We’re all fans of Twitter, for the most part, and break into cold sweats when the service goes down (well, some do anyway), so we need our Twitter fix all the time. Regardless of the smartphone OS you choose, you’re bound to find quite a few Twitter applications. For the iPhone, we have Twitterific, TweetDeck, Echofon, and many others. I have tried several and so far my all-time favorite and the one I use daily is Tweetie.

Tweetie 2 has now been out for a few weeks and it improves on the user experience of the original Tweetie app. Atebits, the developer of Tweetie, has implemented quite a few touches to make this app a pretty good and simple Twitter tool.

One of my favorite features is the ability to swipe over a message on the timeline. This gives you several options, such as reply, retweet, mark as favorite, or go directly to the user’s profile. When composing a new tweet, you have the ability to select recent hashtags, use the @people picker, attach a picture or pictures, since Tweetie 2 now has support for multiple attachments, along with geotagging and even the ability to shrink URLs.

Tweetie 2 Compose Screen

You can now edit your Twitter profile right from the app, which was not an option with the original and should you get a phone call in the middle of composing or reading the timeline (because after all it’s a phone!), you’re brought right back to where you were thanks to full persistence. Tweetie 2 also has landscape support all throughout the app and the UI feels very fluid and intuitive. Direct messages are displayed in threaded form, making it easier to read and reply.

Twitter Profile

Tweetie 2 is full of features but perhaps my favorite is the that URLs open right inside the app instead of firing up Safari. Not sure if it was just me but this was aggravating and I found myself forgoing clicking on URLs at times.

For those of you with more than one Twitter account, you’ll be pleased to know that Tweetie 2 support multiple accounts. The app has a price tag of $2.99 in the AppStore but it’s all worth it in my opinion if you want a simple yet elegant and effective Twitter client.

Verizon Wireless, which recently announced a partnership with Google to carry Android-powered devices, appears intent to go hard after Apple and AT&T. First we saw their “There’s a map for that” commercial and now we have their “iDon’t” commercial, which is a blatant attack at Apple’s iPhone.

The commercial hints at various things that Verizon says the iPhone doesn’t do but ‘Droid’ does (this is apparently how they will refer to their upcoming Android device). Now, while I don’t entirely agree with all their “iDon’t” points, I believe that Android is a mobile platform that is maturing day by day and getting better and more exciting in recent weeks.

Whether “Droid” can be a hit for Verizon Wireless and be a pain in Apple’s rear remains to be seen.

Yes, that’s a HUGE number of downloads. Apple just announced that they have reached the 2 billion download mark from the AppStore. That is in less than 2 years!

No doubt a huge testament of the big success that the AppStore has been for Apple and it continues strong with no signs of slowing down.

Congrats Apple!

It’s been a little longer than a week since I downloaded Dexter The Game from the AppStore and all in all I have been having fun with this game on my iPhone. The graphics are great and the story line follows that from some of the TV show episodes. I haven’t finished the game yet since I haven’t been playing everyday but it’s worth the $5.99 it costs. Any Dexter fans with iPhones should download and play. Oh, don’t forget Season 4 premieres this Sunday on Showtime!

Borrowing a phrase from Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid!”, I twisted it to make it the title of this post: “it’s the apps, stupid!”. Basically, I have been thinking about what has kept me committed to the iPhone platform since I made the switch two years ago. When I bought my first iPhone in October 2007 (the original iPhone), there was no AppStore yet and the UI felt so revolutionary and intuitive that I didn’t care that there was no multi-tasking (still isn’t for any third-party apps), nor that I couldn’t install third-party apps at the time. At that point, we only had the web apps. Compared to the Symbian S60 UI of my phone at the time, the iPhone’s UI was leaps and bounds ahead of it.

Let’s jump to the present time, two years later. We have seen many other platforms come along sporting great UI’s and challenging the iPhone such as Palm with their WebOS, Google with their Android OS, and more recently Nokia with their not yet released Maemo 5 OS. These aforementioned mobile UI’s look great and can seriously challenge the iPhone’s, which in my opinion, will need a refresh soon to keep up with the newcomers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the iPhone’s UI looks dated yet but Apple will have to refresh it at some point to keep up in the race.

HTC’s Android version (Sense UI) is hot and so it’s the Nokia’s Maemo UI running on the upcoming Nokia N900. There is no denying that. I really, really like some of the UI touches and niceties that we’ve seen so far, particularly from these two devices and also from the Palm Pre, so I asked myself this: Would I consider making the switch to one of these devices at this point and time?

The answer is: I don’t think so (this is not a definite NO and I could change my mind tomorrow). Why? The Apps, simply. There are close to 65,000 apps in the iPhone AppStore, compared to about 10,000 in the Android Market and a measly number in Palm’s App Catalog. While I know that more apps don’t necessarily translate into better apps, this is not the case here, from my experience. There is a lot of developer commitment to the iPhone platform at this time (this too may change, I realize), and that translates into a lot more choices when it comes to apps.

That being said, not everything is fine and dandy in the iPhone world and there are some things that make me really upset. Namely Apple’s arbitrary and anti-competitive rejection of apps like the most recent Google Voice rejection, currently being investigated by the FCC. I realize that the iPhone is a closed platform in many ways but I have come to accept and live with its limitations. Maybe tomorrow I will change my mind and switch to another platform but FOR NOW at least, I’ll stick with iPhone. After all, life is not perfect!

Here are two videos – the HTC Hero (Android) and Nokia N900 (Maemo 5). Check out their UI’s.