Tapbots introduces 'Tweetbot'
Friday, April 15, 2011 at 4:00AM 
As a long-time fan of Tapbots' previous apps, including Calcbot and Convertbot, I was excited to hear that they were finally releasing their highly-anticipated Twitter client, Tweetbot. Tapbots are known for their attention to detail and knack for creating beautiful interfaces that are intuitive-yet-functional. I expected no different with this latest app, and they certainly didn't disappoint!
A first glance at the app could give the impression that they have copied a lot of UI ideas from the official Twitter app (which has been my app of choice for quite some time now, even back when it was called Tweetie 2), but once I played with it I found that there's a lot more going on under the surface.
My favorite feature would easily have to be the little toolbar that pops up when you tap a tweet in your timeline. In the official Twitter app, this would take you to another page that would then allow you to tap on any links or photos, and then you'd have to hit the "Back" button to return to the timeline. In Tweetbot, a small bar of buttons slides down from the tweet, with options for replying, retweeting, adding to favorites, etc.
Notice how the tweet itself also changes to have clickable links so that you can tap them directly from the timeline. If you want the bar to disappear, you can simply tap the tweet again, but you don't even necessarily have to; since you never navigated away from the timeline, you can simply keep scrolling and life is good. If you decide to select another tweet, the timeline "shifts" up or down to let the bar appear there. One nice touch is that little bar at the top stating how many new tweets have appeared since you last opened the app.
The official Twitter app accomplishes this toolbar effect by having you swipe left or right on a tweet to allow the buttons behind it to appear, but it's always been a bit wonky for me. For example, if I came across a tweet that I found really funny and wanted to add it to my favorites before retweeting it, I would have to swipe the bar, tap the star button to favorite it, which caused the tweet to slide back into place over the toolbar. At that point if I tried re-swiping the tweet to access the retweet button, the app wouldn't even respond so I'd have to actually swipe another tweet first, then come back and swipe the tweet I wanted to deal with in the first place. With Tweetbot, the bar stays there after I've tapped the star button and I can then retweet with ease. Just one of many ways that this app makes my Twitter experience smoother.
Another noteworthy feature that separates this app from the official Twitter app is the ability to change the last two buttons on the bottom toolbar if you wish. By default they have chosen "Favorites" and "Search" to be there (which would have been my choices anyway), but you can change either of them to be "Retweets by Others" or "Lists".
Also worthy of mention are the swipe gestures from the timeline. If you swipe left on a tweet, you can see replies to that tweet made by other people, useful for when you see a question being asked and are curious to see the answers. If that tweet is part of a larger conversation, you can swipe right instead and view the entire discussion.
There are a few more things I could go into, but just trust me when I say that this is an app that you should try, and it's a steal at the current $2 price point (which apparently won't last long, as the app store page states that the app is on-sale for a limited time). Snatch it up, folks!