Twitterrific for iPhone

The Iconfactory’s Twitterrific is another of the iPhone apps I’ve been beta testing for a bit. It’s not just a great iPhone app, it’s a great app, period. I prefer its layout and presentation to that of the Mac version. Like its Mac sibling, you can choose between paying for Twitterrific for iPhone ($10) or using it for free, with occasional ads from The Deck.

Use it for a bit and you can see exactly why it won an Apple Design Award for the user experience. First, it looks beautiful. But it is very, very usable. My favorite feature is the built-in web browser. When you tap a link in a tweet, the built-in browser slides down from the top. In the browser itself, there are three standard browser buttons — back, forward, refresh — plus another button to leave Twitterrific and open the current page in Safari. Tap “Close” and the built-in browser slides away, putting you right back where you were in the tweet view. If it weren’t for the built-in browser, you’d have to quit Twitterrific each time you tapped a URL.

★ Thursday, 10 July 2008