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Twitter Killing Its Mac App

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Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#12
post #3

What does this app provide that a browser tab doesn't, other than a prominent spot in the Dock?

It used to be much nicer to use, back when Twitter acquired it. (It was called Tweetie then.) The notifications were better, the mechanics of doing things like following conversations or refreshing a conversation were simpler, filtering options were better, etc.

And I don't think it had a prominent spot in the dock... IIRC its icon was mainly in the menu bar.

It's been a while since I used tweetie or twitter, though, for very much at all. I'm really sorry to see it go away more because it used to be a nice UI playground for a talented developer than because of any recent experience with it.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#13
post #3

What does this app provide that a browser tab doesn't, other than a prominent spot in the Dock?

For me at least the killer feature in the twitter app is the global hotkey I can press to hide/show it: when I have 5 seconds of downtime I can press the hotkey, read three tweets, and then send it away. Great for filling short pauses while other things load or I'm waiting for a response from someone.

Fortunately Tweetbot has that same feature now, so I've switched to it.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#14
post #9
post #3

What does this app provide that a browser tab doesn't, other than a prominent spot in the Dock?

Better battery life? Lower memory usage? Integration with the platform conventions? I don’t want to use Twitter in a tab. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Websites, wrapped web views, react native, et al solve a developer’s problem. They do not solve any problem I as a user have. They make things worse, the only question is how much worse. How much better are you forcing me to pay? How much cognitive tax am…

> They do not solve any problem I as a user have. They make things worse

I mean, webapps obviously have a positive value for you over the alternative of not using the service—otherwise you would be doing exactly that (and maybe using a competitor's service.)

At least personally, I appreciate first-class web-app versions of apps (with or without wrappers), since I use a not-very-popular OS and web-apps are basically the only way any company is ever going to give me a version of their software I can use.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#15
post #3

What does this app provide that a browser tab doesn't, other than a prominent spot in the Dock?

A better UI. As every native app does. Yes, in principle web apps can do more, from drag & drop to .. stuff. But in practice they never do, they never go the extra mile but instead just building for the lowest common denominator.

Also the dock spot is important for my method of using windowing. The browser is for websites. I wouldn't want to mix it. I could banish twitter.com to a wrapper window with Fluid, but it's still just a crappy web app. I use Tweetbot instead. And before that Tweetie for Mac. Which was killed today. Fingers crossed that the API survives.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#17
post #3

What does this app provide that a browser tab doesn't, other than a prominent spot in the Dock?

Chrome + (Windows / Mac / Ubuntu) should let users dock any "Web App". That would enable new possibilities. No one would ever write an app specifically for mac / windows.

Native app launchers (which you can stick into the taskbar/dock/etc.) are built into Chrome.

• Windows: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/how-to-create-desktop-sho...

• Mac: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/3A5ZTe...

What this feature doesn't do, is to track the tabs spawned by launching the application shortcut using that taskbar item/dock icon/etc. Instead, you just get a new window spawned in the Chrome application's window-group.

This is really a failing of our desktop window managers, not of web browsers: we need to separate the semantic concepts of "process" and "application", such that one process can be responsible for driving several applications, and choosing to "quit" an application can just result in an IPC message being sent to the process telling it that the user wants that window-group-context gone, rather than telling the window manager to go terminate the entire process.

(Such a feature would also greatly help with things like managing "non-rooted" Remote Desktop or X11 or virtual-machine windows. Right now, some of these use a workaround of generating a stub binary to register each foreign application for the local DWM's sake. But it's a leaky abstraction: Alt+Tab/Cmd+Tab to the proxy "application", and the RDP client/X server/VM "app" gets focus instead. If window-groups—with metadata for the name and icon of the "application" they represent—were something a process could publish to a DWM, rather than something the DWM tried to determine heuristically about an application process, all of these problems would go away. And, even without offering this up for webapps to use, browsers would benefit from this change: Chrome's "profiles" are exactly separate "application" window-groups in the same sense as apps under an X server or VM process.)

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#19
post #3

What does this app provide that a browser tab doesn't, other than a prominent spot in the Dock?

Chrome + (Windows / Mac / Ubuntu) should let users dock any "Web App". That would enable new possibilities. No one would ever write an app specifically for mac / windows.

> Chrome

I'd rather not, thanks.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#20

Also strange: on the iOS app, you can add multiple accounts. On the web version not. Tweetdeck doesnt feel snappy at all. Twitter is, very broken - for a very long time now.

Nope. you're the broken. Not broken. Let me tell you, I have the best brokens and you dont compare. sad. best brokens! Believe me.
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