

R.I.P. Tweetie - olivercameron
http://taptivate.com/blog/r-i-p-tweetie

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pclark
The problem with the Twitter ecosystem right now is that all the other Twitter
client developers have more or less given up.

Birdfeed was the second best Twitter client during the great iPhone Twitter
client wars. This has since been acquired by Brizzly and has fallen into a
niche irrelevant (to me) market.

Twitter (Tweetie) is now junk thanks to the new trends popup ("#dickbar") and
shockingly the Twitter CEO seems to have missed - or, probably - be ignoring
the blatant fact that the first 250,000 Tweetie users fell for _that_ client
because it was beautifully crafted. Tweetie was alongside Delicious Library
and a few other pieces of software that was as close to art meets practically
in software.

Now, Twitter Inc chooses to add features based on what their company
directives are, or "for the greater good" of the community - which might be
all well and good, but the vocal people who use Tweetie/Twitter now have
nowhere to go (as everyone else has given up.)

The most offensive thing about this entire saga is that it is the "early
adopter" users of Twitter - the people that were using Tweetie 1 and such,
were the Twitter die hard fans - remember when Twitter would die during the
Apple keynotes? and now Twitter Inc is happy to ignore them for their millions
of Justin Beiber fans.

~~~
olivercameron
Very much agreed. I wonder how Loren feels about the change to what is
essentially, his baby.

~~~
pclark
Porsches have fantastic suspension. ;)

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rufo
I agree whole-heartedly. (The below is, of course, my opinion only.)

For me, the writing was on the wall when Twitter for iPhone first came out;
they took the relatively simple and easy-to-use search screen and combined a
bunch of separate functions into one bizarre combo search box that felt
unintuitive and annoying. I still used it for a while, but wound up switching
to the delightfully intuitive (if a bit under-featured) Twitteriffic 3.

I kept hoping they'd turn it around, but for me, Twitter for Mac was the
death-knell for Atebit's aesthetic; what used to be an elegant and beautiful,
yet still right-at-home on the Mac experience turned into an ugly, user-
hostile piece of software… just like Twitter for iPhone.

RIP, Tweetie. You will be missed.

~~~
olivercameron
I'm still a fan of Twitter for Mac. It's one app I think users are safe from
monetization, it never felt that important to them.

~~~
ctyrider
Yeah, at least until Twitter decides to extend the Dickbar to the Mac app as
well.

~~~
olivercameron
That's what I'm saying, I don't think they'll do that. I will probably be
proven wrong though.

~~~
mitjak
In light of the Mac App store they probably will :/

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bmalicoat
Unfortunately the 'Tweetie never crashed' bit is untrue. I had Tweetie
download and cache a profile icon that was trash and it continually crashed
until I deleted and reinstalled. I do agree that the app has gone downhill
since the acquisition, but I don't think the code quality has anything to do
with that.

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danudey
I feel like Twitter is going to a lot of trouble to keep their 'never charge
for it' promise, and that's a good thing, but they should seriously consider
other options as well. For example, I'd pay for Tweetie for the iPhone and
iPad - I'd pay a few bucks for it. I'd also consider paying a buck a month for
push notifications, but they give that away for free too. Heck, I'd pay a few
bucks to get rid of the dickbar if it came to that.

Twitter, your service is incredibly valuable to me, as is a good, solid,
elegant client. Let me pay you for it and I will. Hell, I've paid Loren twice
already, why not once more?

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pavel_lishin
> Loren’s programming talents are well known within the community, and I
> struggle to accept that he wrote this buggy piece of code.

Who says it's a bug?

~~~
Timmy_C
I think he's referring to the fact that it crashes on him. I also think he's
attributing the crashes to the new trending bar.

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djacobs
I had heard of Friends. Looks good. Nice hook.

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joebananas
And to add insult to injury, the twitter mobile site seems to be hax0red.
there's an alert("xss"); on it as I write this.

