Review: Twitter for Mac

The opening of the Mac app store last week occasioned the release of a long-awaited official Twitter desktop client for the Mac. It's actually an upgrade to Tweetie, an early and winningly spare desktop client that so enamored Twitter, the short-message service bought the company.

When it was first released two years ago as "Tweetie," such things were called "software." The desktop client is now an "app" called "Twitter." Unfortunately, these changes in name and delivery method telegraph the lack of any real innovation. While "Twitter" adds some improvements to the seminal Tweetie, its arrival feels anticlimactic – especially given that Twitter has radically redesigned its web interface, and that it wasted no time updating Tweetie for the iPhone after acquiring Atebits and Loren Brichter, who developed both the desktop and mobile clients.

When we reviewed Tweetie for Mac in April 2009, Brian X Chen declared that "Tweetie's interface is so clean you would think it came straight out of Apple headquarters." This much remains true, and then some. The font choice is better, the borderless window is sleeker, the activity indicators are more discreet, and the thought bubbles have given way to entries that are gently separated from one another, rather than virtually floating against a background. Even the menu-bar icon is now the silhouette of Twitter's iconic bird instead of a quote bubble.

So Twitter scores a 10 for the cosmetic makeover of a program we already thought was pretty. But where are inline previews of linked content? The counts of unread tweets, mentions and messages? We can roll over our own icons to reveal the account data we already know, but roll over anyone else's icon and there's no useful information. Indeed, many of the things we love about the newly redesigned web experience are absent here.

Bravo for incorporating the iPhone app's Retweet and Quoted Tweet options, and for making Reply All the default when sending @replies. But the rationale for some other choices eludes us.

The menu-bar icon no longer snaps the app into focus by default, it only exposes a menu to go to a particular timeline – Tweets, Mentions or Messages (a reader points out that this can be changed in settings). But it does not tell you if there has been any activity on any of them, so this actually counts as two bad decisions. I find myself clicking on anything, just to maximize the app, and that feels like a workaround.

Also, there's no single-click method anymore to create a tweet. It's now a two-click commitment, even with the app in focus. There is plenty of space for the little pen button that has been eliminated. I'm all for keyboarding, but there's no reason to take a mouse function away. And if keyboarding is all that, where is the still-missing keystroke combo for Refresh All?

A reader points out that this upgrade uses the new Twitter streaming API, unlike Tweetie, which pushed Tweets periodically. That's great as far as it goes, but I doubt many users would notice one way or the other (I didn't, obviously) or care as much about that than some UI and data-reporting improvements.

Where are we on the "happy/grumpy" scale? Somewhere in the middle. This release is cleaner than the breakthrough client of April 2009, but unremarkable in a world now over-run with desktop competitors. Maybe that's the point: Twitter wants to win on the web, where most tweets still originate, and on mobile, because that's where the world is headed. The desktop is so very 2010.

Still, the people are speaking: Twitter is the No. 2 free app in the Mac store. Of course, the top paid app is Angry Birds, so …

WIRED: Nicer to look at than Tweetie for Mac. Gone are the chat-like bubbles and generic design. Activity indicators are more discreet. Price can't be beat.

TIRED: Tries to get by on good looks alone. Missing key functionality found in web interface and in competing clients. Two clicks to tweet is one click too many.