TweetBot has been around on the iPhone for a considerable amount of time now and its used by many users due to its famous fluidity and functionality. The developers of TweetBot have recently finished compiling a new, iPad friendly version of TweetBot in which has been just as successful as the version for the iPhone. Very recently TapBots (the developers) have released an Alpha version of their Twitter client on the Macintosh platform. All of us here at MriOSDevices were very exited about such news and decided that it would be a good idea to produce an article notifying our users about the pre release, Alpha version available and how it performed in comparison to the other Twitter clients for the Mac.

First Impressions:

First impressions quickly brought us to the conclusion that this Twitter client was pretty much identical to that of the iPad version of TweetBot -

but there’s nothing wrong with this is there? Upon portraying some additional navigation we decided that they had implemented some of the best features from the iPad and the iPhone onto the Mac platform. For example you can use multitouch gestures on both your Apple Branded Trackpad and your Magic Mouse. We were thrilled to see such things as this hasn’t been demonstrated on a Twitter client prior to this one.

Whats it like to live with? 

Like many other people whom are involved with the modern technology and journalism industry, having a good view of Twitter all of the time is a great way for us to keep our eyes on things – thus meaning that a high quality Twitter client is important.

The aesthetics, like that of the iPhone and iPad, on this software are outstanding and couldn’t be faulted. Admittedly perhaps the look of this piece of software won’t be for everyone, however the icons are retro and we can see a good amount of evidence that the developer has focused on presenting the your timeline to you in a clear and professional manor. Overall we’re very impressed with the look of this software.

As far as features are concerned this software is definitely not lacking, as a Twitter client it performs all of the tasks necessary and very well. However we do think that they could ‘up their game’  slightly by including support for other social networking sites (as an option). This way we feel that this application would have the potential to compete with a more prominent Mac Twitter client, Tweet Deck.

Unlike its sister applications for the iPhone and iPad and other Mac Twitter clients, TweetBot for Mac is lacking the fluidity required to gain that all important excellent experience whilst exploring your timeline. Additionally out excitement was dampened when  we discovered that refreshing the mentions page on this software resulted in it crashing.

Overall Thoughts:

Obviously we cannot jump to immediate conclusions about this application yet as the full version hans’t yet been released, in addition to this we’re waiting to find out the price of this application when/if it enters the App Store. But Tapbots have created an application in which is already brilliant and useable everyday. However we feel that it has so much potential to be one of best Twitter clients for the Mac platform -

despite some current teething problems.

 

Preliminary Rating: 7/10

 

 

UPDATE: Here is a view of the noticed bugs in which we have discovered from testing this application. As you can seem the user here has tried to refresh the twitter feed to find that the application freezes. TapBots should probably sort this small issue out.