Tweetie is a great iPhone twitter app. In many ways it is even better than most desktop apps (consequently making it the best Twitter app on any platform). And I don’t think any of you can disagree with me on this. Brichter started off good, but with a series of updates has made this the twitter app to have on your iPhone.
But I have one little problem. Brichter’s blog does not allow comments. So whatever his views are, somehow become final and deciding. Most of the times he talks sense, but some times I just need to get my reply across publicly (email doesn’t quite cut it). So here I am, with a bunch of suggestions to counter his one sided arguments.
Shake to do something
Brichter seems to have huge problems with using the accelerometer. He feels that a shake feature is “gimmicky”. Can someone explain to me the various uses of a fart and flashlight feature? That little jab aside, I think gimmicky actually works with a large percentage of the iPhone audience (case to point, Tweetie sales increased 500% after he implemented the aforementioned gimmicky features). His second argument, is that the iPhone is heavy and there’s a possibility one might accidentally fling it out of the hand. Thank you for the concern, but I’m perfectly aware of the weight of my iPhone. I’ve used it for quite a while now to understand what the dynamics are.
Okay, even so, I would agree that the shake-to-refresh would not be the best use of the accelerometer. As there’s something even better. Tweetie needs a shake-to-go-back-to-main-screen. Ever burrowed through a bunch of tweets, users, recents, and then found yourself furiously tapping the back button? Give it a shake, and you’re back on your main screen. It’s functional, you don’t do it every five minutes, and there’s a little bit of fun involved.
Horizontal Keyboarding
I personally hate the horizontal keyboard. Thank god he’s made the keyboard optional. But hey, why is it a be an all or nothing option? Why can’t I, after enabling horizontal in the preferences, choose between portrait and landscape by ? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt though, as I’m not sure if this is technically possible, since I think once the keyboard is invoked in either mode, it stays that way.
Filtering features
Brichter has some good points on implementing a groups feature for Tweetie. Most of his points are solid and make perfect sense. I mean, I didn’t think of ‘create another account to read just a few tweets’. That said, I would still like to see some filtering options in terms of negatives. I could maybe filter out that annoying someone who keeps tweeting nonsense (but need to follow due to business/personal reasons), or maybe weed out tweets on Obama. This could be implemented in the iPhone settings without bringing in complexity on the user end of things.
Tab bar customization
His latest attack is against customization of the tab bar. He says he will implement it, but it’s not high on the list. Here’s his explanation:
They are your tweets, your replies, your messages, your favorites. Twitter “trends” aren’t yours, they’re Twitter’s. If they went down there they’d be the odd man out.
Provide less functionality just because someone will feel like the odd one out? Personally I never check messages on the iPhone app (instead I get them in my email like regular people do), and why on earth would I want to check my favourites? This is the most ridiculous explanation I’ve heard! Now I don’t know squat about programming, but I’m sure implementing an iPod-like tab bar customization feature won’t be too difficult.
Some other features I’d like to see (Brichter hasn’t said anything about this) are viewing user favourites, relative dates and times for tweets. I feel like the devs (in general) aren’t challenging the iPhone enough. Where’s the use of Multi-Touch? I would love to see a two-finger tap to @reply, or tilt scrolling (please, check out Instapaper Pro to see how it’s done). If you have any more suggestions, or think I’m talking nonsense, please do sound off in the comments.
Oh, and if you haven’t used Tweetie [iTunes link] yet, you are missing out on something. Hands down the best twitter app on the iPhone. You can check out our review, or read our interview with Loren Brichter.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I would like to see auto-refresh option and also viewing user favourites. I hadn’t seen Brichter’s blog before. Yeah the tab bar customization argument is totally off!
I love tweetie though! Tried almost all the others and this one is the best.
Just my 2 cents: I use favorites daily… I often scroll through lots of tweets, mark interesting ones (containing links) as fav, and later when I have spare time I’ll go through my favs and read the stories behind the links or send them to instapaper for even more later reading
Agree with pretty much everything here. Would love the tab bar to be customizable and the shake-home feature is a really good idea.
Loren seems cool so I hope he listens to these suggestions and makes Tweetie even better than it already is!
Nicely written Milind. I’ve been observing Loren’s blog as well (who can ignore the linkage he gets from DF), and I can’t tell you how I’ve wanted to tell him exactly wht y ou said about the shake to home screen feature.
I don’t use message a lot but like marco I do use favourites. But that’s besides the point. The point is being able to easily customise the tab bar, and tweetie should allow it. I know the dev can’t possibly implement this all at one go, but he should at least have the right mind to do so.
