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Twitterrific 3.0 Released

iconfactory.com — Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or "tweets" to the Twitter community website. There are many new features in this version which are sure to excite all previous users to the application, and open new users up to a whole new Twitter experience.

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  • EDITXTREEM, on 11/05/2007, -22/+34It costs money now?? What? Thats terrible. I have now uninstalled twitterrific from my mac.
    • WoWKodos, on 11/05/2007, -9/+28Twitterrific 3.0 can be used completely free of charge with no limitations. Registering simply eliminates advertising from the tweet timeline.

      Twitterrific has gone from a fun side project to a full-fledged application that is enjoyed by tens of thousands of users every day. This growing user base reports bugs, requests new feature sets and regularly sends support questions. All of these things take time, and ultimately money, to make a reality. Adding inline advertising via The Deck allows us to keep the app "free" without crippling any of its features. Hope you can understand our point of view. Thanks for listening.
    • dbr_onix, on 11/04/2007, -0/+7Why uninstall it? You don't *have* to upgrade, the new version doesn't break the previous free, ad-less ones still work, and probably will until Twitter change their API completely..
      Although I never saw the point in Twitter (but that's a different rant), Twitterific is a nice application - unobtrusive, and does what it need too. That said, adverts annoy me to no end, there must be a better way to make money from the 'free' version..
      • bmcnitt, on 11/02/2007, -1/+1re: "there must be a better way to make money from the 'free' version.."
        follow the radiohead model.
        • warkro, on 11/07/2007, -1/+4So people pay what they want for twitterrific and Twitterific makes the bulk of the money off of tours. What do you propose, a mascot of the bird going around he world?
  • ondrasoukup, on 11/04/2007, -16/+7It's paid ? I'm officially dead on twitter, cya...

    But great strategy, make a free product and then release update which is paid. Many people will hop on...
    • cheney08, on 11/07/2007, -6/+10Twitter, aka ADHD 2.0 for the web.

      9:12 I'm scratching my ass
      9:13 I'm taking a sip of my Starbucks venti mocha lowfat cappuchino w/ skim milk, extra whipped cream
      9:14 I'm standing up from my desk to stretch

      Freaking lame, buried as such.
      • rufo, on 11/03/2007, -0/+4If that's what you're using Twitter for, you're an idiot.
  • mikev, on 11/03/2007, -9/+5I'm a bit disappointed to see that it's turned into payware (15 bucks is a bit steep), but then again, it's one of the apps I use every day.
    My biggest complaints are that there aren't any new breathtaking features (showing @replies and DMs are nice) and that it's not that great for Leopard users. The previous ad-free version didn't play nice with Leopard (buggy UI), and this version doesn't take advantage of core animation. :(
    • ChiefTypist, on 11/03/2007, -1/+9A version that supports Core Animation is planned. There are still a lot of people who are using Tiger and we wanted to get a new version out for them to use.

      Also, payware means that I can devote more time to working on the app and making it even better.
    • WoWKodos, on 11/03/2007, -2/+5Mike, see my reply above to EDITXTREEM regarding registering. As for Core Animation, we indeed have plans to add these bells and whistles to Twitterrific in the future, we want them as badly as you do. The first order of business was to get T running smoothly on Leopard an introduce the feature set that users have been craving. Our track record with software proves we are committed to making our software the best it can be IMHO.
    • jbhannah, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1I just upgraded to 3.0 moments ago, but 2.1 never gave me any problems on Leopard (which I've had since Monday). I just wanted to show the devs some love :P Ads are a small price to pay (pun maybe intended) for the awesomeness that is Twitterrific.
  • WoWKodos, on 11/05/2007, -8/+18Posting this at the top level so casual readers don't have to dig into replies:

    Twitterrific 3.0 can be used completely free of charge with no limitations. Registering simply eliminates advertising from the tweet timeline.

    Twitterrific has gone from a fun side project to a full-fledged application that is enjoyed by tens of thousands of users every day. This growing user base reports bugs, requests new feature sets and regularly sends support questions. All of these things take time, and ultimately money, to make a reality. Adding inline advertising via The Deck allows us to keep the app "free" without crippling any of its features. Hope you can understand our point of view and support our efforts. Thanks for listening.
  • ondrasoukup, on 11/02/2007, -10/+15Don't want any ads ? Don't wanna pay ? First. You're a bad person. I think if the ads are done this "simple" (dumb) way, the devs deserve to not get money from people who figured this out. But being a member of the scene, I'll ruin this "we're all honest Mac users" thing. Cause it's not like it, don't pretend people.
    So go run "rm -v Twitterrific.app/Contents/Resources/Ad*" whereever you keep your copy of twitterific 3.0 and ads are now gone. poof.

    these files shall get lost...
    Twitterrific.app/Contents/Resources/AdPrefix.html
    Twitterrific.app/Contents/Resources/AdSuffix.html
    Twitterrific.app/Contents/Resources/Ad_1.html
    Twitterrific.app/Contents/Resources/Ad_2.html
    Twitterrific.app/Contents/Resources/Ad_3.html
    Twitterrific.app/Contents/Resources/Ad_4.html


    this isn't a crack, it's simply deleting file...duh...protection: none, release group: mdr, greetz: nst & k0ld4. if you like it, buy it...
    • ChiefTypist, on 11/03/2007, -7/+6Yeah, sure, that will work to a point. You'll still have a big black hole with a bunch of text that will look like *****, too.

