tweetie

Tweetie & Letterpress Creator Will Let Anyone Use ‘Pull To Refresh’ Unless They Are A D*ck

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Loren Brichter is a legend amongst iOS developers. The 28 year old developer is the creator of Tweetie, which eventually became the official Twitter app. He’s the guy behind fan favorite word game Letterpress. He’s the creator of ‘Pull To Refresh’, cell swipe and slide-out panels that have become synonymous features in mobile app development. Yet few people who aren’t app and design junkies even know who he is.

Tweetie Maker Working On New iOS Game, Will Be Released Soon In The App Store

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You may not know Loren Brichter by name, but you know what he has made. After leaving Apple, Brichter originally became famous for Tweetie, an innovative Twitter client for the iPhone. Tweetie was such a success on both iOS and OS X that Twitter ended up hiring Brichter and making Tweetie its own official app. After leading the development for Twitter for iPhone, iPad and Mac, Brichter left Twitter last year. He’s been keeping himself out of the spotlight, but now it looks like he’s coming back into the iOS scene with a new game.

Brichter’s company, atebits, hit the 2.0 stage today. Expect the new game to go live in the App Store any moment now.

The Future Of Third-Party Twitter Apps Doesn’t Look Very Promising

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Your favorite third-party Twitter app's days may be numbered.
Your favorite third-party Twitter app's days may be numbered.

Last March, Twitter told the developer community to stop making third-party apps and clients that “mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” Twitter said, “We need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way.”

Fast forward more than a year later, and Twitter is slowly moving away from an open platform for developers to build upon. Twitter plans to implement stricter API guidelines for developers, and while there’s no concrete evidence that Twitter will shut down third-party apps altogether, the current landscape of great apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific could look very different in coming months.

Controversial Twitter 2.0 for Mac Hits Mac App Store [Review]

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The first thing you’ll notice about Twitter v2.0 for the Mac, which is available for free via the Mac App Store, is that it doesn’t look like a regular Mac OS X application. The applications author, Loren Brichter, has completely tossed Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for the Mac aside and Apple not only allowed him to do so, but allowed his application into the Mac App Store — much to the surprise of many developers.

I’m surprised that Apple, which has been so overly anal about iOS apps in the iTunes App Store, would allow this in the first place. I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to wonder about Apple and the future there. It’s probably the forgone merger of the iOS and Mac OS X GUI interfaces. I’m not sure I’m ready for that – I’ve always boasted about the Mac OS X interface and how it improves my work flow.

So outside of the controversy about Twitters unique GUI it isn’t all that bad if you are looking for something simple. Some of it is actually kind of neat, yet that doesn’t overshadow the fact that it falls short of the iPad version that it appears it is trying to emulate.

Kiwi 2 Gets An Update, Cements Itself As The Best Mac Twitter Client

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A few months ago, it seemed like I switched OS X Twitter clients every other day. A long time Tweetie user, the lack of updates eventually made me ready to switch, but after plowing through client after client in rapid succession — Twitterrific, TweetDeck, twhirl, YoruFukurou — only to keep turning back to Tweetie for the admittedly nebulous reason that none of the competition felt “right” to me.

That all changed when I discovered Kiwi, my new go-to Twitter client. Despite the fact that a change to Twitter’s API meant that Kiwi often alerted me for @replies that hadn’t actually shot down the pipeline, I finally deleted Tweetie from my machine and became a Kiwi user full time.

I’m delighted to see, then, that Kiwi has been updated to its second major release, Kiwi 2. It fixes the aforementioned @reply bug, but also adds a host of new features like account grouping, inline images, gesture support for multitouch trackpads and the extension of its already-excellent themeable interface.

If you’ve been looking to trade in Tweetie for a client with more advanced features while retaining Tweetie’s simplicity and streamlined presentation, I’d recommend Kiwi 2 heartily. The ad supported version will cost you nothing, and removing the ads is a one-time fee of $9.95. Worth twice that, if you ask me.