Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone Is On Its Way!

I’ll admit it, I’m a HUGE Tweetie fan. The brains behind it? Loren Brichter.

What was arguably the most hyped twitter client, and what now is deemed to be the twitter client choice for iPhone, of many, Tweetie has been sitting pretty for a while now. After winning an Apple Design Award in 2009 for ‘Outstanding Innovation and Design’, Tweetie has gone from strength to strength. But it hasn’t all been buttercups and roses. Lately, the word surrounding Tweetie was that it had fallen behind. It had become invisible, due to competition. It lacked the awesome’ness of this, and the necessity of that.

Today, this all changes. After teasing us for almost all of the day on Twitter, Loren finally came clean; announcing via his stream that Tweetie 2 for iPhone had been in development for some time, and that it would bring Tweetie back into the foreground again – for all of the reasons you fell in love with Tweetie 1.0.

Britcher explained that Tweetie 2 had been in beta for a few months now, and after 8 beta versions, the product originally codenamed ‘Bigbird’ throughout the beta phases was finally ready to be submitted to Apple. In fact, it has been submitted… late last night. Britcher says the final version is ready, and he’ll all being well submit the app later this week. We just have to hope Apple and it’s seemingly temperamental approval process makes Tweetie 2’s debut a quick a painless one.

So, what can you expect from this major update? Well, quite a lot actually. For starters you’ll now find threaded conversations. Just like Tweetie for Mac, you’ll be able to see just who thought your tweet was cool, what they said, and what other people said afterwards. Next? Tab bar notifications. Since the introduction of Tweetie for Mac, users of Tweetie really wanted to see this functionality comes to the iPhone. Now, it has. Saved searches. Not content with how they function now, in Tweetie 2 Britcher says saved searches will ’sync’ back up to the upcoming Tweetie for Mac 2 desktop version.

Now come’on. Be honest. Were you a fan of the compose screen? Well, you might like it a little more now. In Tweetie 2 the compose screen has been completely overhauled. Adding options for an @people picker, recent hashtags, multiple attachments manager and a “peek” gesture for when replying to a tweet.

You’ll also probably be glad to hear this version will support full landscape mode, and a load more features including: the ability to edit your own Twitter profile, vastly improved gesture shortcuts, in-app rich-text email, new-style retweet support (supposedly to support the upcoming Twitter update), the option to refresh-all on launch, TextExpander support, “read it later” integration, auto-complete recent searches, auto-complete go-to-user, improved avatar caching, inline Twitlonger, reply chain list view, preview short urls, tweet translation and the ability to block and follow from multiple accounts, at once.

There is one tiny niggle, and that is Tweetie 2 will be an entirely new app to what will now be referred to as Tweetie 1. Although, you won’t have to pay through your nose to get it. In fact, quite the opposite!

In his own words:

“Making a “2.0” could have been easy. I could have changed the version number, added video tweeting and called it a day. Other apps call that “2.0” – I think it’s lame. Tweetie 1 set a new standard for Twitter clients and iPhone apps in general. It proved that you didn’t have to sacrifice intuitiveness for functionality. Today we have iPhone OS 3.0, 3GS, and new Twitter APIs. Tweetie 2 is built from the ground up to take advantage of these fantastic new technologies.

Tweetie 2 for Mac will be a completely free upgrade. (So if you haven’t already grabbed a license, feel free to do so). On the other hand, Tweetie 2 for iPhone will be a whole new app. And while it’s arguably worth a lot more, I’m keeping the price exactly the same: $2.99.”

Hopefully if Britcher is lucky, we could see Tweetie 2 hit the App Store inside 2 weeks, but I wouldn’t hold your breath on that. All we can rest on is that it will soon be in submission, and it’s fate will rest solely in the hands of Apple. I for one, can’t wait to get my hands on this.

WritePad Pro is ultimately a wannabee jack of all trades, but it’s a master of none. There are better productivity tools out there.

A very useful app basically bringing Text Expander to the iPhone.

A Day In The Life

I’ll say it now – I’m an iPhone addict.

