OK, overlooking that- I think Seesmic desktop has great potential, and I think it could end up being my app of choice. But since I have 2 screens and can dedicate one to Tweetdeck, and since Tweetdeck has added the ability to send messages to Facebook as well as Twitter, I’m sticking with it in the short term. I’ll probably start using Seesmic D the way I’ve been using Twirl, to access other accounts I manage.

As for Nambu- I tried, it, meh.

I’d invite anyone to do the same twitter search for #Nambu. You’ll see far more praise and people saying that it’s a relief to depart the plastic world of AIR apps than you will see criticism. Does it have some bugs? Sure it does. It’s a work in progress that is free.

Speaking of bugs, try this in the Mac Seesmic client: open Seesmic. Click the Configure button. The prefs window opens. Now close the prefs window. Click the configure button again. Nothing happens. Click it again. And again. And again. No matter how many times you click it, the window won’t reopen. You have to quit the app to revisit your preferences. Not that you’d want to revisit preferences in such a well designed and though out app, of course.

Some of your Nambu UI criticism comes off like a Windows user who spends 20 minutes in Mac OS X and dismisses it because it doesn’t have a Start menu and the “system tray” icons are at the top of the screen instead of the bottom where God intended them to be.

My original points remain: you used the AIR apps longer, you knew you wanted a cross-platform solution, and you didn’t give Nambu an equivalent test drive before writing your review.

Nambu is FAR from perfect. But it isn’t the unusable application described in your perfunctory review, either.

At any rate, thanks for taking the time to reply. You do good stuff, and I usually agree with and enjoy what you produce.

No, I don’t have two screens.

No, I’m not a clicker in WoW, but I don’t play WoW the same way I use my desktop. WoW is a game that demands lighting-fast reflexes. My desktop is just my desktop. I try to make my work as efficient as possible.

When I said in the blog post that I spent 24 hours with Seesmic, that was just because I played with it for a few hours in the 24 hours it was released. I suppose I should have not written it that way. I’ll say this: in two hours of Seesmic and two hours of Tweetdeck, they’re both very well designed and thought-out apps. Nambu, not so much. Doing a search on twitter for Nambu, I found many people complaining about broken DMs, bad UI design, and other quirks. I believe the people that love it aren’t hardcore powertwitters.

Regarding Growl, it worked out the box for me, though I vaguely remember a question “Enable Growl support?” popping up. I could could be wrong about that. But I certainly didn’t have to fuss with it. So I’m not sure why it didn’t work for you. Do you use two screens?

Audible notifications are a personal preference issue. I don’t use them in my email client, much less for Twitter. Growl support more than makes up for it, in my view. (LIke i said you can have those tweets from super priority users emailed, SMS’d, or read to you.)

So on keyboard shortcuts, you’re telling me you are a clicker in WoW? Seriously tho, there’s a little gear widget that pops up when you select or mouse over any tweet that has all the options you could want, plus let’s you assign the user to a group right from the menu.

I respect your expertise with UI’s. That’s why I made my original point, these features are no more hidden than most of those features you cherish in Seesmic. You spent enough time using Seesmic to understand it. Are you saying you used Nambu just as long as you used the other apps?

Writing a tweet should be instant. Why should I have to press ANYTHING to write a tweet? The textedit box should be there for me at all times. Cmd-N for a new tweet? I don’t think that would work out either since it’s Yet Another Step I have to take to write a tweet. Maybe I’m used to Twhirl where the textedit box is always there, all I have to do is click the mouse inside it and I’m ready to go, not Cmd-N or whatever.

And you can’t understand why you would want audible notifications? Seriously? I’m not one of these addicted Twitter users that stare at the screen all day. I put it in the background and do my work. When a tweet comes in, I’d rather know there’s something to check then pull up my client when I don’t have to. I’m baffled by why you can’t understand that.

I don’t use keyboard shortcuts since I shouldn’t have to. Using keyboard shortcuts means I have to select the tweet to use them on, so if I’ve already got my mouse on the tweet, why do I have to do something ELSE (keyboard) to do an action? The mouse is already there. What do keyboard shortcuts really offer if you already need to put the mouse in that position?

I’ve been working with UIs since the days of Wordstar when there was no GUI, and when the Mac was just a baby. There are reasons for certain design decisions. The UI is supposed to make interacting with the application easier, not hide things and add steps. If I didn’t find these options, then they weren’t presented well.

Many of your gripes are about features that are actually there, you just didn’t take the time to find them.

Want to compose a new tweet? It’s not a two-step process. There’s a key command long-time Mac users like yourself are quite familiar with: cmd-N

Want to see someone’s Twitter history? Double-click on their avatar. Would it be better to have it work if you clicked the name OR the avatar? Sure. But I would point out that clicking the avatar doesn’t do anything in Seesmic while clicking the username does. I’m not sure there is a right or wrong way to access this feature yet.

Want to swap or change columns around? Just click the top of the column to change the function of the column.

You point out the lack of audible notifications – something I imagine will be addressed, though why anyone wants them is a mystery to me. Yet you fail to mention that Nambu has complete Growl support, which offers endless customization options to the way you receive notifications. Heck, Growl can text you, send you an email, or have your Mac *read the message to you* as notification, as well as a host of visual notification schemes.

I don’t understand your “creating columns takes too long” observation. Creating columns is instant on my 2 year old Macbook Pro. /shrug

The shorten url and twitpic icons placement is a function of which view you are in. With a 30 inch monitor on full screen view I suppose it could be annoying, but not a huge deal. And you can always hit “Cmd-1″ to temporarily change your view to single column view if you want the icon in easy reach.

I can’t speak to your biggest complaint about replying from multiple accounts because I don’t use multiple Twitter accounts, but putting this in the context of the rest of your complaints I have to wonder if you took the enough time to sort out the issue versus “Eh, it doesn’t work like Tweetdeck/Seesmic.”

You might have mentioned that the most common Twitter actions (follow, unfollow, retweet, reply, private message, etc) have *customizable* keyboard shortcuts.

You might have mentioned the nifty inline replies, which is something I imagine other clients will eventually be borrowing from Nambu.

You might have mentioned that the UI of Nambu is standard (and beautiful) Mac OS X, versus the fugly faux Windows widgets and weak text display of an Adobe Air apps.

Let me say I have no personal stake or real preference in who comes out ahead in this Twitter Trifecta. While I’ve defended Nambu here, I’m fully prepared to drop it when a better app (anticipating “Tweetie for Mac)” comes out. You review simply didn’t read like a fair comparison, at least to me.

http://twitter.com/timeline/home/?status=Twitter%20Trifecta%20http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fcsnu8k+via+%40ShareThis

which is no good.

i find that i CONSTANTLY am waiting for that notification window in the upper right to get out the way. it blocks my search bar in safari, tab access and other key buttons for my browswer window. i hope seesmic desktop keeps those notifications in the lower right like twhirl did. much less obtrusive