      When you guys move out of your parent's house and figure out that it takes money to live, you'll probably look at things a bit differently...
    • macintalk, on 11/02/2007, -1/+7That's the lame way of hacking it. The real patched version doesn't show the black gap.
  • davidguyon, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1I do prefer the 2.1 version...
  • hifiDesign, on 11/03/2007, -1/+5Thank you Chief Typist and crew!
  • patrickyan, on 11/03/2007, -7/+1@Iconfactory workers: trying to defend yourselves by insulting your users... wow.
  • patrickyan, on 11/03/2007, -7/+1@Iconfactory workers: trying to defend yourselves by insulting your users... wow.
    • pauldy, on 11/05/2007, -0/+1Looks like all 7 of them dug you down.
  • marshallk, on 11/03/2007, -9/+4If you aren't willing to pay $15 to compensate these people for their work on this great app, you are a just a commenting TURD. Make sure to check out Snitter, though, as it's better.
    • mentat, on 11/07/2007, -1/+1I'm not going to dispute that Twitterific is a nice app, and though people have tried to copy its design, no one has been able to quite capture it (I'm looking at you, Juhu!). But It's not nice to string people along and then say "oh, by the way, we're not making you pay for the new features that were previously free." And $15 is a bit much. You could easily duplicate most of its functions with an RSS reader (I actually suspect that's how Twitterific works).

      Besides, what about all the OpenSource projects out there? Or donationware? IconFactory makes money on a lot of other projects, so they were hardly hurting from Twitterific, which (I'm guessing) is a relatively small portion of their business. They sell Design Services, games, icons, icon organizers, and icon creation software. Hell, Roxio paid them to design the interfaces for most of their Mac apps (now if only Roxio could have coded Toast to be a little more stable, and a bit more flexible...). I hardly think they're hurting, financially, and I doubt that people complaining that something simple which was once free, now costs money, makes them a bad person. Especially if they're just complaining that the cost is inflated (see BMCNit's comment)
  • bblande, on 11/07/2007, -12/+3Twitter is gay anyway.
  • Firehed, on 11/03/2007, -3/+1Make the mobile version for the iPhone work properly and I may start using Twitter again. I'm not wasting the money on the text message version, and it's pretty pointless if it only works 10% of the time.
    • mentat, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1There are apps for the iPhone for working with Twitter. Worst case, force it to use the WAP version of Twitter, which seems to work just fine for me.
  • Interestingness, on 11/07/2007, -9/+1This is terrific is you are into twitter... http://ThunkDifferent.com



  • jydesign, on 11/03/2007, -1/+8"ondrasoukup" and others - please actually read the posts and comments. Twitter.com, the website, is what it is (ie Free). Twitterrific is a 3rd party app that can now be used w/o in-line ads if you pay a small fee. You do not need Twitterrific to take advantage of Twitter.com. Iconfactory, the maker of the Twitterrific app is simply trying to make some money for all the work they've done in building and supporting a desktop client. In doing so, they face other Twitter app competitors and we'll see what the market bears, but they can't be faulted for having an actual business model.
  • insensible, on 11/07/2007, -4/+2Hey never tried this twitter thing surely wud but wats with this paid app. if u can find a free one that will be great.
  • fraggle35, on 11/07/2007, -5/+2People still use Twitter?
    • dbr_onix, on 11/07/2007, -3/+5More importantly: People ever used Twitter?
    • GeekyGerge, on 11/03/2007, -1/+3No, Pownce is all the rage now!
      /sarcasm
  • bmcnitt, on 11/05/2007, -2/+5wish iconfactory would follow the radiohead model. let users decide what to pay. i won't pay $15 but i would pay $7. isn't that better than $0?
  • CCmachined, on 11/07/2007, -5/+1nobody told me i needed a macsturbation computer, or to pay for the app... >:-l
  • Abomonog, on 11/07/2007, -5/+1Great! Just freaking great! Now they're making software for twits. :)
  • sdenike, on 11/07/2007, -6/+2Uninstalled mine.
  • livejamie, on 11/03/2007, -3/+1ah... greed
    • PotatoStew, on 11/05/2007, -2/+2Greed, eh? I see from your profile that you run a design studio. I take it you provide your products and services free of charge?
      • livejamie, on 11/05/2007, -0/+3no but i don't offer designs for free for a couple versions and then start charging people :)
        • PotatoStew, on 11/07/2007, -1/+2Fair enough. But the point is that you put time into your product, and to be able to continue to provide that product, you need to be compensated for that time. Initially, the time invested into Twitterrific was minimal - it was a small side project for us. So we could afford to offer it up without worrying about any sort of compensation.

