Twitterrific 3.0. Reviewed.

I was looking forward to Twitterrific 3.0 for iPhone. Since Twitter (ahem) bought Tweetie from Loren Brichter, I feared no one would take the effort of developing a great Twitter client for the iPhone anymore. Fighting against the man with a paid / unofficial app? Many developers gave up, and I understand them.

The Iconfactory team didn’t gave up though. They announced a native version of Twitterrific for iPad and it was released on day one. A great app, but I eventually ended up using Osfoora HD on the iPad, more on this in a moment. After the iPad client was released, they announced their plans for the future: a completely revamped version of Twitterrific for the iPhone and a much needed 4.0 update for the Mac.

With the 3.0 version of Twitterrific for iPhone, they decided to take a radically different approach and streamline the user experience by removing all those unnecessary features that made Twitterrific 2.0 a feature creep. I think it worked.

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Star Walk Follows the Stars! Review & Giveaway!

Growing up in suburban neighborhoods full of light fixtures, airplane traffic, and an illuminated sky just miles away from the uptown, I’ve never really had a chance to just step out in my back yard and appreciate the night sky. The light pollution is awful, and I always remember heading out on camping trips with my Dad and staring up at the night sky that was alive with flickering lights and unknown suns. I may appreciate those ancestral bodies more than others, but I think everyone would find Star Walk for the iPad to be an application you’ll immediately fall in love with.

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Steve Jobs on Wi-Fi Syncing, Macs, and iPhone 4 Scratches

Steve Jobs has been engaging his customers quite a bit lately, and we’ve got some rather interesting answers pertaining to the three most important topics people are concerned about.

“Do you think you will ever allow syncing iPhone to Mac over wifi?” writes Rick Proctor, friend of Mashable and previous TUAW writer Christina Warren. Steve wrote back, “Yep, someday.”

A handicapped Mac user, Steve O’Hear from TechCrunch Europe, wrote in to ask Steve about the future of Mac. It was a personal and concerning email, with this end note, “It’s not that I can’t use the existing iPhone or iPad, just not as efficiently as everybody else, so I haven’t invested in either.” Steve replied, “We will keep making the best computers on the planet. We love it.”

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Mike Rundle’s First Thoughts on iPhone 4

“Apps that haven’t been updated with 2x-resolution raster images look like shit; pixelated and blocky and clunky. I didn’t think I’d notice but I definitely do, it’s unmistakeable which ones aren’t optimized for the new screen.

Text rendered on the new screen looks foreign it’s so sharp. I’ve never seen Helvetica like this.

I bought a bumper, and before I put it on, it felt like the phone was incredibly droppable.

The screen is making my eyes buggy because it’s so sharp. I’ve never seen a screen with this type of pixel density and it’s so sharp it’s almost jarring, like my eyes aren’t used to it yet.”

Brief and insightful. Check out the full post here.

Congratulations, Twitter: You Blew It. [Tweetie]

Writing about Tweetie for Mac updates has become some sort of a joke to me. “Tweetie for Mac has been updated? Yeah, sure.” That’s why many people last night didn’t initially believe Twitter actually pushed an update with OAuth support, and once they realized it was real, they just didn’t update. Why? Because they’re not trusting Loren Brichter anymore. And considering what happened to Tweetie for Mac last night, go prove them wrong.

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Retina Display Under the Microscope

PhD candidates Ryan White and Bryan Gauntt of Penn State University sent Engadget some interesting comparison images of a Retina Display under the microscope together with a 3G screen.

“According to their measurements, the iPhone 3G’s pixels measure 13 x 40 microns, while the iPhone 4’s measure 6.5 x 20 microns, which adds up to exactly four times as many pixels.”

We know it’s impressive, but if you want scientific confirmation - just check out the images after the break.

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Sharing Files with Dropbox Just Got A Lot Easier

Dropbox, the most popular online / desktop backup tool for Mac, just got a brand new feature: all your files in your Dropbox can be shared, not just those saved in the Public folder.

You just have to right click on a file or folder int he desktop or web view and select “Get shareable link”; this will redirect you to a web page with a short link for that file or folder. This is a long-awaited feature, which has made sharing file with Dropbox a lot easier. Good job.

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First iPhone 4 Reception Bug Seems Pretty Bad

Picture this: you hold the iPhone 4 in your hands and the signal drops. You leave it on the desk and it goes up again. You touch it with your skin and boom, no signal. There’s this video that’s running around in the internet, which shows an iPhone 4 “magically” going to to No Signal with just a few inches of skin.

TUAW is also reporting:

“In fact, this reception conniption was predicted on Fox’s Gadgets and Games two weeks ago: “Having been in the cellular business most of my career, I think it’s really odd that you’d want an antenna grounded by a moist hand.” Check out the video; it’s about 24 minutes in when MAKE magazine’s Dave Mathews calls it.”

Check it out after the break. If true, it’s pretty bad.

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Tweetie for Mac Updated with OAuth Support [UPDATE: New Build Available]

I almost can’t believe I’m writing this: Tweetie for Mac has been updated. Sadly, it’s not the long awaited Tweetie 2, but at least it’s got OAuth support, meaning that the app won’t die when Twitter will officially kill the old authentication system.

Since Twitter acquired Loren Brichter’s Tweetie for iPhone and Mac, we all feared that the new team would only focus on the iPhone app, leaving Mac users behind with a version based on a deprecated authentication system. Knowing that they didn’t even have plans to make it an official client didn’t help either. Then, two weeks ago we reported that an update for the Mac version was on its way this month, and here it is: a rather minor update that brings OAuth, better Magic Mouse support and removes Fusion Ads according to Twitter’s new Terms of Service.

It’s kind of surprising though that there’s still no official word about the 2 version (we don’t want that much, a tweet would be enough) especially considering that thousands of users entered the latest MacHeist sale just to get their hands on an early beta version of Tweetie 2 for Mac. But, we heard some rumors last week from a source close to Loren, who claims that he’s up to “some amazing stuff for Tweetie”. I bet he is. Working at Twitter must be awesome.

Anyway, that’s not the point. There’s a new version, go check for updates, Tweetie for Mac won’t die. At this point, I’m afraid to say it’s enough.

You can find the changelog of the new 1.2.7 version after the break.

[UPDATE] They’ve pushed another build that fixes the authentication problems, 1.2.8. It’s available here. Still, you know my position about this.

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