Twitter app is utter crap. Alternatives?

I'm pretty much ready to call it quits on the official Twitter app because it's simply a piece of junk.

1. I'm missing tweets basically on a daily basis. When I check my Twitter say, in the morning, I get several-hour gaps in between tweets and usually NO "Load more tweets" option, which is downright unacceptable. Just yesterday I had 8 (!) hours of tweets missing from the night before. WTF.

2. "Load more tweets" button is utterly inconvenient. As I said in 1., lots of times I don't even see this button, but when it DOES appear, it pisses me off how when I press it, I will end up in the middle of newly-loaded tweets. I mean what the hell, why doesn't the app simply load all the new tweets *above* the tweet where you pressed the button WITHOUT shifting your on-screen location? As a result I'd always have to scroll down and waste my time searching for the last tweet I was looking at.

I've already deleted and re-installed the app several times hoping it would fix the issues, but same crap all the time. I'm always using the latest version of the app and latest version of iOS. I've reported it to Twitter too, provided them with screenshots on their request, and they said they'd look into my account, but obviously they didn't do anything.

Thus, I'm now considering either Tweetbot or Tweetcaster. I tried the latter and it seems pretty good. It has several goodies that make it quite more convenient for use compared to the official Twitter app.

For example, I like how it shows small thumbnails of pics attachments in the News Feed so that you can see right away what's in the link (and consequently not tap on it if you see that it's nothing useful). I also like how it displays the number of unread tweets with a red notification on the "home" icon. Oh, and yes, it loads missing tweets PROPERLY, unlike the official app.

One thing I dislike about it is that it won't display replies in tweets. And also its price -- it costs about twice as much as Tweetbot.

Now I wish Tweetbot had a demo version too so that I could test it. Does it have any of the goodies I mentioned above?

 

One other thing I like about Tweetcaster is that you have more screen real estate in the News Feed because there's less blank space in between tweets.

From what I gather, though, Tweetbot uses the same amount of space between tweets as the official Twitter app?

EDIT: ok nevermind, I see that it actually doesn't make much difference.

 

I went ahead and pulled the trigger on Tweetbot. So far so good! No more missing tweets, and "Load more tweets" works great.

Time to ditch the official app.

 

Exactly my thoughts! Let's write to them... maybe if they get enough requests they'd consider implementing this feature.

I've used Tweetbot for a few days now and I think it's a very good app altogether. Seems to work seamlessly. Perhaps they could add a couple of different skins to choose from (I think I preferred the "Twitterish blue" UI to the grayish-black UI they use, but it's certainly not too much of a problem). Speaking of color, they could also improve the "verified account" patch. Currently they put a gray patch with a gray tick on it in the upper right hand corner to indicate a verified account. However, it would be easier to spot if it was blue, for example the same blue color as the "New Tweet" button in the Timeline.

Also, sometimes I feel that I need too many taps on the screen to get the desired info. For example, to view the amount of retweets of a certain tweet, I need to tap 3 times: first on the tweet, then on the gear button and then "View Retweets". Kind of wish it would display on a single tap...

And, the Readability thing seems to be like a hit or miss. Sometimes works great, sometimes renders random stuff instead of the text.

 

I noticed that if I'm charging the phone and leave Tweetbot open, it will prevent the phone from sleeping. Does anyone else experience this problem?

Another thing I noticed is that the notifications won't disappear from the Notification Center, unless I removed them manually by tapping on "x".

 

Hmm, I see... I wrote to them the other day, too. I hope they will consider it. It would be really convenient if they included "retweets", "favorited tweets" as well as new follows in the Connect Tab, just like the official app does.

And they should simply include the number of retweets in the "View Details" section.