Alex Stone

UPDATE: To save you time, I’ve summarized the article:
I want landscape keyboard, integrated photo features, instead of the app just showing me the twitpic/yfrog page, integrated Google Maps for location links, and icon badges so I know how many tweets I have to look at.

Conclusion: I’m using Tweetie right now, but really want something better

So… I’ve now tried just about every single Twitter app for the iPhone and I can’t settle on one. I’ve actually purchased Tweetie a while ago, but it’s missing some things, now that I’ve seen what everyone else is offering.

Let’s go through them, shall we?

Twitteriffic
So this one is pretty popular, especially since they put out the 2.0 version. I really hated the 1.0 version, so this app had a lot of work to do to make me remotely happy. Here’s the breakdown.

I like that it does multiple accounts (now). I like it’s stylish layout and even really dig how Twitteriffic handles filtering. Sadly, though, the lack of a landscape mode kind of hurts. You get so used to landscape typing out SMS and emails, you kind of expect it for all Twitter apps. Alas, not the case.

Another major gripe is the way it handles Google Map links. Instead of just offering up a pre-shortened link, it gives you the full blown Google Map link that you have to then shorten, yourself. Also, the way this thing handles pictures is really annoying to me. Instead of showing you just the image, like Tweetie and Twittelator does, it actually pulls up the page. Which is great if you use the hideous yFrog service. Twitpics, on the other hand, show you the entire Twitpic page.

Twitteriffic’s Conversation view leaves much to be desired, style-wise, but it’s serviceable.

Twittelator (Pro)
This is the one that’s come the closest, so far. This one came recommended to me by a LOT of people so I checked it out. It is, without a doubt, the most fully-featured and well though-out Twitter app for the iPhone… almost.

Right off the bat, this app is very well-styled. Everything feels clean. And, as an added bonus, you have your badge numbers, showing you exactly how many new tweets, mentions, and messages you have waiting for you. Also, you can customize the navigation bar to your liking.

The way this thing handles images, links, video (yes, video), and audio, is great. Any tweet with attached media or a link, is accompanied by a small thumbnail, showing you a preview of the image. Great if the tweet is not very descriptive of what the image is. Also handy when you really don’t care about every image that comes through or if you have friends that post too many pictures (like friends that happen to be at the No Doubt + Paramore show). Also, should you decide you want to see the full image, Twittelator Pro gives you just the full res image, rather than link you to the twitpic or yfrog page. It’s very nice.

Another major plus for this app is the tweet input screen. You can easily add media , GPS location map, or update your location, as well as flip your phone sideways to get a landscape input. A HUGE bonus, here.

This app is not perfect, though. In fact, the issues I had with it are incredible and were enough to have the app removed from my iPhone, altogether.

Another really nice feature is the ability to quickly toggle notifications. Handy when someone is starts tweeting a lot (hey, it happens. especially during the summer, with people getting out to do more things) and you need to turn them off for a day or so.

A huge glaring issue I’ve experienced is the unresponsiveness of the app. Clicking a tweet doesn’t show you a tweet, clicking a profile name or icon doesn’t show you a user profile. The interface, beyond the compose tweet interface just feels really broken and makes no sense. At first I though it was due to interferance from the screencover and ended up taking the cover off (ruining it in the process :( ). On top of that, if you ever do manage to get to the single-tweet screen, the whole thing is incredibly ugly. It’s like someone else was working on it and handed it off to preschoolers who want to grow up to be interface designers.

Lastly, it’s incredibly difficult to figure out how to switch accounts (actually I just found it and it’s in a really stupid place).

Oh well. On to the next app.

Twitterfon (Pro)
I was very hesitant to try this one. I don’t know why, but the screenshots just made it look boring and underfeatured. Read the verdict.

First off, Twitterfon has a very nice and simple interface. The navigation bar at the bottom makes it easy to filter tweets. The app has a portrait AND landscape tweet creator. Very simple tweet writing interface, too. Like Twittelator Pro, there’s even a little button to quickly select a friend to @reply to. There’s even a quick search for folks that have too many followers to simply scroll through the list.

Sadly, the image handling for Twitterfon Pro is the same thing that Twitteriffic does, where it just shows you the webpage and not the image. On top of that, plus a few weird glitches concerning @replies and the lack of a conversation view, I’ll have to pass for now.

Next!

TweetDeck
This is *the* powerhouse of Twitter apps. All the celebrities and power-tweeters use the desktop version of TweetDeck. I can’t stand the desktop app, myself. It’s really ugly and the interface is overwhelming. But the iPhone app…

Right off the bat, Tweetdeck for iPhone looks intimidating. I’m gonna ignore that for now. So what I really dig is this columns-based Twitter system. Basically, you can create your own sections and swipe through them. The columns are well styled, but could look a bit friendlier. Maybe some rounded corners?

The single-tweet view is also really nice. You can see everything you need to see about the tweet and very quickly retweet, @reply, DM, or mark the tweet as a favorite. You can also quickly and easily get to the user’s profile, which is handy.

Another major plus for Tweetdeck for iPhone is this little icon in the bottom-left corner, labeled “Updates”. Clicking this will give you counts of which of your columns have new content available. It’s very handy and makes it incredibly easy to navigate through the columns and see all the new content without becoming overwhelmed.

Like many Twitter apps, this is lacking a landscape keyboard. It also uses what I’m now calling “Obnoxiously Absent Photo Integration” (OAPI, for short).

Next up…

Birdfeeder
This one is really new (as in just hit the app store, yesterday) and praises itself on simplicity. On one hand, it delivers exactly what it says it does and feels very elegant. But…

When you first launch Birdfeeder, you are overwhelmed in how pretty the interface is. This app was clearly given much love in the interface department. It’s subtle, clean, and serviceable.

To be blunt, this app, while pretty, is just too simple. Creating a new tweet only offers a photo inclusion button and the option to delete the tweet and a 140-char countdown as you type. Handy, yes. Worth $4.99. Not by a long shot. No conversation view (not that uncommon), either.

A major “selling point” for this app was that you can view DMs as if they were SMS messages. It’s handy and I even like this feature, but it doesn’t make up for the simple things that are missing. Oh, and yes, Birdfeeder uses the OAPI method for photos.

This app does some other things, but the fact that it’s missing so many other basic features and that all of the search features are so buried within the app, earned this a speedy removal. I’ll be watching it for updates, though.

Finally…

Tweetie
So far, this is the one I like, but it still needs work (hoping these changes are comming in the often-mentioned update that @atebits keeps saying was sent for approval a month ago).

The apps interface is wonderful. It’s speedy, responsive, clean, and simple. Of all the features this thing has, what I like the most, and what drew me to the app, was the lack of OAPI. Meaning that whenever I see a twitpic/yfrog link, I click it and it shows me the whole image, instead of a page with an image on it. Getting to profiles is incredibly simple from pretty much anywhere in the app.

The app has a landscape view, but it’s not automatically triggered when you tilt the phone sideways. Instead you have to toggle it in the system settings.

Tweetie really only needs the following things to make it perfect

• Automatic landscape mode (even let me read my tweets that way, too)
• Steal the image preview dealie from Twittelator Pro
• Badges on the icons in the navbar so I can get a visual on how many new tweets I have to look at (maybe just steal the thing from TweetDeck)

So close…

The search rages on, but for now, I have Tweetie sitting in my iPhone’s dock.