Day: 5 December 2012

Twitterrific 5 ⇥ culturemilk.com

Shawn Wilkins reviews the newest version of the oldest Twitter client for the iPhone:

You now have full control over how you want to display your tweets, gaining the ability to fine-tune every aspect of it. You’re allowed to choose the font, the line spacing in tweets, and the size of avatars. You’re even given the opportunity to change brightness from within the app itself if you find yourself squinting from the backlight. There is an array of customizable features in this version of Twitterrific, and you have 100% control over all of it.

I really like a lot of what the Iconfactory has done for Twitterrific 5, but I dislike this many customization options. It’s a strange blend of simplicity and complexity: there’s no way to block a user or report them for spam, but I can dick around with the timeline’s leading all I want. Likewise, there’s no linking to Favstar or other third-party services (save for the venerable Instapaper and Pocket), but avatars can be resized to seven different sizes, or they can be turned off entirely.

There’s a lot to like about the app, though. Twitterrific 5 now includes the ubiquitous pull to refresh gesture, with what is simply the best animation of any implementation ever of that feature. There are a few new UI sounds, all of which are delightful, and it’s a generally well-designed app.

Unfortunately, there are some notable missing features. Despite the option to choose a video when composing a new tweet, uploading them doesn’t appear to be supported. The video compresses but, as Twitter doesn’t have a video service (yet?), it never uploads. There are also no push notifications.

Twitterrific 5 isn’t a free update for current Twitterrific owners, but that’s okay — right now, it’s just $2.99. If you want a simple Twitter client, it’s a good pick. If you like some of the power options that Tweetbot has, you probably won’t enjoy this update to Twitterrific.

The Greatest Sweatshirt Known to Man ⇥ slate.com

Farhad Manjoo of Slate:

American Giant has found a loophole in the process. The loophole allows Winthrop to spend a lot more time and money producing his clothes than his competitors do. Among other things, he was able to hire a former industrial designer from Apple to rethink every aspect of the sweatshirt, from the way the fabric is woven to the color of the drawstrings around your neck. The particular loophole that Winthrop has found also explains why he wanted to chat with a technology reporter: It’s called the Internet.

American Giant’s clothing looks like a resurgence of manufacturing quality at affordable prices. I don’t usually wear hoodies in public any more (I dress like a grownup these days), but their mock neck sweatshirt looks right up my street.

Unfortunately, this is yet another great thing not available in Canada (at least, not officially). I’ve emailed their customer service department and I’ll update this as soon as I know more.

Update: American Giant tells me that they’re working to offer international billing and shipping options.