Twittelator Neue: The most beautiful Twitter client for iOS
If you like Twitter and own and iPhone, you should definitely check out Twittelator Neue ($3, App Store). Here's a one-minute video of Neue in action:
From a UI/UX perspective, Neue's the most beautiful Twitter client I've seen, bar none. But its loaded with functionality too. Here's a sampling of its features:
- Timeline Photos. Twittelator Neue places previews of photos directly under the tweets they came from. With just a single touch, the photo springs to life, giving you immediate access to the full-size image.
- Website Previews. No longer will you wonder what's behind the curtain of a shortened URL. Twittelator Neue loads previews of the links in a tweet. A quick tap and the website is at the ready. It's a site-seeing sneak peek.
- Multiple Timelines. Twittelator Neue elegantly allows for the addition of multiple timelines, known as Timeline Shortcuts, to your main friends Timeline. Whether it's something hot in the news that you're keen to keep tabs on, or something of a more permanent nature, Multiple Timelines in Twittelator Neue is the smart solution to keeping up with what's important.
- Multiple Accounts. Have a blog, band, or alter-ego that has tweets of its very own? Twittelator Neue has you covered. Just touch the accounts button and the interface animates down, providing instant access to any given one.
- Simultweet. When you want to tweet the same thing from multiple accounts – let's say an announcement, invitation, link, or anything else – Twittelator Neue makes it a breeze. A tap or two and you're all set. Simultweet in Twittelator Neue handles all of your multiple-personalities with ease.
Neue took a beating in the App Store reviews for daring to charge $2 per year (via in-app purchase) for push notifications. These are probably the same people that don't tip waitresses. C'mon people, we're talking about $2 here.
When I asked developer Andrew Stone about the up-charge, he had this to say:
We partnered with Boxcar - so we have to pay for servers - we carefully reviewed what was a sustainable business model and opted to be honest about that instead of hiding the costs with new sales. Eventually that model will collapse. That people expect stuff for free will eventually become a problem for most developers.
Besides, anyone can get free push notifications from http://boxcar.io.
I was initially surprised that Neue didn't utilize the Single Sign-On (SSO) feature for Twitter that Apple built into iOS 5, but there's a good reason for the omission. As it turns out, Apple's Twitter SSO implementation is mostly broken. Most developers don't implement Apple's SSO because it's lacking support for DM's. Twittelator Neue opted for a bit of inconvenience up front in order to implement a full Twitter experience. Developers have been asking Apple (and Twitter) to fix this for eight months.
Neue is the best Twitter client for the iPhone. Period.
