Twitter for Mac Dead Again
As noted by Vedant, the official Twitter for Mac app is currently missing from the Mac App Store. While it hasn’t been confirmed, the most obvious guess is that X, formerly Twitter, finally got around to delisting the abandoned software.
Twitter for Mac has been abandoned and rebuilt over the years long before Elon Musk acquired the platform now branded as X.
[…]
X for iPad is now available to run on the Mac. No timeline streaming, of course.
I never liked the Catalyst version of the Twitter app, nor the inability to turn off Universal Links, so I’ve been reading via the Web since Twitter broke Nitter. The main problem with the Web is that it doesn’t remember my position in the timeline. I’m pretty much forced to read reverse-chronologically and keep track of when to stop. The other issue is that, if I get several days behind, Safari can’t handle it. It will either stop loading older tweets or stop allowing text to be selected or stop loading any pages at all (even in other tabs). Google Chrome is much smoother and more reliable.
I’m both surprise and not at all surprised that nearly two years after Elon Musk took over Twitter, the native Mac client was still there seemingly forgotten about. And I do mean that literally. Not just neglected – as it had long been – but actually perhaps totally forgotten about. Thankfully, whatever API it was using continued to work even as the new Xitter ripped those away from other services. And actually, it continues to work even now, if you installed it previously.
In my very personal opinion, Twitter for Mac was a triumph. A group of Twitter employees leveraged Mac Catalyst to build an app that management at most companies wouldn’t have cared to build. And they did it by just doing it. They made it happen by making it cheap. And it wasn’t at all bad! Feature-rich, smooth scrolling, and definitely better than the website. I’ll miss ya, buddy.
Don’t lie, why did you think I got suspended?
(Twitter botched their iPad app on Mac rollout is the real answer. 👏)
Trying to signal boost: @rmondello is still suspended because of problems associated with the shutdown of the old Twitter for Mac client and the failed iPad X client launch on macOS (@rjonesy and others were caught up but unsuspended)
Although lots of people have been unsuspended from Twitter, I have not been.
Previously:
- Twitter Is Now X
- Twitter Now Requires Logging In
- Twitter Shutting Down TweetDeck for Mac
- Disabling Universal Links
- Twitter for Mac Returns
- Twitter Abolishes Native Mac Client
Update (2024-08-09): Ricky Mondello:
I got unsuspended from Twitter.
Update (2024-08-19): Peter Steinberger:
The “new” X iPad-emulation app is crap. Doesn’t even have ⌘-N mappings for new tweet.
8 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
@Plume
Pretty much. Since the website doesn't seem to work any better if you are logged into an account, I can't understand how people use the service? As per Michael Tsai's comments and pretty much everyone I know who uses Twitter anyway. I miss nitter honestly. It tended to work much better for me as a non account user just trying to read a thread.
@Nathan My experience is that the site does work better when logged in—otherwise you don’t see all the replies.
@Michael Yes—it's surprising how little known that fact actually is though, if you ask google "Can't see all replies on thread" or some such. But I forget every time I go to look at a Twitter thread and can't because I'm not logged in. I wish, wish, wish people wouldn't feed Twitter!
Time to quit that addictive garbage. In a few years most social networks will be treated like tobacco is today. Only hope the sue the hell out them for damages.
