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Tweetie for Mac has a MacHeist secret

by TJ Luoma Jan 6th 2011 at 1:50PM

The storied history of MacHeist continues with the release of Twitter for Mac in the app store.

As you may remember, MacHeist bundle customers were promised early access and a free copy of Tweetie 2. Then Tweetie 2 never arrived, and Twitter bought Tweetie, and now there's a free version of Twitter for Mac which is what Tweetie 2 would have been.

MacHeist customers have, understandably, felt a bit cheated by MacHeist on the Tweetie 2 front, even if the circumstances were outside MH's control. In order to make up for it, MacHeist announced today that Twitter for Mac has a secret.

If you click onto the help menu for Twitter for Mac, then hold down the control, option/alt, and command keys at once, a secret menu option is revealed (shown above). If you enter your "Tweetie 2 registration information" from the MacHeist nanobundle, you will get a new "Super Secret" menu in preferences that gives you custom settings for the app:

It will be interesting to see what Apple thinks of this secret. Given the rules governing App Store purchasing, it's possible that the app will get "pulled" from the Mac App Store until these "secret" features are either removed or made available to everyone.

Lost your MacHeist information? You can look up your orders here.

UPDATE: Kudos to Zach who figured out how to enable this. (See his comment below.) To enter these, launch /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and paste each of these lines in. I tested it on one Mac where I hadn't entered my MacHeist information, and it appeared to work:

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ScrollingMakesKeyAndOrdersFront -bool true

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac UserTimelineDerepeater -bool true

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac TypeAnywhereToTweet -bool true

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac HideInBackground -bool true

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ESCClosesComposeWindow -bool true

defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac NormalComposeWindowLevel -bool false

UPDATE 2: Aral Balkan posted a free little app which will enable these features for anyone who downloads it. Appropriately enough I saw it on Twitter.



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The storied history of MacHeist continues with the release of Twitter for Mac in the app store. As you may remember, MacHeist bundle...
 

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25 Comments

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Bentley

Yep. This seems to work. At least my "create a tweet when typing anywhere" seems to be working. Although, the new preferences pane doesn't seem to appear. But then again as long as you get the features, I suppose nothing else matters!

January 18 2011 at 11:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Simon Arch

Holy cats, this is pretty awesome news! The "Type anywhere" option in particular turns Twitter for Mac into the first standalone app I consider a viable replacement for the (old Twitter) web UI. It's such a no-brainer feature that I can't understand why no-one else ever thought of it, and why it's not enabled (or at least accessible) by default. Now I don't have to quit Twitter when they finally force that design nightmare that is the new Twitter web UI on everyone!

January 07 2011 at 2:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron Vasicek

For me the app is a fail without the real RT function. My Macheist info was invalid for the secret "features". I do hear that Osfoora for Mac is in the works and that could be nice. Until then I'm sticking with Tweetie for Mac.

January 06 2011 at 11:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Aaron Vasicek's comment
Simon Arch

I'm not sure what you mean by "real" RT function. It clearly supports the new style RTs, as well as allowing for copy and paste RTs. Is there some other way to do RTs?

January 07 2011 at 11:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Simon Arch

In fact, if you click on the RT button it gives you two options - retweet or quote tweet. Now I'm really confused by your comment. Did you actually use the app before you commented?

January 07 2011 at 11:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rjhbooklinux

Okay, this is just a quick and dirty hack I threw together in a few minutes. It's not pretty, but it's easy to do, accomplishes all of the "secrets" right inside the prefs (no need to use terminal), and they work flawless as far as I can tell.

I personally disagree with leaving the features out, as application usability suffers for a reason that any given user may or may not have even had the opportunity to participate (referring to macheist bundle in question).

At any rate, here is a zip file with instructions on freeing those super secret options from their solitary confinement. :P

http://cl.ly/3uYo


RJHBookLinux

January 06 2011 at 8:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
4 replies to rjhbooklinux's comment
glad

I entered my email and serial code and got invalid, which sucks!!

January 06 2011 at 8:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sebastian

I don't get it, how does that work with the terminal? I've never used terminal before. I paste everything into the terminal and press enter, or what?

Well, I can't even get the pop-up to work, or how long to I have to press the three keys?

January 06 2011 at 5:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Sebastian's comment
SIP

Do this one line at a time, beginning with "defaults" and ending with "true" or "false" then hit enter/return.

January 06 2011 at 7:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
SIP

Got heisted by MacHeist?

January 06 2011 at 3:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeremy

The app itself is horrible. Hell, it's not even as good as the first version. What a joke. People waited 1-2 years for that? Ha. I'll stick with Echofon.

January 06 2011 at 3:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Jeremy's comment
Ru

what exactly are you basing this on? im using it and its great. the minimal interface...i dont need popups of my tweets like in other apps..its light and airy. i was using kiwi and weet and echofon and each brought something diff to the table. this is yet another seat at that table.

if what you require isnt getting met then thats different but its working all around then i guess its subjective.

January 06 2011 at 5:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Digitarius

This is actually pretty annoying. It feels like Atebits held out a few simple things (Like being able to hit ESC to cancel a compose window. Really? That's a super secret beta tweak? Give me a break. The fact that it's not a standard option is insane) to make up for screwing MacHeist.

January 06 2011 at 2:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Frank

If it's like the iOS App Store, easter eggs are fine as long as the reviewer is made aware of them.

January 06 2011 at 2:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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