Elon Musk’s acquisition of the corporate and subsequent gutting of engineering groups have left Twitter for Mac within the lurch. The app hasn’t obtained a single replace since Musk’s acquisition and is missing many options key to the “new Twitter” expertise (which is probably not a nasty factor for some customers).
Twitter supplied a devoted app for Mac for a number of years however dropped assist for it in 2018 and as a substitute pointed customers towards the online model of the service. A 12 months later, nevertheless, Twitter for Mac returned with a brand new model of the app primarily based on Apple’s Catalyst platform and the app’s iPad codebase.
Admittedly, the pre-Musk model of Twitter wasn’t at all times nice about holding Twitter for Mac up to date. Nonetheless, in keeping with App Retailer model historical past, the app obtained fairly common updates. The present lack of updates – from Musk’s acquisition in October to now – is the longest hole in not less than the previous 18 months, in keeping with the App Retailer.
The final replace to Twitter for Mac was on October 7, 2022. Musk’s accomplished his acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022, and layoffs started nearly instantly.
Because it stands as we speak, Twitter for Mac lacks a number of Twitter options supplied by the online and cellular variations. This contains assist for Twitter Areas, the power to join Twitter subscriptions from creators, any assist for Twitter Blue and its unique options, and extra.
Even past lacking options, Twitter for Mac is rising more and more buggy and unreliable. Customers have complained of an elevated variety of crashes, failed timeline updates, and posting failures. Even for customers who’re pleased that Twitter for Mac is rid of a few of Musk’s questionable characteristic adjustments and additions, the general reliability of the app is an issue.
9to5Mac’s Take
Whether or not or not Twitter has any plans to replace Twitter for Mac once more stays to be seen. Musk has laid off the overwhelming majority of Twitter’s employees, and the Mac app is probably going a sufferer of engineering employees shortages. Even Musk has admitted that he could have to rehire a number of the staff he initially fired.
Twitter for Mac is clearly much more area of interest than Twitter for iPhone, Android, and the online. Most of the individuals who use Twitter for Mac, nevertheless, possible fall into the “energy person” class and publish fairly a bit on the platform. Twitter for Mac’s abandonment might push these customers to discover different platforms, akin to Mastodon. There are a number of glorious Mastodon shoppers for Mac at the moment out there (and extra to come back).
And, in fact, Twitter additionally killed off assist for third-party Twitter shoppers – lots of which had been out there on the Mac. This leaves Twitter for Mac as the only possibility for Mac customers, wanting utilizing the online model or one thing like Tweeten.
There are methods for Twitter to supply an app on the Mac with out an excessive amount of overhead, together with merely letting Apple Silicon customers set up the iPad model of their app on their Mac.
I reached out to Twitter for a touch upon the way forward for Twitter for Mac and was greeted with the corporate’s auto-response for press emails.
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