Review of 3 Twitter clients on the Mac

There are probably dozens of Twitter client reviews out there. But this review is unique. It talks about clients for Mac (mostly). It is written WAY late in the game. And most importantly, it's just moi writing it. So enjoy :-)

I would consider myself a pretty advanced Twitter user, or some would call it addicted. I mostly interact with Twitter via twitter.com (or m.twitter.com), instant messenger (Google Talk) and SMS when on my iPhone. But occasionally I fire up a client. There are dozens of clients out there. Below are the 3 which I've given somewhat of a good test drive.

1. Twitterrifc http://twitter.com/twitterrific Download @ http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific

Things I like.

• Keyboard shortcuts. When a tweet is highlighted. I can use Apple-2 to @ the user. Apple-d to direct message the user. Left arrow to open the user's profile on twitter.com (e.g. http://twitter.com/thomashan/with_friends). Right arrow to open a link if that tweet has an URL.
  
• It shows all unread tweet by making them bold. You can use keyboard shortcut Apple-k to mark them all read.
  
• I liked that it shows me unread count on the Mac Dock, like this.
  

Things I don't like or were confused about.

• This only works on Mac. So if you have other OSes at home like me, you'll have to pick another client when on those machines.
  
• They started out with no ads at the very beginning. But the latest v3.0.1 has ads. You can pay $14.95 to not see ads.

2. Twhirl http://twitter.com/twhirl Download @ http://www.twhirl.org/

Things I like.

• It runs on Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), which means I can have the same look and feel on both my Mac and Windows. No need to relearn another UI, for an old dog like me, that's important.
  
• I like how it has a trash bin icon to "clear timeline" for readibility.
• This one is not useful for me, but if you have multiple accounts, you'll like this one.
  
  
• I recently read about terraminds.com's search feature and have already subscribed to certain keywords via their RSS feed. I was pleasantly surprised (so was @bbluesman) to find that Twhirl has build-in search to leverage terraminds to search against all tweets including people you don't follow.
  
  

Things I don't like or were confused about.

• I can never spell the name "twhirl" correctly.
  
• This is probably related to AIR, not sure. But unlike Twitterrific, if I miss the notification pop-up (which is configurable, default 6 sec), it does not show me unread count on the Dock when I return to my computer.
  
• When it opens a link on the browser, it always opens a new window. Why can't it open in a new tab of my already opened FF? Twitterrfic does.

3. Spaz http://twitter.com/spaz Download @ http://www.funkatron.com/spaz

Things I like.

• Spaz is developed by Ed (a.k.a. Funkatron), a fellow Boilermaker!
  
• Again, it is on AIR, same reason as above under Twhirl.
• It won the “Best HTML Community Application” in the AIR Develper Derby award.
  
• Has a tab for public timeline, like on Twitter.com. Not sure if I'd ever use that, but if I get really bored one day, nice to know I can just keyboard-shortcut-5 it.
• Keyboard shortcut. Nicely documented when you click on the "?" icon on top.
  
  

Things I don't like or were confused about.

• It froze quite a few times on me on the Mac. I had to force-quit it.
• I can't find a way to mark a tweet read. In Twitterrifc, when you click on a tweet to mark it unread, it'll unbold it. In Twhirl, it's got the trash bin. Can't find this feature on Spaz yet.
  
• Same as Twhirl above, when I open a link, it opens a new window (on the Mac). However, I did notice that on Windows, it opens a new tab in my existing FF, which is what I want.

I guess the bottom line is that I'm going to stick with Twitterrific as I've been using it since the beginning and it seems like the most mature one to me, at least on the Mac. Any other cool features you've found out about any of these above? What client are you using?