          But when a piece of software becomes popular, you need to spend an increasing amount of time on it to provide support and to improve upon it. That's time taken away from other income-producing projects. So you're left with three choices: 1) Meet the users needs and requests and suck it up and take the hit to your time and income, or 2) Find a way to make the project financially justify the time spent on it, or 3) Let the project (and its users) languish.

          We picked number 2, but tried to do so in a way that was mindful of the fact that Twitterrific was initially free. I think it's a good compromise. Twitterrific and its users aren't left hanging. The app pulls some of its weight financially, which allows us (a business, with employees and other overhead to pay!) to justify the time spent working on it. And we still give people the option to use it for free if they don't want to pay for it.

          Believe me, no one is going to be retiring to the Bahamas on the back of that little bluebird. It's not about greed, it's about offsetting the cost of the time spent improving and supporting what has turned into a popular application.
      • mentat, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1LiveJamie might not, but that doesn't mean that other people don't. Ever hear of the CreativeCommons? Plenty of people out there license their stuff to be used freely for personal use, but when a profit is being turned, now you have to deal with my people.
  • winnopeg, on 11/04/2007, -1/+4I, for one, was happy to purchase a license. Twitterrific is a great app.
    • WoWKodos, on 11/05/2007, -1/+2Thanks winnopeg, we appreciate the support. We've been giving away icon sets for free for over a decade, so it's nice when people decide to give a little back.
  • pauldy, on 11/05/2007, -3/+4I'm disappointed it is now a pay version too given the simplicity of the app and total lack of extra features. It took me just a couple of mouse clicks to make a widget with safari that seems to work better anyway. Un-installed!
    • kashem, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1Holy *****! I forgot about the web-clip thing in Leopard!

      DONE!
  • mentat, on 11/06/2007, -2/+4Honestly, $15 for an app that acts as a front-end to a free service is a bit steep. $5, maybe, but $15 is kinda much. I mean, it's a simple app that can, more or less, get away as just being a shiny RSS reader. Maybe if this was an app for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, or the iPhone, where they're stuck using the not-as-robust Twitter Mobile WAP page, I could see this being worth $15 (provided additional functions were added) but for about a meg of code? I could just as easily tell Twitter to IM me all my updates, and I'd get just as much functionality, minus the ads, minus the memory footprint of running another app (yes, it's small, but you get my point), minus another program cluttering up my Menu Bar, minus $15.
    Seriously though, there are tons of GREAT projects out there that are far more advanced than Twitterific (read: Adium), and they're completely free. I don't see how the fact that "tens of thousands" of users justifies a $15 price tag, or ad-subsidized features. If IconFactory was hosting the service (like Google does for all of their web apps) I could see it, but not in this case.
  • jbhannah, on 11/05/2007, -1/+1And now for another edition of jbhannah's "What's With This Wank?"!

    First off, I actually downloaded and installed the new version. It does have some good new features—maybe nothing too terribly exciting, but just neat. One new thing is that it can update your Adium, or iChat, or Skype status when you post a new tweet. You can also delete an accidentally posted tweet. And if you look in the preferences, under the Register tab, it says: "Advertisements are displayed once per hour." Once per hour. As opposed to every piece of Windows adware, in which at least 50% of the window is covered with ads. I think it's a minor enough annoyance to be able to deal with for a window that I probably don't even look at once an hour.

    And for another thing, life isn't free—not for the developers, not for you. Don't want to go to a grocery store because food costs money there? Fine, go dumpster diving. Don't want to put up with ads in Twitterrific? Fine, use 2.1 (still fully functional), put up with the ads, or shell out $15 to help the developers keep their internet connection active and their health and hygiene properly maintained. Believe me, I know what needing money desperately feels like; I'm a college student. It's just how people decide to spend their time to make money, and I would definitely write and sell software to cut a living if I had time for that, but I don't; and I personally like to just give my source code away for free use. MIT License for the win.

    So basically, either don't upgrade, or suck it up and show a little extra appreciation to the developers. I'll put up with the ads, I don't even have an extra $15 right now, but Twitterrific is such an awesome app that it's a small price to pay to say thank you to the people who wrote it. (Or if I really didn't want the ads I could probably write my own app, but I don't have enough time for that either. But just another thing to throw out there, and one great thing about being a programmer: don't like it? Make your own.)
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