If you’re old school, Twitterrific for Mac was probably your first Twitter client.

Twitterrific for the Mac came out in January 2007. I joined Twitter in March. It was the first native Twitter app for the Mac, and I loved its small footprint, dark UI, and color-coded @replies. For a long time Twitterrific was Twitter for me.

It’s funny to look back at how I used Twitter over half a decade ago. I followed dozens of people and would often post Tweets through a Quicksilver plugin, treating my tweets as one-line “status updates” which lived on my site’s sidebar. Visitors to my blog circa 2006 and 2007 could see a “this is what the author is currently doing” message.

Obviously our usage of Twitter has changed drastically since then. Twitterrific for Mac shipped the same week Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone. Now, almost 6 years later, I primarily check and post to Twitter via my iPhone.

Six months after Twitterrific for the Mac shipped, the first proof of concept for “MobileTwitterrific” was announced in August of 2007. Twitterrific for iPhone launched on July 11, 2008, and was one of the first apps in the brand new App Store for iPhone. Before Twitterrific for iPhone, we were all using web-based Twitter apps. Remember Hahlo?

T5

Today, Twitterrific is 5 years older and 5 versions mature. The app has gone through many design iterations over the years, but has always remained true to its roots. Additionally, Twitterrific has made many significant contributions to the Twitter ecosystem at large — it was the first native Twitter client on both Mac and on the iPhone, it was the first to coin the word “tweet”, and it was the first to implement a bird icon.

Graphics-wise, the newest version of Twitterrific is simply stunning. Without any hyperbole, I consider T5 to be the best-looking version of Twitterrific to date and one of the most attractive iPhone apps I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks in no small part to the great use of typography and color. Though this new version seems to me the furthest departure from the original design, it still has hints of familiarity and does not cast aside all design elements from past versions.

I haven’t used Twitterrific on my iPhone since 2008, which is when I switched to Tweetie. Then it was Tweetie 2, and then Tweetbot. All these aforementioned Twitter apps are not just great apps for Twitter, but they are (or were) great iPhone apps, period. The look and feel of Twitterrific 5 is, in my opinion, its greatest selling point — it has a UI design on the same caliber as what I consider to be some of the best iPhone apps ever built.

Twitterrific 5 strikes me as an exercise in simplicity with a focus on all the little details. When your UI doesn’t use gradients or drop shadows or boxes to hold itself together, all the loose elements have nowhere to hide. Any designer worth their salt will tell you that a “minimalistic” app like this is extremely difficult to pull off well. I say the Iconfactory hit a home run.

I asked David Lanham, designer at the Iconfactory, about the redesign. He said, “the focus of the redesign was to bring Twitterrific back to making reading tweets as enjoyable as possible while also applying what we’ve learned over the last few years for interface and interaction decisions to the usage of the app.”

Twitterrific’s most historic design detail is its liberal but clever use of color. Twitterrific has always used colors to signify the various types of tweets, and it’s no different in version 5:
– @replies directed to you use a yellow, orange, and red color scheme.
– Tweets which simply mention your @username use a brown and tan color scheme.
– Incoming direct messages are dark blue.
– Outgoing direct messages are teal, with an arrow pointing to the name of the user you sent the message to.
– A purple line underneath a Tweet signifies where the current tweet marker is (you can sync your timeline position via iCloud or the TweetMarker service).

Another historic design element is Twitterrific’s customizable themes. Just like in past versions of Twitterrific, T5 lets you choose between light or dark themes, adjust the font size to anything from teeny-tiny to ginormous, and more.

What’s new, however, is you now get a choice of the typeface itself. Custom fonts include Helvetica (of course), Proxima Nova, Museo Slab, Calluna, and Signika. Naturally I’m using Proxima Nova — it’s a gorgeous typeface which I think looks especially stunning on a Retina screen.

Also new: T5 can switch between light and dark themes automatically based on the time of day. Bright theme in the daytime, dark theme in the nighttime (a la Instapaper). This option is clever and fun; I had it turned on for a few days, but ended up turning it off because I like the dark theme too much.

Interestingly, popover notifications and slide-up selection buttons are not customized. So much of Twitterrific’s design is unique and customized, I was a bit surprised to see these default iPhone elements.

Direct Messages

Showing DMs right within the main timeline, as Twitterrific always has, always freaks me out. After a few days I’ve slowly acclimated to seeing a blue message and knowing blue means not publicly viewable.

