Tweetbot For Mac Goes Gold On The Mac App Store For $19.99

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Screen Shot 2012-10-18 at 12.29.55 PM

It’s finally here. After a long alpha and beta period, and months of teasing before it, Tapbot’s incredible Tweetbot client for Mac is finally here in polished, 1.0 form. That’s the good news. The bad news is the app in its final form costs $20, a price that is sure to scare off all but the most die-hard Twitter users.

If you’ve used Tweetbot on the iPhone or the iPad, you know what to expect from Tweetbot for Mac, but here’s the release notes:

Tweetbot is a full-featured Mac OS X Twitter client with a lot of personality. Whether it’s the meticulously-crafted interface, sounds & animation, or features like multiple timelines & column views, there’s a lot to love about Tweetbot.

Brief Highlights:

◆ Multiple Timelines. Quickly switch between your lists as your main timeline.
◆ Multiple Windows and Columns. Display timelines from different accounts side by side.
◆ Notification Center Support.
◆ Beautiful Retina graphics.
◆ Mute filters lets you block messages from users without unfollowing them. You can also mute hashtags and specific keywords.
◆ Sync timeline position, direct message read statuses and mute filters between your Mac, iPhone and iPad via iCloud.
◆ Support for multiple services like Pocket, Instapaper, Readability, CloudApp and Droplr.
◆ Save drafts, add locations and POI’s, attach photos/videos, manage your lists, and much more.

For complete details on Tweetbot, visit tapbots.com/tweetbot/mac/

The $20 asking price of Tweetbot for Mac is pretty hard to get your mind around. We assume this must be a response to both the built-in integration of Twitter within Mountain Lion and Twitter’s own increasingly draconian API rules limiting the number of users a third-party app can support. Tapbots’ presumably only has so many keys they can distribute, and they know that anyone willing to pay for a Twitter client on the Mac when it’s been built right into OS X is an advanced user who is going to want some seriously advanced functionality at their disposal.

Tweetbot for Mac is a fantastic client, so if you live in Twitter, even a $20 price tag is probably a steal. Look for Cult of Mac’s review of Tweetbot for Mac coming soon.

Update: Paul Haddad over at Tapbots’ official blog explains the price:

Because of Twitter’s recent enforcement of token limits, we only have a limited number of tokens available for Tweetbot for Mac. These tokens dictate how many users Tweetbot for Mac can have. The app’s limit is separate from, but much smaller than, the limit for Tweetbot for iOS. Once we use up the tokens granted to us by Twitter, we will no longer be able to sell the app to new users. Tapbots will continue to support Tweetbot for Mac for existing customers at that time.

This limit and our desire to continue to support the app once we sell out is why we’ve priced Tweetbot for Mac a little higher than we’d like. It’s the best thing we can do for the long term viability of the product. We know some will not be happy about Tweetbot for Mac’s pricing, but the bottom line is Twitter needs to provide us with more tokens for us to be able to sell at a lower the price. We spent a year developing this app and it’s the only way for us to be able to make our money back and continue supporting it with updates in the future.

That certainly makes sense, and puts the price in perspective.

Source: Mac App Store

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