#TWITTER MAC OS MAC OS#
In fact, a guy I know, Ben Ward, had written a thing called Twidget, which was just basically a widget for the Mac OS dashboard, back when Mac OS dashboard was a thing. It was at the beginning of Twitter, when we were all trying to figure out what it was. God, it's been so long ago, I don't even remember what year it was. I think he claims he got the idea in a shower.Ĭraig: It's true. Rene: Even before Twitter for Mac, mutual friend Craig Hockenberry had made Twitterrific for Mac. There's a mushy middle there, where you could have a truly native app, where it's not just a web view in a container, but it's nonstandard in ways that would provoke, let's say, a debate. It's easy to get mixed up, as we talk about native apps, what's good about native apps, and then talking about standard UI controls and nonstandard UI controls. It was not like a generic COCO UI elements app, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad way to do a Twitter client. Gruber: While Loren was doing it, it was under active development. No, but I wrote it on top of Core Animation. If I did it today, yeah, I'd probably do something like that. Rene: You didn't write it purely in OpenGL? I was like, "I'm going to just make a UI framework inspired by UIkit, and build an app based on that." That let me do some other cool stuff. AppKit had a very low ceiling for doing anything even remotely interesting. By the end, I was just banging against the calls.
#TWITTER MAC OS FOR MAC#
Loren: No, basically, writing Twitter for Mac, or Tweetie for Mac 1.0, I wrote it in AppKit. Rene: Your reason you went to Twui was just to make it easier to maintain cross-platform? Is it twee? Is that the way you pronounce it? Rene: You couldn't just make an app, either. I needed an app that let me use three Twitter accounts at the same time. It just drove me nuts, signing out and signing back in. The problem was, I had three Twitter accounts, and Twitterrific only lets you use one at a time. What made you want to make a Mac Twitter client? Rene: Loren Brichter, you created Twitter for Mac, back when it was Tweetie for Mac. That was the one that was written with Loren's crazy UI Kit. I think by the time it was going to be Tweetie 2.0, and it turned into Twitter for Mac 1.0. I don't know that Tweetie 2.0 ever shipped. 2.0 was, but 2.0 was the first one that came out after Twitter acquired it. Somebody on Twitter, there was some speculation, or just recollection of the timeline where I think Tweetie for Mac 1.0 was not written with Loren's Twui UI kit, whatever.
Then he got bought by Twitter, and that became Twitter for Mac. Rene: Twitter for Mac, it was originally, if I recall, Loren Brichter made Tweetie, and then he made Tweetie for Mac, including Twui, which was his version of UIkit written, I'm assuming, in OpenGL for the Mac. Twitter had a much better option available. Rene: You understand Facebook, because they have no native client. Why in the world would you not want this? I remember asking around, and somebody at Apple told me, more or less, "That's the way Twitter wanted it, and that was that." I can't think of any other app or service I use where, if you have a native client installed, usually, that's where the notifications come from, is the native client. I thought the big tell was that, even if you had the official Twitter for Mac client installed, when you clicked on one of those notifications, it would always open the Twitter website. Then, you'd get these notification center notifications at the system level. Do you want notifications for DMs? You want them for mentions? Blah, blah, blah. That Mac OSX, which was the name of the OS at the time, you could enter your Twitter account in system preferences, and set what kind of notifications you want.