And oooooh yeah, Tweetie is the best!
shake to refresh hurts my wrist.
also it makes me look like i am frustrated at my device.
also it’s stupid.
i hate when i’m using my ipod touch in bed and suddenly the screen orientation changes. the accelerometer used when laying down is not the greatest idea. therefore i’m so happy that the keyboard isn’t changing constantly while using tweetie in bed.
i’d like to see tab bar customization and maybe even swipe icon customization.
sometimes i want to swipe to delete my own posts (just like i swipe to delete almost anything on the ipod touch) and there is no trashcan icon.
I never said use the accelerometer to make Tweetie go landscape. The current implementation of the landscape switch in the preferences is just fine. Just that after you explicitely enable landscape in your preferences, the accelorometer should decide the orientation of the keyboard. Again, I’m not sure if this is technically possible.
@Marco: Sure you do. But many don’t. Bringing in customisation would not cause any more UI clutter.
Agree with most of comments but particularly being able to sort tweets into folders/favourites or something similar as have a job getting to tweets that I want at particular time. Also customizing the look a bit more too. Different colours maybe. Still really like twinkles look and feel. Viewing world tweets is quite good as is the location feature. Maybe that could b enhanced to view tweets in a particular area and tweet to groups easily. Maybe getting a bit carried away with that last one. Found out that there is a problem with viewing someones blog too but that could be due to wordpress.
i actually have been talking to @atebits a lot via twitter and found out some hints about the future of tweetie (that i wont mention because if he wanted the knowledge to be public he would have @replied me instead of DM) but honestly i think the biggest thing to take into account with this program is how much progress is made in each release and how quick versions are released
that being said, it is all just a matter of time before this program will do everything any twitter user could ever dream of wanting
you do make some decent points above, but i would agree with @atebits in saying that some of them would be seen as frivolous by the majority of twitter/iphone users
while i notice his blog doesnt have a comment thing, he does have a kind of mini forum for things like this
and i honestly thing his goals are clear: adopt as many of the most useful features that the majority would appreciate while keeping the program simple and fast
the flashlight/fart feature seems to me to be his way of playing a practical joke on his user community (or at least the ones that didnt buy the program specifically for fart noises and flashlights) and i think it’s hilarious
i would imagine tweetie 2.0 (which as far as i can tell is on the roadmap) will be an app that just about any user looking for a twitter client will be able to download and not need to request features, because it will just have EVERYTHING that you need in a twitter client (and it will probably make very good use of the iphone interface technology)
anyways i need to stop now[/rant]
Agree with the points, wish it would open into Safari when click web links or at least sort out it’s own browser rendering
Hiya Milind! Good points and yes I hate blogs with no comments. Sure it’s a web log, but the internet is all about communicating and blogs help do just that. Tweetie is as much an app of the community as it is of the developer. Sure he needs to moderate and make sure it doesn’t become a mess but not adding those few features that we want (but he doesn’t) makes it selfish on his part.
I don’t use the favourites view. I mark favourites for others to see, not for me to mull over. There are so many new tweets to check out that there’s hardly time to go over the past.
Seeing as it is a trend in this comments list, I love tweetie! Thank you Mr. Brichter for making such an amazing and feature rich app.
I use Tweetie and TwitterFon. The reason I still use TwitterFon is because of the Auto-Scroll to First Unread feature. I would like to see that in Tweetie. I find in Tweetie if I haven’t checked in a little while I can miss some tweets. I don’t know how many have come in and as I scroll I am reading them in reverse time line order.
While both apps load pretty quickly, TwitterFon shows you the last tweets that you checked and Tweetie shows a blank screen. It’s nice to have the last tweets to look at while waiting for the new tweets to load.
For everything else I like Tweetie more but it means I usually use TwitterFon first.
Sorry, Milind, but I think your suggestions are frivolous or completely unnecessary. I think the major missing feature in Tweetie is the ability to sort those you follow by groups. The solution Brichter advocates (create a whole new Twitter account for yourself for each “group” you which to create) looks smart on the surface but in reality would be a maintenance nightmare if you follow hundreds of people.
Eric Nemchik, I certainly hope Groups will be one of the new features with version 2.0
This would be my favourite twitter iphone app except for the fact that it does not distinguish new tweets properly.
when you load the friends page, it just loads recent tweets. What it should do is begin loading from where you last left off or properly mark the last seen tweet. That is a feature that ALL other twitter iphone apps have. By using tweetie I am missing out on tonnes of tweets that are sent. It should also show how many new tweets are waiting to be read in each section as other apps do.
if the above could get implemented I would have no need to use any other app. Currently I only use tweetie for “nearby” searches because it identifies city/location and allows you to specify distance unlike some of the other apps that strictly use GPS numbers to show locations.
Wholeheartedly agree with Dan. Does anyone know if Brichter has indicated that this will be addressed?
I agree with Scott. The absense of any groups management prevents Tweetie from being a perfect app. Please add groups!!