Cloudy Days and Connected Nights

[Note: 2.2 is now live in the App Store. iTunes link]

It is always interesting to watch something grow, and SimplyTweet users have a unique experience right now. SimplyTweet is an app in rapid development. I wrote my first review based on a beta of 2.0 when 1.7 was current in the App Store. 2.1 came out last week with major new features and refinements, and 2.2 has been submitted, with even more features and refinements. The author of the program has been unusually responsive to user feedback, and really seems to try to program in any truly useful feature or refinement his users ask for.

And yet, he maintains a solid vision of the operating  simplicity and essential responsiveness and speed needed for a useful twitter client. Added features have not added to the complexity of the program, or slowed it down. They have fit unobtrusively into the existing framework. New users will still find the basic, surface functions of maintaining a twitter account and a twitter correspondence fast and easy. Experienced users, and those who put a higher demand on their twitter client, will find the enriched feature set of SimplyTweet easily and logically accessible.

A note: new users often compare load times for SimplyTweet with an existing client on their iPhone, and think that SimTweet is slower. They do not realize that, unlike other clients which load a limited (often user selected) number of tweets on startup, SimTweet, by default, loads all the tweets since the one you last read (you can shut this off in the Settings App). That might be as many as 1000 tweets. In the morning, for me, following 500 plus tweeps, SimTweet often loads 700 tweets. That takes a few seconds. However, during the day when I am checking tweets on a regular basis, and SimTweet is loading 100 or less tweets since my last read, it is as fast or faster than any client loading a similar number. (Most clients for the iPhone max out at a 200 tweet load.)

If you want to see how fast it can be, start SimTweet, read all your tweets, hit refresh and read those very quickly, then close SimTweet and restart. If it loads less than 20 tweets it practically jumps to life.

Rapid development? Take a look at the new features and refinements added since 2.0 hit the App store with Push and Themes.

New in 2.1

- Block/Unblock support
- Update icons
- Allow account switching by tapping on navigation bar of timelines
- The current account used is now displayed on the navigation bar of Favorites
- Choice to have the friends timeline refresh after sending a new tweet
- Add support to update user profile image
- Add support to view large profile pictures
- Add support for reposting tweets
- Add support for copying text/links in tweet/DM view
- When receiving a push notification while SimplyTweet is running, the
affected timeline (Mentions or DM) is reloaded immediately if it is
visible, otherwise it is reloaded automatically when the user tabs to
it

Coming in 2.2

- Add support for uploading video (single video, optionally with
multiple photos) to Posterous and yfrog
- Built-in photo viewer now allows you to view the video (button in
toolbar) in a Posterous post
- Built-in photo viewer now supports MobyPicture
- Add support to view a user’s favorites from the account view
- Add support for search for replies (@whoever) to a user from the account view
- After picking/taking a photo for updating the user profile picture,
you are now asked to crop it to a square (since Twitter crops it
anyway, might as well do it yourself)
- If you take a photo while drafting a tweet/DM, the photo is
automatically saved to your camera roll
- Add option for larger text size
- Add option to display Real name in addition to Account name in timelines
- Add “Conversation between us” function in Account view
- Upon a push while SimplyTweet is running, but screen is locked, the
DM and mentions timeline will now autorefresh when the screen is
unlocked to reveal the new mention/DM (with badge count)
- You can now post media (picture/video) without typing any text
- If you are in the drafting window (DM or Tweet) and SimplyTweet is
quit by pressing the home button, the draft is automatically saved
- Change default theme to Silver

I have said it before: SimplyTweet is simply the best Twitter client currently available on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.