Last year I had an in depth review of SimplyTweet 2.3 and later 2.5.
With the release of SimplyTweet 3 [iTunes App Store link] MotionObj has improved on a Twitter client that is already amazing. As mentioned in my review last year, many of the features in SimplyTweet 2 were later adapted in Tweetie 2, it is surprising why Twitter did not purchase SimplyTweet instead of Tweetie.
In this latest update, the developer has made some bug fixes but also added the following features/enhancements:
- Improved offline caching.
- Faster application startup.
- Improved Twitter List access.
- Added new style RT to swipe menu.
- Added support for tweeting current song (with #nowplaying).
- Added support for TwitLonger.
I had tried many Twitter clients on the iPhone: TweetDeck for iPhone, Tweetie, TwitBird Pro for Twitter and Twitterrific, but had to go back to SimplyTweet mainly for the following reasons:
- First and foremost is its built in Push Notification. Yes, I understand BoxCar is a common solution for applications that do not have built in Push Notifications, but for whatever reasons I never have too good of an experience with it.
- Link shortening seem to be the only one that works correctly for me. This is one of the most important feature to me as I share many links among my followers.
- Since I manage my Twitter stream using Twitter Lists, SimplyTweet’s ability to customize the icons at the bottom is invaluable to me. Although it is a bit limited with only 4 spots, but TweetDeck’s implementation is a bit hard to manage also. I hope the developer will improve this UI behaviour.
For more screen shots of the application please see my previous review of SimplyTweet.
I spoke with the developer about the future of SimplyTweet given Twitter’s recent purchase of Tweetie and the pending release of an official free Twitter client. The developer tells me that he is still examining the situation.
This sort of thing happens often in the software development community, where independent software developers create applications that link with a service/platform, and the service or platform owners decide to release their own applications. Often this actions eliminate all 3rd party applications for the service/platform, but in many case these 3rd party software developers is challenged to differentiate their application from the official application from the service or platform owners. One such example is BusyCal from BusyMac. It is an excellent replacement for Apple’s iCal, calendar application. There are many more examples like this on the Mac OS X platform.
I wish the developer of SimplyTweet luck and hope he can afford to stay on this excellent client. If you too agrees with me, please do spend the USD4.99 that the developer is asking for in the iTunes App Store.
Agree with @vinko that SimplyTweet really is a powerful iPhone Twitter Client. I think Twitter acquired Tweetie because of Tweetie's UI and their style matched with Twitter so much. Some more its already so hype and famous than SimplyTweet a lot.
I think SimpyTweet lost out from the Twitter acquisition radar because was not noticed by the Internet celebrities and it is from Asia. Which is very unfortunate, since most of the cool features in SimplyTweet appeared prior to Tweetie.