The highly anticipated Twitter for iPhone is finally live on the App Store taking the place previously occupied by the award-winning Tweetie for iPhone.
Existing Tweetie 2 users will see the new app as an update, this means it will replace Tweetie 2 but with a new, blue icon. Those who still have Tweetie 1 will continue to be able to use it since Tweetie 1 and Tweetie 2 are separate apps.
With Twitter for iPhone, Loren Brichter and his team have maintained much of what made Tweetie such a terrific app to use and built on it to completely avoid the need to ever go to the Twitter website when you have your iPhone with you.
The app allows anyone to use Twitter even if they have no interest in creating a Twitter account. Users will be able to check out the trending topics, read tweets by popular users, see what people are saying nearby, all without having to create an account. Should you be interested in joining the twittering masses, you can create an account right from the app.
The app resembles Tweetie 2 so much, existing users should have only a few adjustments to get used to it as a few things have been reworked from Tweetie 2, as expected from an update.
The official retweet function has moved from the "more" button to having its own place underneath each tweet. The function area has been slightly reworked and a few action buttons reorganized.
The map area for geotagged tweets have been enlarged to fit the width of the screen and geotagged tweets will also show the actual location name if the area is under the supported list. At the moment only a few cities in the US has it.
Username search has been lumped together under Search, hashtags can be filtered out of the trending list (OHYEAH!), and there's no more RT or /via or quotes tweets.
Just on that last point, there's a Quote Tweet button under the "more" option but it actually puts the tweet as an actual quote, "like this."
Search has been tweaked to reflect the most retweeted tweet and includes the number of retweets on each tweet. Note that this counts only for official retweets.
The app is also fast. Loading tweets is much faster compared to Tweetie especially on slow EDGE connections which is great since networks can't seem to maintain stable 3G connections. Saving photos is really fast, and more importantly it seems that caching tweets work much better as it managed to save tweet positions on multiple accounts after a relaunch.
Speaking of accounts, it's probably the bigest gripe because existing users have to reenter their account details. For someone who runs multiple accounts, this can be tedious. It was probably done in purpose to show everyone that there's something markedly different about Twitter for iPhone. Also, it hasn't yet use OAuth which means the app will definitely see an update before the end of June when Twitter shuts down non-OAuth access. What this means is no more entering username and passwords to sign in to Twitter outside of their oen website.
Accessing Settings and Accounts have been moved to the Search tab on the right rather than directly to the left of the timeline. As far as user interface conventions go, this change is really jarring but perhaps only those pedantic enough about it will be annoyed by it.
Overall, Twitter for iPhone is clearly the best Twitter app on the App Store for the majority of Twitter users. Twitter has definitely made the right move in purchasing Atebits and bringing Loren Brichter on board. Best thing about the app as far as consumers are concerned, it's free.
