Three Mac Twitter Clients That Aren't Tweetdeck

It’s finally hit the boiling point… I’m so sick of Tweetdeck and the lame-a$$ adobe air suck-factor that I’ve got to find another twitter client for the mac. I’ve used Tweetie for the mac before, and I completely love it, but it doesn’t support lists.

Lists have become a linchpin in my twitter use. I have one list of all my close friends, another of important industry people, and several other lists that help me slice and dice and get the most value out of my time scanning tweets.

So, with that in mind, here are three twitter apps for Mac that I recently tried out.

Echofon For Mac

• $20 or free ad supported version
• Very clean look… All white, dark grays and blues. Maybe too clean. A subtle gradient — very subtle — would help distinguish between the tweets. Also, a bit more vertical space between the tweets would be nice. It’s sort of hard to scan.
• supports lists! You click on the list section and select your list from a dropdown. I didn’t like this at first, but then discovered there is a handy keyboard shortcut to move between lists alt+command+up/down arrow. Actually, this is really friggen cool.
• adding people to list, checking out their profile… all of it works really well. Feels very “twitter.com”
• “Highlight” feature that lets you highlight any tweet containing keywords you set… kinda nice
• twitpics open up within the app with Mac’s quickview style… so pressing esc closes it quickly. Nice.
• Autocompletion of usernames by typing @, first few letters, and tab. Like textexplander or Textmate triggers! But doesn’t display a list as you type… Nambu’s autocomplete is definitely a bit nicer here.
• I’d still like to be able to see more columns at once (you can take the boy out of Tweetdeck…)

Overall, i’m really surprised by this… It’s quite good! I like the simplicity of looks, yet it’s got just about all the stuff i need

Nambu

• new and free but seems to be in terminal beta (but so was gmail…).
• has all the features but feels lest streamlined than Echofon… Echofon does all this a little bit easier.
• Interesting feature to combine all your lists into one stream… It’s nice, but not something i need.
• a lot less choices for settings than Echofon… e.g., Nambu automatically shows the domain of the link instead of the bit.ly link (facebook.com instead of http://www.facebook.com/majesticcats), and there’s no way to change that.
• You can choose between a left-hand navigation drawer or a minimized top navigation… which saves you a little screen space.
• No good keyboard shortcuts to move around in the app between Home, Replies, Lists, etc. Perhaps they’re coming at some point.
• shows pics inline with the tweetstream as little thumbnails, which is pretty good. Then when you click on them they come up in the quickview window.
• they have a very cool autocomplete for names. Way better than any other app i’ve seen.

Overall, Nambu isn’t half bad. I’d use it over Tweetdeck right now… but, so far, i’d have to opt for Echofon for it’s keyboard shortcuts to navigate between replies, lists, etc. (though I’d be sacrificing a little on the autocomplete)

Socialite

• $29 to buy… a bit pricey, but these guys make good apps.
• I want to use it just for the friggen AWESOME icon (A gin and tonic with lime in it?! on a black party napkin?! = Me!)
• i’m serious, I might have to use it just for that!
• This app was built to do it all: Facebook, flickr, twitter, etc… All i care about is twitter right now.
• It looks really good. A lot of design flair… I think it might even bee too much, though you’d never look at it and say “Oh hideous!”
• It’s setup with the menu on the left hand side, so you can see mentions, DM’s, Home, all your lists, etc.
• The keyboard shortcuts are a little less than I desire. To navigate to lists you have to command+s to get into the sidebar menu, and then up/down arrow to change sources. It’s better than nothing, but not as ideal as Echofon (command+4 for lists, and then alt+command+up/down arrow to move between lists).
• autocomplete works sort of: It only autocomplete’s usernames that appear in the current view (e.g., replies, DM’s, home, etc). So if the person you want to mention isn’t in the current view anywhere you’re not going to get any autocomplete for that name.
• I mentioned this to them on twitter, and it sounds like they’ll be making changes to this in the future.

I want to use this one, like, seriously want to just for the icon alone… and i have been for a few days, and I like it. It’s different to use my arrow keys to navigate all around the app (left arrow gets me into the sources, move up and down my lists, DM’s, mentions, etc… Then right arrow puts me on the tweetstream where I can move up and down… )

Are you using something else on your Mac? Plz let me know!