Once upon a time, a review of OS X Twitter apps would be a display of innovation and fun.

Tweetbots automated cropzoom routine forces the image into a 9:5 rectangle, which almost never serves the image well.

On the Mac, though, you may be scrolling any number of ways: the arrow keys, the spacebar, two-finger swipes on the trackpad.

Regardless, opening the image to see it full-sized (and then closing it afterward) is a distraction on the Mac that it isnt on the iPhone.

The dark window chrome isnt in keeping with the general OS X aesthetic, where dark windows are usually associated with temporary heads-up displays.

When an app takes over the entire screen, as on iOS, it defines the entire experience and can have whatever look it wants.

But when it shares the space with a background and a Dock and other apps, it needs to consider how it fits in with them.

Like a new building in a city, it should fit in with the neighborhood.

It doesnt show inline images at all, and its options for URL shortening and image uploading are hopelessly out of date.

And like Tweetbot, it seems to think the user cant be trusted to pick a font size that works, offering only three sizes: Ridiculously Small; Too Small For Me; and Come On, Im Not That Bad Off.

Unfortunately, like Tweetbot and Twitters own web app, it crops and zooms images into a rectangle that almost never matches the aspect ratio of the original.

And its kind of stingy in the number of services its willing to show images from.

It did not, for example, have a corporate snit and decide to punish Instagram by no longer inlining its images.).

Im not thrilled with washed-out blue it uses as a link color, but I could live with it.

It uses square thumbnails for every image, and their largest size is 4848 pixels.

Too bad. I like a lot about this app.

Unfortunately, it doesnt let you to use Twitters native image uploading, and it doesnt display inline images at all.

Its not as ecumenical in this regard as Tweetbot, but it handles the great majority of images in my timeline.

A day will come when my courage fails, when I forsake Dr.

Vaya Fail Tweetbot For Mac