managing your account.
The resizable main window lets you view your timeline, mentions, messages, lists, and profile. You can also conduct searches from the sidebar, and your timeline automatically updates with the latest news and lets you retweet, mark favorites, reply to tweets, or view all messages in a conversation with a tap…er, a click. And like its touchscreen cousin, Twitter supports multiple accounts, so if you’re the personal assistant to a Kardashian, you can tweet from your boss’s photo shoot and still access your own account with ease.
Is it iOS or OS X? Only Twitter’s hairdresser knows for sure.
Despite the iOS flavor, Twitter is a Mac app through and through. Compose multiple tweets in separate windows simultaneously, and gain quick access to accounts and incoming alerts through a menu bar icon. Handier still are extensive keyboard commands, including customizable shortcuts that let you create new tweets and show or hide Twitter from any application (a good thing, since creating a new tweet frustratingly requires multiple clicks otherwise). You can even use Multi-Touch gestures on a trackpad to view links or user profiles with a three-finger swipe over your timeline. And don’t worry about shortening URLs to make each character count—Twitter automagically squashes ’em down to size when you tweet. Together, these refinements can actually help you get more tweeting done in less time than tapping away in iOS.
But it’s called a Twitter client for a reason—you’ll still depend on the Twitter site to do your account’s heavy lifting. Sure, you can block or unfollow users, report spam, and edit your bio in the Twitter app, but you can’t manage your lists, approve new follower requests, change retweet settings, or even change your profile picture within the application. These limitations are disappointing given how easily the app tackles the day-to-day business of tweeting—we’d rather stay in Twitter than switch over to a browser to make these changes.
The bottom line. Twitter is a great app that’s lost little in translation from iOS, but we’re still hoping it gains more features over time.
Mac OS 10.6 or later
Fun and familiar iOS look and features. Multi-Touch gestures and keyboard shortcuts make tweeting easy.
Full account maintenance requires trip to Twitter’s site. No New Tweet button.
LandonAB
February 24, 2011 at 8:03pm
I must be the only person on the planet because I can't find much via Google but Twitter and a few other apps on Mac randomly freeze. Actually, just the timeline freezes and I have to restart the app to get it working. The only twitter app i can use is Echofon.
Ever seen Twitter clients freeze? A solution would be awesome.
Manooel
February 22, 2011 at 2:06pm
Also it doesn't have the list of users you follow when composing a new tweet. So if you want to mention someone you have to memorize their twitter name or do a reply from a previous tweet, kind of frustrating when you want to mention more than one person. The iPad version has the same problem. This is a big fail and should be addressed quickly.
