We’ve long been fans of Tweetbot for iPhone, the stylish and unique Twitter client from developer Tapbots (which we reviewed back in June 2011) – our only question being, when will it come to the iPad? The wait is over, and we’re finally able to enjoy Tweetbot’s unique style on the iPad.

If you see a tweet in your timeline that’s a reply to another user, you can swipe to the right to view the conversation, or swipe to the left to view replies to any particular tweet. There’s a customisable triple tap on tweets, allowing you to easily reply, retweet, favourite or translate any given update.

There’s also support for muting particular users (too many tweets from someone at a conference, perhaps?), or even specific hashtags, which makes it really easy to manage what you see in your Twitter timeline without having to unfollow people!

While Twitter is very much about what’s happening right now, until recently whenever you launch a Twitter client you’d have to mark all your direct messages and similar bits as read. Thankfully, Tweet Marker – a free third-party service – allows third-party clients to ‘sync’ your timeline position, making it really easy to pick up your timeline in other apps. And, of course, Tweetbot for iPad fully supports it, along with built-in Push notification support for almost any activity relating to your tweets.

We love the design of Tweetbot for iPad. It actually feels much lighter than its iPhone sibling, which uses plenty of dark grey and black; on the iPad there’s a much less intimidating grey and charcoal look, and for all the  ’robotic’ feel that pervades across the Tapbot apps, Tweetbot for iPad feels the friendliest of the lot.

Tweetbot’s UI is, as you’d expect, slickly done. The left-hand side shows a customisable toolbar of Twitter timelines you can display-your timeline, mentions, messages, retweets and more – and the choice of sidebar items is customisable per-account.

While the sidebar works pleasantly to display timelines for the current account, unlike other apps, it’s ever-so-slightly more convoluted to switch accounts, requiring you to tap on your own icon in the sidebar before being shown a list of other accounts. For those of you with one account, fear not – it’s a small detail that won’t get in the way of your enjoyment. But if you’ve got multiple Twitter accounts set up, this does slow you down as you navigate around the app. We still love it though!

Pin Drop

Never forget where that new restaurant is ever again

You’re walking down the street, and see a new restaurant or shop you want to remember for later. With Pin Drop, you can quickly mark a spot, including categories, location, and even a picture. It’s faster and more intuitive than using your native Maps app, and Pin Drop offers a few curated lists (heavy on London bars) if you need some inspiration. It shares some similarities with Pinterest and Path but with fewer features. For now, Pin Drop is largely anti-social. You can share individual locations using SMS, but you can’t follow other users unfortunately. The recent 2.2 update did add the ability to share lists of pins though.

Pinterest

The fastest growing social media site comes to iOS

Pinterest is the latest craze in social media, enabling you to literally pin things that interest you onto digital pinboards. A pseudo combination of Delicious bookmarking and Flickr. The app let’s you do most things you can do on the site, but with the added bonus of uploading your pics direct from your phone with ease. However, iOS 4 users will annoyingly discover it has a tendency to crash. It’s also worth reading up on Pinterest’s copyright issues before you sign up, because despite it originally being a hot spot for keen crafters, the service has become a victim of its own meteoric success.

Nooka

The time on your iPhone has never been so stylish

Nooka is, at its most simplest, a clock. But a damn fine lookingclock it is. It’s the kind of clock that designers would have hanging on their office wall; the kind of clock that a Japanese hipster might wear on his wrist; the kind of clock that is uber-cool, but also very easy to read quickly. Do you really need another to tell the time on your iPhone? Oh, yes! Change colours to suit your mood, even set alarms and world time. And then just count the blocks or other graphical elements to tell the time. It’s so simple, a child can pick it up almost immediately. Admittedly, it’s a bit of a novelty, but a lovely one, nonetheless.

DR. Seuss Beginner Book#1

Interactive story books lovingly crafted for iOS

Theodor Seuss Geisel is one of those authors you cannot help but have heard of ­although you might know of him more affectionately by his pen name, Dr. Seuss. And chances are, you or your kids love his rhyming stories. Oceanhouse Media has turned virtually all of the famous tales into wonderfully animated and narrated books. This collection gives you a starter bundle of The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, The Foot Book, Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?, and Fox in Socks. All of the books are in quality top, we started reading and just couldn’t stop (sorry).

Evi

Evi, which is the better voice assistant – you or Siri? Evi? Evi??

Over in the US, and with the iPhone 4S, Siri is easily the best virtual assistant around. In third world countries like the UK though, it’s still lacking many of its most useful features, like being able to find nearby restaurants — and it’s increasingly clear that there’s no reason a regular iPhone can’t run it just fine. Evi aims to fix both of these things. It works on anything with iOS 4.0, and plugs into services the most important being Yelp, for business info.

Having access to data and delivering it are two different things though, and Evi’s performance is very inconsistent. Speech recognition is fine, but the servers responsible for getting you an answer are slow compared to Apple’s. Following its own prompt to ask ‘Is it light in Brisbane?’ for example, it sheepishly replied ‘I don’t think I can answer that’. It also has some odd blind spots like basic maths questions. Siri may access fewer information sources, but it’s a more helpful.

When everything works though, Evi can answer some impressive questions, if it feels like it!