Finally! A Fun-to-Use Twitter Client for Your Mac!

For a long long time, I have been searching for a good Mac Twitter client. There are so many clients that are based on Adobe's AIR platform. (Adobe Integrated Runtime)

However, I have found AIR apps just don't measure up. They are (often) buggy and have clunky user interfaces.

So, for me, a Twitter app needs to meet a few qualifications:

1. It must be a native Mac app. I don't want to have to install a runtime just for that application.

2. It must be stable. I don't want any AIR-esque crashiness.

3. It must have a clean, fluid interface without the clutter of most Twitter clients.

4. It must have the standard features: follow/unfollow, block/unblock, user profiles, trend search, direct messaging

I think I may have found one that I truly enjoy using. It's called Tweetie by Atebits.

Atebits first entered the Twitter market with Tweetie for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Tweetie took the Apple App Store by surprise as one of the premier Twitter clients offering superb features for a low price.

Boosted by the success of Tweetie's iPhone variant, Atebits set out to make a full featured client for the Mac OS X.

Tweetie for Mac is an excellent native Mac Twitter client. It is based on Cocoa, Apple's native scripting workflow. Thus, it meets my first requirement.

Tweetie has yet to crash for me. I have it open nearly any time I'm at my computer (which is often) and I have yet to see a single crash or slowdown. So it meets my second requirement.

The user interface of Tweetie impresses me. It's good looking and powerful but not overdone. It isn't cluttered with useless buttons or too much information. On the left side of the window, there are four buttons:

• Timeline (for updates from you and your friends)
• Mentions (for all tweets that mention you with an @yourusernamehere )
• Direct Messages
• Search

You can also access unlisted functions with a variety of key combinations – as detailed in the various menus. There is also a nifty blue notification icon that sits on the menu bar at the top of your screen and turns blue when new tweets arrive. This clean interface satisfies my third requirement.

Tweetie does sport an impressive set of features. You can drill down into your conversations and see a detailed display of what you said and what was said in reply.

Full support for user profiles is impressive. See who is following you and who isn't by looking at a user's profile. You can also follow or block a person from his profile as you would expect.

The search function lets you search for users or hot topics or even phrases. If you want to find who is talking about a certain topic, just do a quick search and find out.

Tweetie even comes with a “bookmarklet” for your browser so you can quickly tweet a link to your current webpage.

As far as pictures go, Tweetie for Mac supports yFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo, Posterous, Img.ly, and Pix.im.

You can even shorten long URLs directly in Tweetie with it's support for Bit.ly, TinyURL, Is.gd, tr.im, and even DiggBar.

Tweetie also supports multiple user accounts.

With such an extensive feature list, Tweetie more than fulfills my fourth requirement.

Tweetie is a free to download and try as long as you want. The free version is ad supported. You also have the option of buying a license for $20 which removes the ads.

I have no complaints about this amazing little app. It does everything I need and more. If you are seriously looking for a Twitter client for you Mac, take a serious look at Tweetie. I think you will be impressed.

For more about Tweetie, take a look at the Atebits website.