It wasn’t long after I got my iPhone 5 that I started feeling like Facebook wasn’t for me anymore.
Like everyone else, I checked out Twitter,[1] and also App.net.
Three years later, and only one of those two services is still alive.[2] It’s crazy how much things can change in a few years.Back in 2012, Twitter had only recently started to crack down on third-party clients using their APIs. And there were plenty of third-party clients on the App Store. The best examples of which were Tweetbot and Twitterrific.
Ecstatic with the concept of apps (this was my first iPhone), I downloaded both and tried both. Unlike a lot of iPhone owners on Twitter, I was never forced to use the official Twitter client, on iOS or Mac OS X.[3]
I even used both Twitterrific and Tweetbot at the same time. Tweet Marker made Timeline syncing easy, and I wasn’t too bothered with the lack of DM / @mention syncing between clients, since I wasn’t getting many of those at the time anyways.
While Tweetbot 2’s visual esthetic was, in 2012, much heavier and less ‘flat’[4] than Twitterrific’s at the time, I loved the look. Combined with my preference for the Tweetbot esthetic, the power user features also made Tweetbot more compelling for me than Twitterrific.
Yesterday, Tapbots launched their newly-redesigned website. They had this to say about the change:
Welcome to the new tapbots.com! We hope this long overdue refresh is a better place to stay up to date with our apps. Our goal this year is to not only ship updates on a more regular basis, but also provide more insight into what we are currently working on. So lets get on to the important bits of information.
Mark Jardine, designer for Tapbots since its inception, did a great job with the site’s new look.
You can check out their new site, as well as all of their wonderful apps here.
(From MacStories)
Here’s my first tweet ever, auto-posted from—get this—iTunes. ↩
Notice how I didn’t say “thrive”? It will be interesting to see how things look for Twitter three years from today. ↩
Flat was so in back then. I guess it still is, but it’s more ‘flat, and non-flat when needed,’ which I like much better. Tapbots really has taken this new ‘flat’ and ran with it. While Tweetbot and Calcbot are still technically quite flat compared to older versions pre-iOS 7, they both have tons of delicious animations and textures that enhance the app experience tremendously. Sometimes plain ol’ flat just doesn’t work that well. ↩