There has been a lot of mixed feelings about the new Twitter for iPad app, and I have really neglected to write anything because I didn’t really know where I stood until now. Listening to the latest episode of The Talk Show with Dan Benjamin and John Gruber I really started to become annoyed with how they were talking about Twitter for the iPad (I completely agree about their thoughts on Tweetie for Mac).
The UI
Yes, the UI is nothing short of different bordering on crazy. When I first started using it (in landscape mode) I was really annoyed that the right 2 inches of the screen is nothingness. Then I clicked on a tweet and it all made sense, a sliding columnar view – OK I get it. Much like Instapaper and Kindle or iBooks, Twitter for iPad really shines in Portrait orientation.
What irks many people is that the sliding interface seems to odd, making the entire app feel wrong. There is also much criticism over the new tweet field, Milind Alvares nails the problem:
My only problem with the compose window UI, is the freakin thing is so narrow, you can hardly type something without it overflowing from the view. Not just that. The actions are floating inside the window, so if you’ve typed something long, you can’t see the character count unless you scroll to the bottom. There’s no reason that compose window needs to be so narrow, let along have the actions floating at the bottom. I hope this is fixed in the next release.
I agree and so do many others, but this is version 1, this is expected to have a few annoyances. Overall I think the UI is far better than every other Twitter app that the iPad has seen to date. If you are a multiple account user you will love it too, you don’t have to back out of the tweet stream to switch accounts, it is always sitting on the left side to flip between everything.
The Best an iPad can get.
Twitter for iPad is without a doubt the best Twitter client available on the iPad ((Yes I have used Twitterrific, and no it is not that great.)) I have several Twitter accounts but only two of which I regularly check (@benjaminbrooks and @brooksreview) with all the others I have tried this was a pain. Twitter for iPad fits perfectly with how I use Twitter and perhaps that is the real crux of the issue. Twitter for iPad is not as universal as the iPhone version is, meaning it is not for everyone.
One Major Annoyance
One thing that I find beyond annoying is the way that Twitter for iPad opens TwitPic (among other photo sharing options) pictures. I don’t need to see the entire damn website, just load the picture like almost all the other Twitter clients do. This is beyond annoying to me.
Version 1
In the end it is pertinent to remember this is the first app that Twitter has released for the iPad – which excites me. If this is how much they can do on their first try, then there is no telling just what they will be able to do with more time and feedback.