There is, of course, a Messages tab, however, you cannot start a new DM thread from within it. You can view and reply to any current DM conversation you’re having with someone, but you cannot begin a new one with a new person.

The only way to start a new DM thread is to first navigate to a user’s profile, and if they follow you then you’ll see a small envelope icon. Tap that to start a new DM conversation with that person.

Alternatively, you could send a DM the old-fashioned way: “d @username Hey pal!”

A Few “Missing” Features

Being a hard and fast Tweetbot user for the past few years, there are 3 elements I instantly noticed were not features of Twitterrific 5:

• No mobilizer view available in the in-app Safari web view.
• No muting of keywords, tags, clients, users, etc.
• No push notifications.

But this is something Craig Hockenberry (the man who had the idea for Twitterrific in the shower) addressed all the way back in 2008:

There will always be more than one way to solve a problem: a developer’s personal preferences will inevitably seep into the implementation. Having many choices for a Twitter client means that developers don’t need to create a “one size fits all” solution. In essence, users get to choose a developer whose preferences match their own. […]

For Twitterrific, our core function is reading.

The core function is not managing your Twitter account. Nor is it being a general purpose tool to exercise every nook and cranny of the API. It’s primary function is not to act as a surrogate for SMS messaging.

I asked the awesome gents at Iconfactory why they chose to not ship T5 with push notifications. It was a two-fold answer from both Craig Hockenberry and Gedeon Maheux.

“Twitterrific 5 is a clean slate. The visual design is obviously a fresh
start, but our code base is as well,” Craig said. Gedeon added that if they’d included push notifications as part of T5, it would have added another 3 – 4 months to the development cycle: “So much has changed in the Twitterverse this past year with Twitter introducing new guidelines and restrictions that we felt any further delay in getting version 5 out the door increased the risk of not being able to release it at all.”

But that’s not the only reason. “When everything is new and clean, you think carefully before adding new stuff,” Craig said. “The things in this initial version are things we, as a team, really wanted to have. I know a lot of people love push notifications, but as iOS matures I find myself actively disabling notifications in apps. There are just too many and they end up being a distraction.”

I am an advocate of Craig’s stance on disabling as many notifications as are reasonable. But for me, there are many peers and comrades that I connect with throughout my workday, and Twitter DM is one of the primary ways we go about doing that. Fortunately, push notifications are in Twitterrific 5’s roadmap, they’re just not here yet.

And alas, for me, some of the “missing” elements in Twitterrific are deal breakers. Despite how fast and gorgeous Twitterrific 5 is, I do not want to give up push notifications, mute filters, or the mobilizer web toggle. These 3 features of Tweetbot are so important to how I use Twitter that I won’t be switching to Twitterrific as my one and only Twitter client.1

For the past week, I’ve been bouncing between both apps — using Tweetbot for DMs and Twitterrific for the rest. I know it’s silly to use more than one Twitter app, but the look and feel of T5 is so splendid that I’m happy to be silly for the time being. Not to mention, if you have any appreciation at all for world-class app design,2 then Twitterrific 5 is worth checking out for that reason alone.

It’s a universal app and is currently $2.99 in the App Store.

My Olympus E-PL5 arrived on Tuesday, and the lenses arrived yesterday. Most of yesterday afternoon I spent reading the user manual and shooting a few hundred photos.

My first impression of the camera is that it’s great. Really, really great.

Here is a Flickr set with the 31 photos I thought were good enough to share with the Internet. All the images were shot in RAW and edited a bit in Lightroom using the default presets.

* * *

• Hardware: It’s a dense and heavy camera. Heavier than I thought it would be which makes it feels expensive. But it’s not so heavy that it’s difficult to hold or operate. With the front grip attached I can comfortably hold and operate it with my right hand.

The movable / tiltable touch screen has sturdy hinges and I don’t feel like I’m going to break it. As a feature, the adjustable screen is very welcome. I found myself frequently holding the camera at waist height to take a shot and then tilting the screen up towards me so I could see to frame the picture. It makes taking shots at or near ground level as easy as kneeling down.

• Speed: I have two Panasonic lenses I’m trying out (see more below). Olympus cameras are known for their super-quick auto focus, and my E-PL5 lives up to its reputation. Focusing seems near-instantaneous most of the time, but in lower light it can take up to half a second to focus (even with the “slower” focusing 20mm pancake). And speaking of focus, the tap-to-focus-and-then-snap-a-photo feature of the touch screen is great. Very useful for auto-focusing on something not in the center of the frame.

