Software design - ur doin it rite

I do the Twitter thing. In fact, I would say I'm a complete Twitter-head. Like most, I too dismissed it initially as 'Facebook statuses' but it has become increasingly relevant, now to the point that the only thing I log into Facebook for is to see if anyone has commented on my status (updated via Twitter), upload photos (done via iPhoto) and play Know-It-All. Guess which one I do most.

Obviously, I don't do actual logging into the website - that's just SO oldschool - so I have tried a number of clients. First, there was TweetDeck - but, as @serafinowicz says, it does feel like being an air traffic controller. It's ENORMOUS. Oh, I tell a lie! First was actually the Dashboard widget, Twidget, which I have never let go of, because it's simply wonderful for just having a quick check on the last two or three updates. It's simple, it's basic, I'll always have it (I am a complete Dashboard freak, I'll post about that another time!).

So then, after noticing that @VoteWoz made a post from twhirl, I gave it a try. It's very, very nice, and clean, far simpler than TweetDeck, so I consigned TweetDeck to the hills. I used twhirl for a long time (at LEAST two weeks), but I did have a few niggles - number one being how tiny the buttons on it were (although I am running at an insanely high resolution on a laptop, so...), and number two that because it's cross-platform, it has a button for Prefs. Which, as I am a Mac user, means no cmd+, TweetDeck had this problem too.

Then, yesterday, I was turned onto Tweetie. Now, as iPhone users know, Tweetie has been around for the iPhone forever, but they've just released a Mac version, and, well, I am a complete convert. FINALLY, the app that I was waiting for. If Apple themselves designed a Twitter client, it would look like this, it's brilliant. Cmd+, for Prefs! Hooray! Also it doesn't auto-scroll when new Tweets come in, so you pick up where you left off and see things in order! It integrates with TwitPic to just load the picture in its own window. And it has a really neat menubar icon that simply goes blue when there are unread Tweets. No popups, no blinging. It's just marvellous.

All this is lovely, but it is what happened after I went for Tweetie that the real excitement for yesterday happened - I discovered Scribbles. Scribbles is atebits' (the makers of Tweetie) little drawing program, and it's just lovely, and fun. Its layering is simple and intuitive. The way it scales in and out is fab. However, the best thing EVER about it is found via a poke around on the website - it has a one-button Publish to the online Scribbles gallery - click on the link.

Go on, click on it. I'll wait here.

Amazing, isn't it? It's just a dead simple drawing program - almost as if MacPaint got very, very drunk and had an affair with Photoshop 7 - but it's clearly capable of epic drawing wins.

And Windows peeps wonder why it is that I choose a Mac. Because nothing this clever, simple and elegant could ever be dreamt up by a Windows developer (I would ADORE to be proven wrong about this because really, it would make the world a better place).