What you need to know
- Twitter for Mac is now available to download from the Mac App Store.
- It launches with support for live streams and automatic Dark Mode.
- The app is one of the first to use Apple's Catalyst technology to bring iPad apps to the Mac.
- Oct 30, 2019 Twitter says a bug in macOS 10.15.1 aka Catalina stops users of the social network's desktop Mac app from entering certain letters in account password fields.
- Jun 04, 2019 Twitter discontinued its native Mac app in February 2018. The all new Twitter for Mac will be in development this summer in preparation for an early launch on macOS 10.15 Catalina.
Today, the Twitter for Mac app has made its return to the Mac App Store. Originally announced at WWDC 2019, many were expecting its return when macOS Catalina became available, but the new OS rolled out without Twitter for Mac. That changed today, as Twitter for Mac became available to download for all macOS Catalina users.
When Apple announced its Catalyst technology at WWDC 2019 in June, the company talked about how developers will now be able to bring their existing iPad apps to the Mac. With well over a million iPad apps on the iOS App Store, this spelled a huge opportunity for developers and for users who have enjoyed apps on the iPad but have had to switch to a browser when accessing the same app on their Mac.
The Twitter app on MacOS Catalina. Apple Users of the Post-it app had requested a desktop version, and Catalyst was a relatively easy way to make that happen, said Remi Kent, global brand director. Oct 12, 2019 Twitter first previewed its revamped Mac app back in June, which, as noted, has been enabled with improved tools and options based on Catalina.Twitter pulled support for its previous Mac app in February last year, leaving many users out in the cold. But now it's back, and among the new additions, Twitter has included.
One of the apps highlighted at WWDC was Twitter, who had once had a Mac app but had shut it down years ago. Now, with Catalyst, Twitter has taken its iPad app and brought it back to the Mac.
The app functions exactly as you would expect it to whether you are on a browser, on iPad, or on iPhone. It even comes with automatic Dark Mode support which will change it from light to dark mode along with the rest of the apps in macOS Catalina. Things do look a little odd if you take it into fullscreen, as the timeline currently does not expand to make use of the extra real estate. This is something that will hopefully be worked out in a future software update.
You can download the Twitter for Mac app from the Mac App Store now.
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Twitter says a bug in macOS 10.15.1 aka Catalina stops users of the social network's desktop Mac app from entering certain letters in account password fields.
When attempting to type their passwords into the application to log in, some characters are ignored, specifically 'b', 'l', 'm', 'r', and 't'. That would make it impossible to submit passwords using those keys to sign into Twitter accounts; pass phrases can be cut'n'pasted just fine.
According to Twitter in-house developer Nolan O'Brien, these particular keypresses are gobbled up by a regression associated with the operating system's shortcut support. Normally, users can press those aforementioned keys as shortcuts within the app to perform specific actions, such as 't' to open a box to compose a new tweet.
Twitter App For Mac Catalina Beach
Something changed within macOS to capture those shortcut keys, rather than pass them to the password field in the user interface as expected. So, in other words, when you press a shortcut key in Twitter when entering an account password, the keypress is ignored in that context rather than handled as a legit password keypress.
Other programs may also be similarly affected.
Here's how O'Brien put it, referring to Apple's UIKit API:
Root cause is Catalina regression that fails keyboard inputs when a UIKeyCommand is registered for the same key. UIResponder chain regression most likely.
— Nolan O'Brien (@NolanOBrien) October 30, 2019And here's a video of the regression in action:
Twitter for Mac is incapable of accepting certain letters in the password field. Not special characters. Regular letters. pic.twitter.com/QMDJyc4uRO
— Mike [Zom]Beasley ?♂️ (@MikeBeas) October 30, 2019Not LibreOffice too? Beloved open-source suite latest to fall victim to the curse of Catalina
READ MOREThere's no word yet on when a patch for the issue might be out. Apple did not respond to a request for comment. Chalk this up as another potential weird bug of the week.
This is one of several headaches that Mac fans who opted to update to Catalina are having to deal with in the early days of Apple's latest OS edition.
Developers have lamented the sorry quality of the release, in some cases even likening it to Windows Vista, while users have reported a number of performance and stability bugs introduced by the update.
Those who have not yet updated to macOS 10.15 may want to hold off for a bit longer while both Cupertino and third-party devs iron out most of the wrinkles in the platform. ®
PS: Apple's fiscal 2019 full-year financial numbers were out on Wednesday: $55bn profit, down seven per cent year-on-year, off $260bn in sales, down two per cent, in the 12 months to calendar September 28.
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