Not only does the E-PL5 focus quickly, but it turns on in about one second. After I press the power button, it’s up and ready to go before I have the lens cap off. One of the reasons I bought this camera is so I could take better shots of Noah. Assuming the camera is nearby it would be ready to take a picture nearly as fast as my iPhone would be.

• Point and Shoot (but only if you want): After my first day shooting, I felt like I got several high-quality images that turned out great and all I did was point and shoot. The E-PL5’s Automatic mode is great at detecting what sort of image your taking and what the lighting is like and then favoring the best settings. Thus this camera will allow you to take some great photos without having to do much more than frame the shot.

But it’s not all auto. The E-PL5 has priority modes and full-on manual mode — I can adjust all sorts of stuff that I don’t yet understand.

This is exactly the sort of camera I was hoping to get. It will allow me to learn how it works and learn about the finer details of photography, but not require it of me. I could give this camera to anyone and tell them to just point and click and they’d likely get a pretty decent image, if not a great one.

• Battery Life: I took a little less than 300 pictures yesterday and the battery indicator says it’s still at full. I don’t yet know for sure how long the battery will last, but it’s obviously much longer than a good afternoon of shooting.

• Preconceived Notions: I’m trying hard to remember what I’ve always told myself when it comes to print and web design: tools do not a designer make. In my dreams I tell myself that after 5 years of avid iPhone photography, I’ve slowly grown in my composition skills as a photographer and that I’ll pick up this new high-quality camera and instantly produce jaw-dropping photos.

While I’m sure that the photographic eye I’ve developed over the past few years is better than starting from nothing, it’s also likely that since I’ve been using one camera for so long I’m now somewhat pigeonholed into what the iPhone is and is not good at. There is now a whole world of options and styles that the Olympus and it’s different lenses will open me up to.

Simply having a nice camera does not mean my shots will be what I want them to be. And that’s okay — I’m here to learn.

• Voice: I am as excited about editing images as I am about taking them. Just as a writer, over time, develops their writing voice, so too does a photographer. But with photography you develop your voice not just in composition but also in post processing. And those two come together.

• Lightroom: I bought Lightroom 4 when it came out and have been using it to post-process some of my iPhone photos. Mostly to clean them up and make them pop a little bit. There is still a lot I have to learn about post-processing.

One thing to note is that Lightroom 4.2 does not support RAW files from the E-PL5. Adobe recently made available the beta RC1 for version 4.3 that does.

The shots from yesterday I took in RAW and edited with Lightroom’s stock presets. For my first day shooting and editing with what could be considered “pro” gear, I am thrilled with the results. But I’m not blown away — I know I can do better. The good news is that I feel only held back by my own skill and knowledge.

• Lenses: Though I only plan to keep one, I ended up ordering two lenses: the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 and the 25mm f/1.4. Because I’ve read and seen so many good things about both I wanted to use and compare them side-by-side and determine for myself which I wanted to keep as the daily shooter. The lens I decide not to keep will just be returned or sold.

The 20mm f/1.7 is a pancake lens, which, in terms of size, is ideally what I want. Not only does the pancake make the camera more portable, it also makes for a less intimidating camera. People who aren’t used to a fancy camera, tend to act awkward or look funny when there’s a giant camera pointing at them. A small camera that looks like no more than a humble point-and-shoot I got at Walmart may help friends and strangers alike to pay no mind and thus allow me to capture some great candid shots.

However, the 25mm f/1.4 is a bit faster and is slightly higher-quality glass. It gives a creamier depth of field than the 20mm, and it’s auto-focus is quicker as well. And so it has me wondering if the tradeoff in portability and incognito-ness may be worth it.

But it’s impossible to conjecture about which lens is the better daily driver without using and comparing the two. All throughout the day I tried to take the same shot twice — once with the 20mm and then again with the 25mm. As I was later going through all the photos in Lightroom, most of the shots which stood out to me as being better than the others were the ones taken with the 20mm. (Perhaps this is because the focal length of the 20mm seems more akin to that in the iPhone, and so I’m naturally used to framing shots in such a way that the 20mm shines more?)

Down the road I’m planning for my 2nd lens to be the Olympus 45mm f/1.8. It will make a fine companion to the pancake 20mm, and so, though I haven’t made my final choice yet, my gut instinct is that the 25mm — as nice as it is — will not make the cut.

• Is it fun? I felt like a dork walking around with my camera and taking photos. I’ve never thought other people with cameras were dorks, but I sure felt like one. I’m just going to assume that this is something all photographers feel and that once I get over it I’ll have a lot more fun taking photos, and the quality and style of my photos will increase as well.

