Recently (after upgrading to Snow Leopard) I have been forced to find other twitter clients than the one I had been using for almost a year, Nambu. As a part of the MacHeist offering I got a copy of Twitterrific which I tried for a couple weeks…I hated it. Here they are with their pros and cons:
Nambu (10.5 version):
Pros:
- Multi-account setup is easy
- Good layout
Cons:
- On Snow Leopard, if left running will use 2.0GB of RAM
Nambu (Snow Leopard version):
Pros:
- Smaller RAM usage
- Free
Cons:
- New UI is awful
- The break outs of retweets
- Resizing window doesn’t resize tweet field
Twitterific:
Pros:
- None, simply awful
Cons:
- Always on top
- Horrible UI
- It costs money
TweetDeck:
Pros:
- Multi-column so you can see all of the info you want
Cons:
- Ugly – even if the color scheme is changed
- Adobe AIR
- Multi-column
Tweetie:
Pros:
- Beautiful UI
- Wonderful multi-account setup
- Overall, very enjoyable
Cons:
- Pop out compose field
- Search setup is odd and clunky
- Dock icon doesn’t show number of tweets
- Number of tweets isn’t shown anywhere
Echofon:
Pros:
- Simple, clean interface
- Number of tweets is clearly visible
- Search is quick/easy to use
- Compose bar is built in
- Slide out drawer info is helpful
Cons:
- Multi-user accounts are clunky
After my full evaluation of these clients I’ve found the perfect twitter client for me would be Echofon and Tweetie smashed together, giving me the in app compose bar with the left sidebar and the slick interface that Tweetie has.
I’m still unable to decide between Tweetie and Echofon so I am currently using both. (side note: leaving 4 twitter clients open at a time quickly reaches the API limit.)