Twitter released a new iPhone app today. That should be all I write about but instead I need to rant a bit. The short version is I think 4.0 needs revisiting. But I’ll elaborate. 
First, I don’t really like how they shrunk the timeline space. Those slight edges take away space for valuable tweets. Is a small thing but it’s obvious to me they aren’t thinking through the design like they did when Lauren Brichter was programming Tweetie.
 
And related to design, they removed the swipe gestures to retweet, save to Instapaper, and more. That was my most favorite functionality and the thing that made Tweetie so popular. And if you don’t think new users care about it, fine… But why remove it? But more perplexing is why remove a swipe only to add a swipe for DMs. If you swipe up over the ‘Me’ icon, it reveals your direct messages.
 
But the worst thing is the general unresponsivenesss of the app. It could be my phone, network, or whatever but the response on my iPhone 4 is pretty sluggish. Specifically with that upward swipe. The app shows my personal profile then my DMs but it takes a second to show up. That’s a remarkable change from what I was used to before.
 
I don’t mind the other UI changes and the Connect section is rather nice. Not a fan of the Discover tab but I think I’ll get used to it over time.
 
But return the swipe on the iPhone app. I can’t use Twitter for iOS without it.