[tweetmeme]Iconfactory’s Twitterrific was one of the first iPhone Twitter clients, and they tried to make it as simple as possible. The first version’s intent was to make checking and posting to Twitter easy and fast, so you use it while you have a spare minute. The second version changed that; it added a significant amount of features, while still retaining its ease of use.

Twitterrific for iPad certainly descends from the second version. It shows your mentions, direct messages, favorites, lists, allows you to save searches, check trends, retweet, translate tweets, email tweets,… and the list goes on. Twitterrific for iPad is filled with features—but does it have the right ones, and is it still a joy to use?

What It Looks Like

Twitterrific for iPad follows Mail’s lead, and changes its layout depending on whether your iPad is oriented vertically or horizontally. In the vertical orientation, it shows an uninterrupted list of tweets, and you can switch between all tweets, mentions, messages and favorites through a popover (just like Mail works for viewing your inbox). The best view, though, is in the horizontal orientation—here, the left side is dedicated to a source list. It makes it easy to check your mentions and direct messages. If you switch between views often, horizontal is perfect.

The large screen real estate affords another change between the iPhone: links in tweets are immediately tappable. On the iPhone, when you scroll your finger inevitably touches links people have tweeted. If they were “live,” you would often accidentally tap them and open a web view, to your annoyance. To prevent this, developers force you to open the tweet to its own view to open links. But on the iPad, because you can easily scroll without touching links, you can open links right from the timeline. It’s a small convenience, but one I’ve enjoyed.

Kinds of tweets are differentiated by color. Direct messages are a nice, dark blue, while mentions are brown. Using different colors to differentiate works fine, but unfortunately the brown used for mentions isn’t very pretty. It’s a minor issue for sure, but it sticks out in an otherwise beautiful application.
One problem is that unlike Tweetie for iPhone, when you receive a new mention or direct message, there isn’t any notification of that in the source list. Every time I open the application I have to manually check whether I received any since I last looked.

What It Feels Like

Scrolling and writing tweets are the main actions in a Twitter application. Twitterrific, luckily, scrolls quite well.

Writing tweets works quite well, too. When replying to another tweet, the tweet is shown underneath yours, so you can reference it while writing. It also provides a convenient button for shortening any links you’re posting. Most importantly, though, typing tweets on the iPad is easy. The on-screen keyboard, especially in horizontal orientation, works well. One issue, though, is there’s no button to make a public mention of users. You either have to reply to one of their prior tweets, or create a new tweet and type in their username. It’s a minor issue, but a little annoying.

I didn’t think “popovers” in the iPad’s UI were that big a deal when I first saw it announced, but those that were able to use one at the launch event disagreed. They said they were a big change. After using the iPad, and especially Twitterrific, I couldn’t agree more.

In Twitterrific, popovers are used in vertical orientation to change what kind of tweets you are looking at, and to interact with tweets and users. On the iPhone, when you tap on a tweet or user, you are moved to a new view that shows just that tweet or user, which then allows you to interact with it—open links, reply, et cetera. You are separated from what you were doing, and although it might not take long to move to a new view, do what you want to do and then move back, it feels like it does. You are forced to remember sometimes complicated trails to get back to where you started.

In Twitterrific for iPad, though, you interact with them through popovers. Tapping a tweet opens a popover which gives you several options: show the conversation, replies to the author, translate the tweet, email it, or retweet it. Similarly, tapping on the user’s avatar brings up the user’s information, buttons for following or blocking them, and checking their recent tweets and followers. You never leave the context of where you were—if you want a quick glance at the rest of the conversation a tweet is a part of, you don’t actually leave the timeline. You can check it, tap out, and you’re back where you were. It feels much quicker and simpler—you don’t have to think about how far down the rabbit hole you descended.

Links, too, are handled very well. In horizontal orientation, when you tap a link, the web view opens as a centered window similar to Mail’s new message window. Like the popovers, this makes the view hierarchy feel much flatter.
Unfortunately, Twitterrific for iPad doesn’t support saving links to Instapaper. This is my largest complaint, because saving links is an important part of my workflow (many of the links I post to my weblog originate from people I follow). Fortunately, Iconfactory says Instapaper support is on the list of things to add.

Twitterrific makes good use of the iPad’s power, and is quite beautiful. It makes using Twitter on the iPad a joy. Twitterrific for iPad, actually, feels better than any desktop Twitter client.

Update: Twitterrific 1.0.1 for iPad brings Instapaper support, audio notification control (you can turn off that embarassing tweet-tweet sound), and the ability to quote-retweet. — Ed.

Kyle writes and publishes TightWind, where he analyzes creative and political miscellany. He’s obsessed with how the web and mobile devices can provide a medium for long-form, in-depth content. And he loves the Mac a little too much.

[Header image by Jorge Quinteros]