International Mac Podcast

Cocoa is my girlfriend. That is a phrase coined by the popular cocoa blog of the same name, and it rings sadly true for me, both as a developer of mac apps, and more importantly as an avid user of mac apps.

Somehow things like Adobe Air, X11, and even Apple’s own Carbon give me flashbacks to my time on Windows. Up until a few weeks ago I was using Twitterific as my main twitter client, unfortunately for it, it took its own concept of simplicity too far.

Also, it doesn’t look all that cocoa-ish, especially in Leopard, where HUD windows are supposed to have a glossy looking header. So then I was a rogue twitterer, on a hunt for some good Cocoa twitter clients. I found 5 contenders – here and now they will battle it out for my usership. ding ding

Round 0 – Meet the condenders

Bluebird is, much like Twitterific, focused on simplicity. While it has more features than Twitterific, it still leaves much to be desired on that front. The thing that Bluebird brings to the table is theming. The main part of the Bluebird interface is run in Webkit, making it easy for anybody with a knowledge of HTML and CSS to style it however they want and share it with the world. There are already a number of gorgeous Bluebird themes available for free online.

Canary is one of the first decent contenders to come out in the Cocoa Twitter app world. Its interface and feature set are decent, though not great. Canary’s greatest feature isn’t really a feature at all, and honestly most people won’t even care, but Canary is open source. It’s a nice way for anybody interested in Cocoa to see how a real, functional, decent looking Cocoa app is made, and maybe even contribute a bit to it yourself if you’re feeling generous.

EventBox is still one of the only Twitter apps I know of that you have to pay for, unless you were one of the lucky few tens of thousands of people who got it free from visiting Macheist. It’s got a nice interface, with both a Cocoa-style fully Core-Animation-itized window and a Twitterific-style HUD, and a decent amount of features. EventBox’s big thing is it’s integration with Facebook, Flickr, Reddit, Google Reader, and RSS feeds as well as Twitter.

Nambu is the powerhouse of the Twitter apps. It’s like your own personal Twitter servant, you click like two buttons and you can manage your friends and followers, track trends, track statistics on your tr.im and pic.im URLs/pictures, it will even make you a coffee just the way you like it while combing your hair, cleaning your dishes, and driving you to wherever you want to go. Update: Turns out that part was just a dream. But yeah, lot’s of features.

Tweetie is to UI as Nambu is to features. Everything is laced with Core Animation effects and frosted with shiny graphics (wait, why would you frost laces? Hmm…). I find the UI kind of annoying to actually use though, the fact that the Post to Twitter box is in an entirely separate window from the rest of the client just bugs the crap out of me. Feature wise it’s no Nambu, but it’s got some nice features, like a messaging view that mimics iChat.

Round 1 – Features Basic twitter features

Feature	Bluebird	Canary	EventBox	Nambu	Tweetie
Replying	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Retweeting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Favoriting	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tracks Replies/DM’s	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tracks Read/Unread	No	No	Yes	Yes	Kind of
Emoji	Yes	No	Yes	No	No

More Advanced Features (Bold = Best Implementation)

Feature	Bluebird	Canary	EventBox	Nambu	Tweetie
Full Twitter Search	No**	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multi-account	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Trends	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Counts API Requests	Yes	No	No	No	No

User Management (Bold = Best Implementation)

Feature	Bluebird	Canary	EventBox	Nambu	Tweetie
Lists Followers	No	No	No	Yes	No
View user’s archive	No**	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
View user’s info	No**	No	No	Yes	Yes
Follow/Unfollow	No**	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Block/Unblock	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Groups	No	No	No	Yes	No

Content Management (Bold = Best Implementation)

Feature	Bluebird	Canary	EventBox	Nambu	Tweetie
Shorten URLs	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Expand URLs	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Track URL Stats	No	No	No	Yes	No
Twitpic viewing	No	No	No	No	Yes

Other Features

Feature	Bluebird	Canary	EventBox	Nambu	Tweetie
@user Autocomplete	No	No	No	Yes	No
Bookmarklet	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
Multi-Service	No	No	Yes	Yes**	No
Reply Nesting/Tree	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
DM Nesting/Tree	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
Themable	Yes	No	No	No	No

Winner: Nambu Next Week: UI Design, Usability, and the Final Showdown!

*Based on Bluebird’s ‘iChat Bubbles’ theme, features may vary based on theme

**Feature promised soon.