Review: Twitter for iPhone (#1)

I have been waiting all morning for Twitter app to be available on Australian App Store. Finally, 8:30am, it's appeared. Downloaded and installed.

Yay! the official "Twitter" app. And it's Free!

Let's see how it compare to the other two apps I have - TweetDeck and Twitterific?

App Loading and Restored from Background Task
Twitter app loads up pretty fast and restores right back to where you were. This is important, especially under *cough* OS 4.0 *cough* beta 4 *cough* (please, you don't hear it from here, ok?). I like TweetDeck, but was starting to get annoyed at it when I switched to it from other foreground apps (under background-task env of the OS 4 *cough* *cough*). Twitteriffic wasn't so bad, but it insists on showing its splash screen/logo each time I switch to it. With Twitter app *bam* the app is restored right back to where I was.

Refresh/Update Tweets

I do *love* the intuitive way Twitter app allows a user to refresh or update tweets. After the app is restored from running in background, if you pull the page down (i.e. to see the latest tweets), Twitter app will show animation icon (just above the search bar) "Pull down to refresh" and "Release to refresh...". Upon releasing, the page is refreshed with new tweets.

Posting Tweets
The more I use it, the more I like it!
Posting is no-brainer. Tap on the "Posting" or "Update" icon on the upper right brings up the posting screen. The posting screen is quite complete in term of functionality - with extras. You are presented with a screen with an on-screen keyboard. All the usual ingredients are there. However, if you tap on the Character Count button (the gray one above the keyboard), this reveals additional screen where you can access camera to take picture, or select a picture from Photo Library, Geotag, or to select a twitter account to reply, hash tag, or shrink URLs. Tab on the Word Count button again brings back the on-screen keyboard.

I really get a hang of it! I found that today I used it more than the other two apps. Maybe it's just brand new. Maybe I am bias. We will see how I put it into a good use...

Please check back for more update.

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