As they say: just relax.

* * *

My favorite two photos from yesterday are this one of Noah laughing (though that picture would have looked good no matter what camera it was taken on), and this one of Anna and Noah playing:

It is tough to say after only one day of shooting, but I’m feeling extremely happy with the E-PL5 and the Panasonic lenses. So far, it looks like I made the right choice for the best compact, mid-priced, Micro 4/3 camera.

It took about a week from when I bought my first iPad until I realized I would likely never buy a physical book again.

The iPad was to books what my first iPod was to music. It had been years since I’d bought a physical CD — all my music lives in iTunes and comes from the iTunes music store. So too would it now be with books. The convenience of being able to buy a book with a few taps, have it download instantly, and add it to my small-but-now-growing digital library was just too awesome of a perk.

My enjoyment for reading digital books evolved even more when, last year, I purchased my first Kindle. My reasoning for buying the Kindle Touch was mostly business. I wanted to review it, to get some experiential knowledge of what e-ink was like, and I wanted to compare the size and weight of the Kindle Touch to the iPad.

It took all of 10 minutes of reading on the Kindle Touch for me to regret the money I’d spent in the iBookstore up until that point. For long-form reading, the Kindle was obviously leaps and bounds better than the iPad, and now I was thinking about all the digital books I had bought on the iBookstore and how they were no good on the Kindle. The few books I was currently in the middle of reading on my iPad I bought again on the Kindle store and the rest is history.

Reading a book on a Kindle truly is a more enjoyable and relaxing experience than reading one on the iPad. There are the obvious, tangible advantages: the Kindle is easily held for long periods of time with one hand and the e-ink display is easier on the eyes. But there are also the less obvious, intangible advantages: when you’re holding a Kindle there are no other apps, no other options of things to do, no distractions sitting impatiently behind the text before you, no notifications, or any of that.

The Kindle is a single-serving device. It’s meant to offer all the niceties of reading print, enhanced by all the luxuries of a digital device. It’s as light as a paperback book, the screen looks like printed ink on paper, but it can hold a massive library and you can buy a book with just a few taps without even getting up from your chair.

The only significant quibble I had with the Kindle Touch was its non-illuminated display. I do most of my reading in the evenings on the couch and/or in bed. Often when reading in bed the lights are out, and thus I’ve become a regular user of the Kindle app for my iPad.

Which is why, when the Kindle Paperwhite was announced, I ordered one immediately.

What’s Great

Not all the gadgets I buy to review continue to get used after I’ve written about them. But my Kindle Touch proved to be something I use all the time. After a month with the new Kindle Paperwhite, I consider it to be superior to its predecessor in every way.

For one, the Kindle Paperwhite just looks cooler than the Kindle Touch. It’s the most attractive Kindle to date. The front of the bezel is a semi-gloss black plastic with nothing but the Kindle logo centered in silver.

The Kindle logo used to be on the top-most bezel, and on the bottom-most bezel is where there used to be a Home button. The Kindle logo has now been moved to the bottom and the Home button has been removed. It’s obvious that Amazon was going for ultra-simplicity in the design of the Paperwhite; it’s a shame they didn’t remove the front logo altogether.

(I will say that the missing Home button hasn’t bothered me one bit. It is quite easy to get to the Home screen through the software menu, and for how infrequently I visit the Home screen of my Kindle I’m fine with an even simpler front bezel design.)

On the bottom edge you’ll find the only port and the only button: a micro-USB port and the power/wake/sleep button. On the Kindle Touch, the very bottom also sported a speaker. I never once used that speaker except during testing, and so I’m glad to see Amazon removed it on the Paperwhite.

The back of the Kindle is black and sports a matte, slightly-rubbery, grippy plastic which bends around the side and top edges and meets the front bezel with a single seam. There are no screws or clips on the whole device. It’s lightweight, easy to hold, and built very well. It is the nicest non-Apple “tablet” I own.

But the refinements to the hardware are only the beginning. The higher-contrast screen with its higher DPI looks better than previous Kindles. And, best of all, the screen is now illuminated. This was the whole reason I popped for another Kindle despite the fact I had a perfectly good one that was less than a year old. Because, as I mentioned above, the Kindle Touch’s lack of an illuminated screen was actually a hindrance to me using it as often as I wanted to.

