There has been a considerable amount of backlash about the release of the new Twitter for iPad, especially because the old version of the app was so well-regarded. In the midst of the furor, Twitter client developer Tapbots decided to take advantage and put Tweetbot for iPad on sale.
That decision paid off, as the app climbed from roughly 200th on the top Paid iPad apps chart up to number 7, where it currently resides.
The new Twitter app is on the bottom below, and the old app on the top. The new one is essentially a web view embedding Twitter’s stream of expandable tweets and advertisements. The look and feel are now very consistent across its various incarnations and should provide a similar experience to users.
The old app, by comparison, featured a very unique butterfly-wing interface which creator Loren Brichter said was done to emphasize being able to view your stream while you loaded images and webpages, being able to refer back to your content while composing a tweet and to navigate without having to move your arm to the top left of the screen.
Many have stepped forward to criticize the move to what they feel is basically a ‘blown up iPhone app’. The old Twitter for iPad was praised precisely for being something more than that by Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this year.
When talking about apps for the iPad vs. apps for Android tablets, he compared it against Twitter on Android. “It kind of looks like a blown-up smartphone app, because that’s exactly what it is. Compare that to Twitter on iPad,” he said, continuing on other apps “Look at Yelp. Lots of white space. Tiny text, hard to read. Compare that to the iPad. This is a reason that momentum on the iPad continues to build.”
The bump in sales for Tweetbot indicates that there is a desire by many existing Twitter users for a more robust and more polished Twitter client than the one that Twitter now provides.
Thanks to Christina Bonnington for the screenshot help.
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