Tweetbot for Mac

It’s finally here! (sort of)
Tweetbot for Mac is finally available! However it may not be quite as you had hoped. Developing for the Mac is no easy task, especially a full-featured Twitter client. However, we’ve gotten to a point where while not complete, it is useable. We’ve decided to release it as a public alpha to a) motivate us to finish faster, and b) get feedback to help us build the best Mac incarnation of Tweetbot we can make. You can love it or hate it, but rest assured it will only get much much better from here.

Introducing a new scientist.
As you may have noticed, Paul has been hard at work this year with many great updates to the iOS versions of Tweetbot. So how have we been working just as hard on a Mac version at the same time? We would like to introduce our Canadian friend, Todd Thomas (@toddthomas). While much of the underlying twitter code is Paul’s, Todd has been working hard to bring Tweetbot to the Mac. Follow him on twitter, but don’t bug him too much as he’s got a lot of work ahead of him.

So what can I expect from this alpha?
Bugs! Lots of them.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Sending us bug and crash reports will help us out a lot. You can do so by hitting “Send Feedback” from the Help menu in Tweetbot for Mac.

Missing features.
We’ve been focusing on replicating the core features of our iOS versions. Features like multiple windows will be coming in the future. You can open a new window by hitting command-shift-n, but rest assure it will be much more elegant in the future.

Disturbing graphics and performance issues.
Okay, not disturbing to most of you, but some designers can get pretty disgusted by the slightest mis-aligned pixel. Don’t be alarmed, we plan on making everything as beautiful and pixel perfect as we can. Throwing things on the canvas is just part of our process. And no, the egg icon isn’t the final icon. It was thrown together for alpha/beta purposes. We also spend most of our time optimizing performance towards the end of development.

No support.
This is a public alpha so run it at your own risk. When you run into issues, we’d love it if you would send us a report. However we can’t respond or spend time helping you get things up and running or else we’ll end up spending time with support and not getting the app done.

No Notification Center or iCloud support (in the alpha/beta).
There’s no way we can offer them until the app is signed and goes through the app store. They will work in the shipping product.

Updates and Expiring alpha/betas.
Updates will be automatically pushed out to you. We suggest you install them as each new build will fix bugs and possibly add new functionality. Old builds will also expire after a certain period of time.

Answers to some common questions.
Will Tweetbot for Mac be free?
No, we plan to charge for the app in the app store once we hit version 1.0. Until then, you get to use our app for free. Think of it as a long term trial. When we hit 1.0, you’ll know whether it’s worth your hard earned cash or not.

How long will it be in alpha/beta?
As long as it needs to be. We would like to earn money for our hard work as soon as possible, but we won’t sell anything short of a quality product.

How much will you charge for it?
We haven’t decided yet.

Is it retina ready?
For the most part yes. However some of us are still waiting for our retina macbook pros so until then, there are a few glitches here and there.

Which versions of OS X will it support?
The alpha version supports 10.7+, but the shipping product will only support 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or later. We will be taking full advantage of features only available in 10.8. We will most likely be dropping 10.7 support sometime after 10.8 is available to the public.

So um…where do I get this so called “alpha”?
Right here: http://tapbots.com/tweetbot_mac