We all know how saturated the market for Twitter apps is, with each striving to provide the best experience for the service. This ever-growing market can make it difficult for users to pick their go-to Twitter app, especially when they only differ from one another in subtle ways.
Enter Osfoora, the popular Twitter app for iOS that has recently made its way to the Mac. With over 80,000 Twitter followers and 1,700 ratings in the iOS App Store, the popularity of the brand alone might have been reason enough for the developer to release a version for the Mac. But does Osfoora stand out from the multitude of existing Twitter clients? To see if Osfoora will be a serious competitor on the Mac, read on.
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These days we all have our many ways of sharing content online, be it email, Dropbox, or any number of other services, and it can be hard to keep them all straight. The developers of Dropzone have tried to simplify and streamline the sharing process (and other tasks) through automation and a single interface. Let’s see if they’ve succeeded!
I do not intend here to rehash any of the digital ink already put out there on Mountain Lion. Our own James Cull did an excellent job rounding up what we know about Mountain Lion. And Scott Danielson has had an in-depth look at Messages for Mac. I want to address instead something that might be nagging at all of us Mac users just a bit.
With Mountain Lion, Apple has stepped up the game of brining the two ecosystems of Mac and iOS closer together. The trend started (arguably perhaps) with Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event in which iLife was touted to have taken cues from iOS design, FaceTime was brought to the Mac, the Mac App store was announced, the MacBook Air was introduced, and oh yeah, Lion was announced with many features reminiscent of iOS.
Lion brought with it many iOS like advancements; enhancements to Multi-Touch Gestures, Full Screen apps, Launchpad, Resume/Auto Save/Versions, an iPad like Mail interface, iCal and Address Book highly styled like the iOS counterparts, auto termination of applications again borrowed from iOS, reversed scrolling to better match up with touch screen devices, and many more things that all spell out one thing; OS X is borrowing heavily from the design of iOS.
Perhaps it’s only fitting since OS X spawned the existence of iOS in the first place. They share much base code in common. In fact, Steve Jobs very much emphasized in the iPhone introduction keynote of 2007 that the iPhone OS (as it was then called) was really OS X. But what’s actually going on here? Should we fear for the future of OS X?
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We’d like to say a big thank you to last month’s Mac.AppStorm sponsors, and the great software they create! If you’re interested in advertising, you can purchase a banner advertisement through BuySellAds, or sign up for a Weekly Sponsorship slot.
Thank you to the fantastic applications we had sponsoring each week during the month, all of which we personally recommend you download and try out!
- MobDis – An incredibly easy way to build mobile sites without writing a single line of code. MobDis features an intuitive drag and drop workflow that’s so simple to master, you’ll be creating awesome sites in minutes flat. It’s a free download so there’s no reason you shouldn’t check it out!
- Photo Transformer – Photo Transformer is a super fast image browser. No need to build a library, just point it at a folder or directory of folders and it will instantly dive in and find all of the image files. From here you can browse the flexible thumbnail grid and quickly filter the results by file type, size, date created, etc.
- Ramotion – Typically we reserve weekly sponsorship slots for our favorite apps but Ramotion has such an impressive portfolio that we simply couldn’t turn them down. One of Ramotion’s primary strengths is icon design. Stop by their icon portfolio for some samples of their work along with a collection of amazing free Mac OS icons.
Finally, thanks to you for reading AppStorm this month, and for checking out the software that our sponsors create. I really appreciate it – you make the site what it is!
Security is something that Macs do well even out of the box. Most users never have to bother much with adjusting their settings to keep their Mac safe and that is one of the reasons Macs are especially appealing to those who can’t wrap their brains around complex security measures.
That luxury, though, often makes people forget that even the simplest measures can already do a lot of good, for example locking the screen of your Mac when you’re not using it. While the standard tools of Mac OS do a good job at that, you can tune the simple command up with Lock Your Screen. We’ll take a look at what the app can do for you.
Are you ever in one of those moods where you want to solve a puzzle, but would rather play a puzzling game? If not, maybe you feel like playing something that will really turn your brain on and exercise it. I’ve been browsing the Mac App Store quite often lately to see if there are any great new games/apps that I’d actually enjoy playing.
Sure, there are a lot great games for this stuff, but the main problem is that there are too many of them. You’re probably looking for a short list of the best ones so that you can spend less time reading the list and start playing. Keep reading for ten great games that will really give your mind the workout that it’s been asking for.
I used Thunderbird off and on as my email client back in my Windows days (dark days indeed), and then again on Mac OS X for a while. I finally switched to Apple’s official Mail client and haven’t interacted with Thunderbird much until I started thinking about writing this review.
So, can Thunderbird earn it’s keep as a primary email application? Let’s find out shall we?
MacPaw is at it again and has released a brand new app to the world: Gemini, The Duplicate Finder. The folks over at MacPaw are no strangers to the Mac ecosystem, and have released some greats apps in the past, most notably CleanMyMac.
Although not a revolutionary concept, Gemini takes a beautiful new approach to finding duplicate documents on your Mac, with a stunning interface and some fancy animations. Head on past the break to read more.
As a recent college graduate and thus an official member of the “real world,” I’ve been learning about all kinds of exciting things like how to file my taxes, the joys of job-hunting and the need for renter’s insurance. I decided that if I was going to take the time and pay the money for renter’s insurance, I might as well actually get a handle on what I’m insuring. That led me to go and explore different apps for inventory.
I tried a couple of “general” inventory apps and a couple that have more specific purposes. Some I loved and of course others I hated. Read on below for five of my favorites!
The world of Twitter clients is an ongoing obsession of mine. The history of how third party developers have helped push the platform forward and then left the market disgruntled at how they’ve been treated by Twitter is fascinating. Looking back we can see Twitter’s strategy clearly: wait to see who makes the best apps and then buy them up. Clear category leaders Tweetie and TweetDeck are prime examples.
Now that Twitter has such a strong presence in the Twitter client game both on OS X and iOS, it’s interesting to see which clients still hold on and choose to compete with the official apps. Recently, Tweetbot for iPhone and iPad has gained a ton of popularity as users flock away from the recently watered-down official apps in favor of versatility and awesome design.
While we’re waiting on Tweetbot to hit the Mac, I thought it would be interesting to check in and ask about your current favorite Twitter client on OS X. There are a few major players in this category to choose from, vote in the poll to let us know which is your favorite.
Once you’ve voted, leave a comment below and let us know your favorite bygone Twitter apps. For instance, the first native Twitter client that I really loved was Nambu, after which I switched to Tweetie. I also really enjoyed Kiwi during its brief stint.
