Do you use Tweetbot for iOS? If you do, then you probably already download the free Alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac, available for all to test and provide feedback for the Tapbots team. Tweetbot for Mac Alpha so far is a pretty nice release that albeit is not perfect, it does the job of matching its iOS interface perfectly (and is 10x better than the buggy Twitter for Mac).
We can actually thank a Canadian link to Tweetbot for Mac, Calgary developer Todd Thomas, a friend of Tapbots co-founder Paul Haddad that joined the team last October. He is the one responsible for the Mac release of Tweetbot, and in an interview with the Globe and Mail, noted what it was like working on the release:
Mr. Thomas began work on Tweetbot for Mac in October, and has been developing the app almost full-time since. And despite similarities between iOS and OS X development, there was still a great deal of work for Mr. Thomas to do. “Scrolling behaviour, all that stuff, it doesn’t behave the same on the Mac,” he explained. “Gestures on the Mac seem kind of half-baked as far as I can tell.
“The stuff in the Apple documentation … you know, it seems easy. Except I couldn’t ever get it to work. At all.” Instead, Mr. Thomas wrote his own gesture code so the app would behave just as it does on iOS. When a users swipes their trackpad with two fingers while hovering over a tweet, they can see replies and conversations without having to click a button or hunt through a drop-down menu. It’s an experience that’s meant to feel simple and fluid.
So those gestures you’re able to use within Tweetbot for Mac Alpha? That was developed by Thomas so the app would act just like its iOS counterpart. I would say Tweetbot for Mac is in some pretty good hands after my experience with the app over the past couple days.
Click here to download Tweetbot for Mac Alpha and let me know what you think of it!
