Next up is the new Twitter for Mac app. Its not surprising its ugly, and its UI leaves much to be desired- its descended from Tweetie for Mac. That was one of the worst Twitter applications. It took a couple of versions to support Growl, and to send a tweet it was Shift-Enter which was incredible frustrating and stupid. See this post for more on that.

Back to Twitter- it has nonstandard stoplight buttons (sound familar?). It has no Titlebar OR toolbar- so how the heck does one move the window? By the ugly black box on the right. The font is in Helvetica, rather than the proper Lucida Grande. The new Tweet window is draggable by the bottom, and is not attached to the main window.

Because Apple has led the way with their bad UI design, other apps have also taken that approach. What a mess. For more on this, check out this post from Tim Morgan.

But it also comes with problems, the biggest of which is the restrictions. Even if I wanted too, I could not sell SMART Utility in the app store. It violates a number of rules, and version 3.0 will violate more. I don’t like giving control of selling to another company. And I will also lose my connection to my customers- as Apple does not release that information.

I’m sure the store will do great, but I’ll be happy to continue to sell my app the old fashioned way.

Note that there are now 2 builds. Because of how Apple’s development tools work, the 64bit build can only be compiled with the 10.5 SDK. There are also some bug fixes and changes that allow for newer features. So if you are running 10.5 or 10.6, run the 10.5+ build. Only use the 10.4 build on 10.4 (though it will run on 10.5 and 10.6). If you don’t know which to use, download the 10.4 build.

Download 10.4 Build

Download 10.5+ Build

Full Release Notes:

- Added support for 64 bit build (10.5+ build only)

- Added progress bar for opening drive reports (10.5+ build only)

- Added Clear Log button in log window

- Fixed a crash on 10.4 systems

- Fixed bug reading in drive attributes where extra line would appear

- Fixed spacing of log output

- Fixed two spelling mistakes in preferences

- Now ignores errors from attribute 190 by default

- Improved error handling in certain conditions

- Removed deprecated API calls and replaced with modern ones

- Removed Smart Crash Reports and replaced with UKCrashReporter for 10.6 support

- Removed built in feedback system and replaced with UKFeedbackProvider, also now sends all logs automatically

This is such a perfectly encapsulated nutshell of exactly why Apple does not allow third-party background processes on the iPhone.

He gets it all wrong. If this is why Apple doesn’t allow third-party background apps on Touch OS X devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), then Apple has failed at UI innovating. Palm, as well as the Android, have very poor interfaces for allowing background applications.

Mac OS X (which the iPhone OS is based on) can handle background processes just fine. Obviously, the interface for dealing with them is poor for a small touch device. So a new interface needs to be created. I don’t know what Apple has in mind, but I will tell you how I’d do it.

Double click the Home Button, and up comes a popover listing all running applications- iPod, Mail, Safari, Twitter. Each has a little X next to it to kill the app. Tap on the app and the popover flips over to reveal a widget for that app (ala the iPod that currently pops up on a double click). Heck to assuage the nonsensical battery life arguments (let me choose what and how my battery life is- that is why Mail and the iPod can run in the background if I want), a maximum of 4 apps can be running.

I think that solves the problem once and for all. After finally allowing multitasking (just like the finally allowed copy and paste), Apple has only one more hurdle for the perfect phone- unsigned apps. Android won’t stand a chance once those two things are checked off. I’m anxious to see iPhone OS 4.0 to see how they really do implement background apps.

Well, color me impressed. I could definitely see using this around the house or on a long distance trip to surf the net, play games, even type on it. Sometimes it would be nice not to look at a small screen, or lug around a big laptop.

Now, I don’t like the fact that it still doesn’t allow unapproved apps, but I’m hoping that changes with time. However, the ability to run iPhone apps, as well as apps specifically designed for the iPad will be very cool.

I will probably wait for revision B in any case, but I will probably pick one up.