Every week, I have to go to a 12 step program designed to wean me off my addiction.* But, you know what? It’s not working. You see, to be cured of an addiction you have to want to be cured. I love my iPhone. It’s a part of my life. It’s never far from my grasp, and I use it many, many times throughout my day. I don’t want to be cured.

Paul Pelosi (look at his hands) is also an iPhone addict.

When I first got my iPhone, I was amazed – due to the superb implementation of the web, that I could actually use it to buy my wife’s Christmas presents… from the sofa… while she sat next to me. I would ask her what she wanted, she’d have a little think, then tell me, then I’d buy it, without her even realising her wishes were coming true within seconds of her uttering the words. She might as well have been saying abracadabra. It was magical, and exciting in a way only another iPhone-phile can understand.

This is how my iPhone and I spend the day.

Wake Up Call
Even before I awake, my iPhone is there for me, dragging me from my slumber with the sound of Marimba. Clock has become my Alarm Clock. I’ve even taught it not to wake me at all at the weekend – at those times my iPhone allows me to dream on (although my daughter does not respect the covenant me and the iPhone have made).
Continue reading A Day In The Life »

Read It Later is a bookmarking alternative intended for articles that you just want to flag for later reading. This app, however, also stores pages for offline reading, and it’s quite the useful utility!

Kevin’s “Utility of the Week”

Games are great, but when you have a device as complex as the iPhone you want it to do a little more than just play games. I have a very specific goal for my iPhone – use it to help streamline everything that I do on a day to day basis. For anyone joining me in this quest to make the iPhone simplify your life, I will be posting an app every week that I have deemed worthy of everyday use. This app can be a utility, a productivity app, an education app, a finance app, etc – anything that’s not a game or entertainment app. You can make suggestions for the “Utility of the Week” thread on our forum.

My pick this week is “Groups”, developed by Guided Ways Technologies (check out the review). For $2.99, you’ll receive the most perfect contact organization companion in the app store. This app has replaced the Contacts app on my dock, and is now sitting beside Phone, Mail, and Text. Congratulations Groups! You are officially the first non-native application to earn a spot on my dock.

Groups: Drag & Drop Contacts Management, Group Email, Smart

Our Rating: :: REPLACED MY 'CONTACTS'

Category: Productivity
Released: 2009-02-08
Price: $4.99

Daylite Touch, from Marketcircle, is an incredible tool for people who need serious task management on the iPhone. The app ties in with Daylite and requires Daylite Server to enable syncing over a LAN or a true server environment.

If the iPhone calendar and sheer absence of built-in task management leave you wanting more, check out Pocket Informant from WebIS. It is a well thought out application, adapted nicely to the iPhone. Despite some performance issues and a (current) lack of functionality compared to the more mature versions of PI that exist on other platforms, its active development ensures that this will not be the case for long.

Birdhouse acts as a suave addition to your favourite Twitter client. Acting as a 140 character notepad for all your pre-tweets, the app allows you to compose, save and (when ready) publish your tweets. Don’t like one? Un-publish it with a couple of taps!

In a couple of the cases I was genuinely surprised how well the software worked. Text that I could barely make out was interpreted perfectly. Conversely, perfectly legible text in standard fonts was not transferred at all.

If you’re on the Mac and perform lots of online financial transactions or manage websites with secure data, I believe 1Password can simplify your life while enhancing your security. Grab the free iphone app, the free desktop trial and give it a try.

Unfortunately this app has been released before it is ready. I could not get it to work with any POP3 email accounts (and have read customers saying that IMAP didn’t seem to work), and I also could not get it to work with GMail. I also tried Hotmail accounts and other generic accounts. None worked with this application in my experience.

Organizer is useful for writing your daily plans, jotting down your ideas and for an advanced memo tool. The options in this application for making notes are impressive, but lack of calendar integration lets it down.

RaonbowNote allows you to keep all of your notes on you iPhone — and back them up to Google Docs

OmniFocus, the fantastic GTD task manager comes to the iPhone, and it rocks!