Moreover, the Paperwhite’s screen itself sits closer to the rim of the bezel. Or, put another way, it’s not sunken down into the device as much. And even the touch responsiveness is faster. Perhaps this is due to hardware upgrades to the internals, or perhaps it’s due to the software that the Kindle Paperwhite is running. It’s probably a combination of both.1

In addition to being more responsive, the new version of software running on the Paperwhite is easier to use. The new cover view on the Home screen is so much nicer than the list view. Also, you can now view the books you have on your device and all the books you’ve ever purchased, but that are in the cloud and not currently downloaded.

All these little changes really add up to a great device. But, of course, the Kindle Paperwhite is not perfect.

What’s Not So Great

• No Page-Turn Buttons: I have never actually used a Kindle that had the physical page-turn buttons, but I suspect I’d love them. And why shouldn’t this version of the Kindle have them?

John Gruber, in his review of the Paperwhite wrote:

To remain relevant in an iPad (and Kindle Fire) world, a single-purpose device like the Kindle Paperwhite needs an obsessive focus on the reading experience. Page-turning buttons would make that experience better.

Another disadvantage of the Kindle Paperwhite’s lack of physical page-turn buttons is that you cannot rest your thumb on the screen. If you tap the screen on accident you end up turning the page. If you leave your thumb resting on the screen then you end up highlighting a word.

In the countless hours I’ve spent reading on my Kindle, a touch screen seems so obvious. It makes highlighting passages and looking up definitions a breeze, as well as navigating the Home screen and other menus. The inability to rest my thumb on the screen is only an issue when reading while lying down on my back. And so to me it’s worth having the touchscreen of the Paperwhite than the non-touchscreen of the Kindle 5 (especially since the Paperwhite now has a crisper, illuminated display).

Ultimately, my ideal Kindle would be smart enough to know when I’m resting my thumb on the screen and when I’m trying to highlight a passage or define a word. And it would have physical buttons for turning pages.

• The Illumination Spotlights: By far, my biggest complaint agains the Kindle Paperwhite is with the way the lights illuminate the bottom of the screen. Underneath the bottom bezel of my Kindle are four LED lights, shining upwards to light up the screen. Yet they shine like spotlights, and it’s not until about 3/4 of an inch up the screen that their light beams blend into one another and you get a soft, even lighting.

This is common. All the Paperwhites have it and nobody likes it. The darker your reading environment, the more pronounced the uneven lighten is. It’s unfortunate for sure, but it is what it is and by no means is it a deal breaker.

• Text alignment: Nearly all books are aligned with full justification. I say nearly all because the Tom Clancy book I’m reading right now actually has a ragged-right text alignment; surely it’s not the only one. Kindle books are notorious for having odd typos here and there (like the numeral “1” in place of a capital “I”). And so, in a way, it seems like we’ve just come to expect sub-par layouts with our Kindle books. But why should we?

There’s no reason Amazon can’t offer ragged-right text alignment. I second John Gruber’s vote for Amazon to hire a world-class book designer and put him on the Kindle product team.

• Poor Access to Previously-Highlighted Passages: I highlight passages like it’s my job. It’s how I revisit a non-fiction book. Unfortunately, there’s no great way to access my highlighted sections of a book other than within the Kindle itself.

Right now, the only way I know of to get a highlighted passage from my Kindle to my Mac is to share that passage via Twitter and then copy/paste the passage onto my Mac. It’s unfortunate that I cannot access my Clippings via the Amazon website, nor can I email a highlighted passage to myself.

Update: Thanks to everyone who has let me know kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights should show me all my highlighted passages. Alas, it lists nothing for me. I’ve contacted Amazon Customer Support to see about that. In the meantime, I also learned that if I plug my Kindle in and put it in USB mode then in the device’s Documents folder there is a My Clippings.txt file. (Thanks, Scott!)

• Special Offers: I suppose technically the special offers are not that great. But for me it’s not worth the $20 to get rid of them.

Last year I bought the version of the Kindle Touch with Special Offers and I never paid the $20 to turn them off. The ads don’t bother me much — I usually just have the Kindle resting face down — and there have been a few times where there’s a deal that I’m actually interested in and I get a book for a buck, or something like that.

The End

The Kindle is in the same category of gadget as my Apple TV. Both are great gadgets that I use often and seem like a steal at their relatively inexpensive prices.

The Kindle Paperwhite has a lot going for it: the e-ink screen, million-year battery life, illuminated display, improved software, the iOS Kindle apps that sync with my iPad and iPhone, and the lightweight yet rugged build of the device hardware. The biggest compliment I can give the Kindle is that thanks to it, I read more books and I read more often.