Twitter for iPhone App Icon
So here it is the long promised Official Twitter iPhone Application, first impression upon loading it from the Apple AppStore was that the icon needs a bit of work, almost like it had been rushed.
But more importantly what is the application like? Opening the app up for the first time presented me with a screen showing the latest tweets of interest and trends. I would show you a screen shot, but stupidly I rushed passed that page and logged in (you get a similar page once logged in). What did surprise me was the basic authentication method that was used, “please enter your username and password”. Surely the official Twitter app should be using oAuth? If someone like me can slave over a PHP oAuth system, then Twitter’s dev team can create a layer for the iPhone!??
But what do my tweets look like I hear you shout (or I might be imagining it), well they look like this.
Official Twitter iPhone App - Timeline
They appear to have taken the standard layout, author image to the left (unless its your’s, then its to the right). @kaivana ‘s tweet is shown with a blue background I presume because it is tweeted at me! Oh and @Tony_Hillier is trying the new app also, hence the random “Tweet Tweet”.
My current iPhone Twitter client is TwitBird Pro, and the only thing that I feel this page is missing is the background image feature that TwitBird Pro offers. Perhaps @Twitter will take notice and do an update!
The icons along the bottom of the screen provide a few extra views,
- Speach bubble provides your standard home timeline.
- @ symbol unsprisingly provides a list of tweets in which you are mentioned.
- Letter provides your direct messages, grouped by user which is a nice touch.
- The hand glass provides the more interesting feature allowing for trending topics and searches.
- The triple dots gives access to the settings and your favourite tweets and lists.
Clicking onto a tweet performs the usual action of showing the tweet along with and links for #hashtags and @usernames. If the tweet is geo-tagged then it will also show a nice little map which can be extended with a click to a full screen view. The normal access to a users bio is also available when you click on their name, which gives a funky feature allowing you to import their info into an iPhone contact!
