Tweetie is my preferred twitter client for iPhone. I have about 4 others installed (including Twitterific and Twitterfon) but use nothing but Tweetie. I therefore had good reason to be excited about the release of the Tweetie Mac client a couple of days ago.
I expected it to be good, I didn’t expect to love it. And I do love it.
At first, I thought this was because:
- It has proper customizable show and hide commands
- You can easily do searches without switching client or using twitter’s webpage
- You can ‘tear off’ searches and keep them running
- It displays conversations as conversations
- You can retweet, and you can post webpages using a Tweetie bookmarklet
- Easy access to @ replies and direct messages
Then I realized something – those are the things that make it good, not the reason I love it. I actually love it because it is simple yet does advanced things, its smooth, it’s well laid out, it flows, it looks pretty. It has streamlined things I didn’t even realize I did regularly until I can now do them with less hassle. In short: it is well designed. You can never underestimate the power of something that is well designed - its what moves software from being useful to being a real pleasure to use.
The Twitterific client has been removed from my Mac dock. Not only has Tweetie taken its place, but I’ve actually designated some screen real estate for it to live in. It deserves it. A reminder to us all that thoughtful design is worth more than the sum of any number of features.
