Not dead, just busy! I’m starting a development company, but you’ll hear more on that later.

Right now, I’d like to draw your attention to two really fantastic applications for Mac OS X: Twitterrific and Sparrow

Twitterrific

I got the original version of Twitterrific a while ago in a MacHeist Bundle, and while it was good, it didn’t exactly stand out the way Tweetie did. I eventually stopped using it, and adopted Tweetie as my go-to Mac Twitter client.

Shortly afterwards, Tweetie (and developer Atebits) was acquired by Twitter.com, and all development stopped. Tweetie 2 (long promised) became Twitter for Mac, the official Mac client.

Now, anyone who’s seen me work, or at least seen my previous post (My IO Graph Day) knows how much I use spaces for Mac. The official Twitter for Mac client shipped with spaces completely broken. I don’t know if this is a result of using a non-standard window, or just an oversight, but for me, it’s a complete deal breaker.

They quickly tried to fix this, and proceeded to make it even worse. The official Twitter application follows me onto every space, and sits above other windows, and gets in my way. Since the original Tweetie lacks native retweet support, I was forced to deal with this horrible monstrosity for a while. I eventually stopped using it altogether, and started using the website again.

Then, as if the gods answered my pleas, a review of Twitterrific 4 shows up on my news feed from Ars Technica, and the verdict is pretty decent. Combine that with a $7.95 upgrade price, and you have a real winner.

Sparrow

Next up: Sparrow. You’d think e-mail clients are pretty straightforward these days. Mail.app for Mac OS X is pretty standard. It supports a lot of mail accounts, and comes bundled with new Macs. If you’re looking for a more feature-filled mail client, Outlook (bundled with Microsoft Office) handles the job nicely, integrating calendars, contacts, and improved Exchange support.

But Sparrow is a case where outstanding design trumps features. Sparrow is basically a desktop GMail client. It uses GMail’s built-in IMAP syncing for e-mail, and currently only supports GMail (although standard IMAP support is coming). It takes a lot of cues from Tweetie and iOS for the user interface, and basically presents e-mail as a social stream. This idea works on so many levels, I can’t fathom why nobody else has done it this way.

Add to that the convenient widescreen-friendly dual-pane view, and a simple task like checking e-mail becomes a wonderful thing.

My main gripe is the lack of option to disable loading of remote images, but I’ve worked around this pretty well using Little Snitch to allow Sparrow access to GMail’s servers only.

Sparrow retails for $9.99, and is the first of what I hope will be many more applications inspired by the simplicity and ease-of-use of iOS applications.