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Provides: Access to social network Twitter from Mac desktop
Developer: Atebits LLC
Minimum System Requirements: G4, G5 or Intel Mac, Mac OS X 10.5
Processor Compatibility: Universal
Price: Free (with ads) or $14.95 ($19.95 from May 4th, 2009)
Availability: Now
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1

Tweetie for Mac was officially released earlier this week, and it has turned out to be just as popular as the iPhone version. There are currently two versions available for the app: ad supported or not. However, the ads in the free version can be turned off. When it comes to Twitter clients, Tweetie is as feature packed as it comes; from @replies to direct messages and search, it has it all.

When you first launch the app, you sign in with your account (and multiple accounts are supported). Then, you are greeted with a beautiful interface that makes tweeting even more entertaining.  Along the left hand column you see the tabs for each section of your Twitter profile, as well as your user image. The tweets are beautifully embedded with easy links to reply to a tweet or check out the user’s profile. Basically, it does everything you would expect your basic Twitter client to do (heck, you even use Cmd-Enter to send a tweet to avoid all those mistakenly published tweets. The things that make it special are its great interface as well as what I will discuss next.

Two of the coolest features the developer included are the ability to see images inline and shorten URLs on the go. If you see an image from TwitPic, Twitgoo, yFrog, or Posterous and click on it, it will open in a appropriate sized HUD window instead of launching your browser. Also, when tweeting, you can simply drag an image to the update box and have it automatically uploaded to your service. Furthermore, you can also shorten links within the update box and never having to go to the actual website. The current sites include bit.ly, is.gd, TinyURL, tr.im, and DiggBar.

There is definitely some work that can be done on Tweetie. Currently, some of the most requested features have been the ability to set the refresh rate and see how many API calls are left.  Also, users would like to be able to easily delete their tweets from within the Tweetie interface. Atebites, the developer, is currently working on some of these, and I’m sure he will have an update pretty soon. That said, the app is better than any other Twitter app I have used on the Mac so far, so I will be sticking with it for a while. It’s clean, it’s Cocoa, and it works.