APP OF THE DAY: Twitter for iPad

Sep
09
2010

APP OF THE DAY: Twitter for iPad

Finally, a decent free (and official) Twitter iPad app

Whilst we’ve featured iPad apps in the past on App of The Day that involve Twitter, such as the brilliant Flipboard, we haven’t yet featured the official Twitter app for the iPad.

But come on, cut us some slack - it’s only been available since the end of last week.

So after almost a week of playing on the new app we can now proudly bring to you, our honest feelings regarding…

Twitter for iPad

Format: iPad
Price: Free
Where: iTunes

Sure, there are a couple of decent free Twitter clients for the iPad (most notably Tweet Deck), but none of them feel iPad native.

There isn’t a Twitter app that really takes advantage of the iPad’s screen real estate and multi-touch gesture support.

Until now that is.

The official Twitter app is nothing short of brilliant. Twitter may have just killed its own website by releasing this app into the world.

First up, it isn’t just a timeline viewer - there’s much more to it than that. Your lists are present, as are searches and trends, and the app even supports multiple accounts.

Even typing a tweet on the official app feels and looks nice. Tweets are composed via a notepad looking platform with a nice friendly and clear font.

But it’s within the tweet timelines that this app really proves its worth. If a tweet contains content such as a link to a website or a picture, then simply tapping the tweet will bring up the content in a separate pane. You can then simply slide this pane back out of view when you’re done with it - or leave it hovering at the side if you’ll want to refer to it later.

A double finger drag on a tweet opens up the conversation thread, making it much easier to follow one theme without scrolling up and down your timeline.

You can also expand a tweet with two fingers to reveal the tweeter’s details and pinch to zoom back in.

Selected tweets are frozen at the top of the timeline, again making it easier to refer to them later on.

All the usual Twitter that you’d expect is on board as well, including the ability to add favourite tweets, retweet, direct message and so on.