MPH

chartier:

Tweetbot 2.0 is out for iPhone and, yes, for the first time, iPad. Tweetbot for iPhone has been my primary Twitter client for over a year, and now it’s the only client installed on my iPad. It’s that good.

I helped beta test both versions and there’s a ton of great new stuff. The timeline view now shows image thumbnails, and there’s a slick lightbox-like viewer on iPad. The DM view now better resembles a conversation, much like iOS’s Messages app. Readability now joins Instapaper and Read It Later for your read later services, and there’s more.

Tweetbot’s debut on the iPad brings a couple of perks over its little brother. For example, drafts are a little easier to get to with a dedicated button in the sidebar while composing a tweet. While the iPhone version has always let you tap-hold on two of the toolbar items to change their behavior, the iPad version has a “Navigation” option in Settings that lets you completely hide sections. If you don’t want to see sections like Retweets, Messages, or Favorites, you don’t need to.

The new features in Tweetbot 2 for iPhone and iPad are in addition to the signature Tapbots style and polish, which includes lots of great stuff like a “last photo taken” option so you don’t have to drill down through your camera roll or albums to attach a photo, and generous use of iOS gestures to do things like view conversations (either your own or someone else’s) and a customizable triple-tap feature. You also get native Push Notifications (complete with a sleep option), syncing your reading place with other clients via the donationware Tweet Marker service, support for CloudApp (and lots of other services) for link shortening and media uploads, some clever integration of Favstar, the ability to mute people or hashtags, and the list goes on.

Speaking of lists, Tweetbot is one of the few clients I’ve used that truly integrates Twitter lists and makes them useful. You can add and remove people from lists, create new lists, and easily swap any list in for your main timeline if you need to switch gears for a while. Tweetbot is a primary reason for why I rediscovered Twitter lists, and I curate a few you might want to check out.

I rarely have a hard time finding something to complain about in an app, but I can find only two things wrong with Tweetbot. The first is that the button to switch accounts and get to settings on iPhone is a little confusing (the iPad version has a different design). Tap it once for a popover that lets you see and switch between all your accounts. But if you tap the Accounts & Settings button at the bottom, you’re taken back out one page to a second list of your accounts, with the Settings button at the bottom of this new page. I wonder if this would make more sense if that button took you straight to Settings, with a Back button to return you to the last account you were using.

My other complaint is that Tapbots isn’t interested in adding support for TextExpander, which is usually a deal breaker for any app that I spend much time typing words into, let alone full sentences (but I have to admit I can understand their reason, even if I don’t agree with it: they want to avoid third-party SDKs as much as possible). I’m enough of a fan of Tweetbot that I’ll forgive Tapbots on this one.

If you’re looking for a polished, full-featured Twitter client for iOS, I dare you to try and go wrong with Tweetbot for iPhone and iPad.

(Source: chartier)