Tweetie for Mac: A Fresh Take on Desktop User Interface
Tweetie for iPhone has long-been my iPhone-native Twitter client of choice; it’s feature-packed and powerful, yet incredibly easy to use and beautifully designed. So, when I heard that Tweetie for Mac was in development, I was hopeful. The problem (I thought) would be the “lost in translation” effect of going from a mobile application to a desktop app. All too often I find that developers aren’t able to bridge the gap between platforms and an app that is successful on one platform seems to fall short on another. Thankfully, that seems not to be the case with Tweetie. On the contrary actually… Tweetie for Mac seems to have leveraged many of the (until now) mobile-specific idioms that are so prevalent in Cocoa Touch and integrated them into a well thought out desktop app.
This is the first successful iPhone-to-Mac transition for a software title I’ve seen and Tweetie for Mac definitely shows its iPhone roots. There is something decidedly iPhone-esque about the user interface with its horizontal sliding transitions and hierarchical navigation. Without having used the iPhone version first, Tweetie for Mac might seem a bit… well, radical in its design. It’s really unlike anything else on the desktop and it’s incredibly refreshing.
I’m sure this is just the beginning of the iPhone’s influence on desktop computing and we’ll soon be seeing more desktop applications leveraging iPhone-esque UI patterns. It might just be what we need to get past the dated “Desktop” metaphor rut we’ve been in for the last two decades.
Tweetie for Mac is priced at $19.95 but is on sale for $14.95 until May 4th. You can also use it in ad-supported mode for free or even buy a copy and choose to see the ads anyway.
Twitter
Entries RSS
No comments
Jump to comment form | comments rss | trackback uri