Kiwi 1.1 is a stunning upgrade

by Milind Alvares
Tuesday February 9, 2010

Kiwi 1.1 is a stunning upgrade

by Milind Alvares on February 9, 2010

Kiwi 1.1 is a stunning upgrade →

Remember Kiwi? Great start for a 1.0 twitter client, but was missing some crucial features. Well it turns out the developers were serious about their app. With the new 1.1 release, Kiwi is almost a complete package compelling enough for any twitter user

First of all, it brings in a slick inline image viewer for twitpic, Ember and yFrog links, where the image zooms in as you hover over—very cool. It also supports viewing images in a HUD (but sadly, no support for img.ly). Greatly improved notifications support, including a per account menubar notification system much like Tweetie does (terrible icon though), as well as Growl support and Dock badges. It can remember your scroll position as new tweets arrive, or take you back to the top, mark them as read as you scroll by. It can even mark tweets as read across views so long as you’ve seen it in one—nice!

Most importantly, the Kiwi theming community has grown, and I’m totally in love with the ‘industrial’ theme style. Anyone can make themes using HTML and CSS, and you can submit and browse them at Kiwithemes.com. I’m going to try it out for a while and see whether I can finally make the switch from aging Tweetie. I’m just not sure I’ll be able to put up with its ridiculous icons.

Reader Comments

timbo February 9, 2010 at 2:51 am

Too much flare. Despite Tweetie’s lack of new features, it still remains the most intuitive, and solid Mac client.

Milind Alvares February 9, 2010 at 2:55 am soggysh.it

I agree about Tweetie’s UI—no other client comes close. However, a lot of people have started using the official retweets, and I’ve missed out on some important ones because Tweetie doesn’t show them.

Moreover, I’m really intrigued by Kiwi’s account groups feature and want to see whether that will help streamline my feeds. That, and the ability to filter out gowa.la links.

I just hope I’m strong enough to bear with the ‘cheap’ UI.

WalrusCP February 9, 2010 at 3:04 am gridironmeanderings.blogspot.com

I actually like the UI in Kiwi. It’s nicely designed, though I agree the account window takes a little getting used to.

Things I’d love to see added for 1.1.1 and beyond:

Official Twitter Lists support
Oauth (priority for Isaiah already from his lips)
Twitter profile viewing and editing within Kiwi
Ability to follow and unfollow users within Kiwi
Retweet (Quote and Twitter) button API added for themes
Instapaper support

My general thoughts are here: http://thurly.net/e8t

Milind Alvares February 9, 2010 at 3:13 am soggysh.it: Just sidetracking here a bit, but I’m not sold on Instapaper support within a desktop twitter client. It makes sense on a mobile twitter client since you only see it on an embedded browser, but for the desktop I see the link in my browser already—from thereon just clicking the usual instapaper bookmarklet.

As Brent Simmons explains the anatomy of a feature using exactly Instapaper as his example.
WalrusCP February 9, 2010 at 3:16 am gridironmeanderings.blogspot.com: You may have a point there. I kinda like it, but it’s not a must-have feature. Very true the bookmarklet is well and good, though some might argue it adds the necessity to open the link and then use the bookmarklet instead of just a single click in the Twitter app.

samu February 9, 2010 at 1:47 pm twitter.com/samaiwade

A lot of the time, I’ll star tweets on my iPhone so I can look at the links they contain later. Ideally, therefore, I’d have keyboard shortcuts for opening Favourites, and for opening these links in Safari.

As far as I know, Socialite is the only one to offer both of these. Unfortunately, the interface is comically icon-strewn, the current version crashes on launch for me (as does Echofon), and I’m still irritated by being told first that I was entitled to a free upgrade from (MacHeist) Eventbox, and then that I wasn’t*. Brizzly needs the mouse to get to Favourites, but you can V links out into tabs from there. Twitteriffic can open the links, but doesn’t seem to have a Favourites view, and everything else I’ve tried is similarly missing either one half or the other.

… which is a long-winded way of saying, “I wish there was a keyboard shortcut for ‘Open Link’” …

* an initial “no” would have been fine; I got Eventbox for free, after all.

John February 9, 2010 at 1:49 pm

I disagree, completely. Instapaper support is relatively easy to roll in to an app, and the whole point is to get rid of something to read it LATER. Not now. If it gets sent to my browser, I have to switch to the browser, wait for the page to load, press the bookmarklet, potentially log in to Instapaper, close the page/tab, switch away from my browser. Nonsense.

And if you look at the page in your browser the chances are very high you will at least skim through it.

All very distracting! I bang a whole bunch of links and articles into Pinboard and Instapaper all for reading later in the evening when I have finished work and put the family to bed! Isn’t that the entire premise for these services?

Not everyone is a perfectionist like Brent. But, that is why I have been paying for NNW for many years…I think his analytical approach is great but possibly overdone in this case.

John February 9, 2010 at 1:53 pm

samu, if you take a look at Pinboard ( http://pinboard.in/ ) it will automagically pull links in from your Twitter stream and/or favorites and other places (including Instapaper).

For me it’s been great for consolidating all my “read later” stuff into one place. It might fit your needs too.

samu February 9, 2010 at 2:14 pm twitter.com/samaiwade: I use Pinboard already; it doesn’t help with the issue of keyboard navigability. In addition, I prefer to use it for long-term bookmarking, and keep short-term “to read” items separate.