Though I have no proof, one would assume that social media use must over-index with iPad owners. With additional screen space, being able to literally touch the social graph, and the ability to hop between programs, the iPad is the home portal for sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others. Here are my thoughts on three iPad optimized Twitter apps: Twittelator, Twitterific and TweetDeck.

MacHeist, purveyors of the popular MacHeist Bundle, have a smaller yet sweeter deal available for today (Thursday, Nov. 12th) only: six applications available free of charge when you register with their site. As of this writing, the applications are free for the next 5 hours, which puts the expiration at about 11pm, EST.

One of the many reasons I’m not a Windows fan is the fact that applications can all look very different and behave in very different ways. On the Mac, most applications behave in much the same way when it comes to standard functions. Apps that don’t follow these rules are ones I don’t use. Well, that is, until I tried Twitterrific. When I first downloaded it, I felt it stuck out like a sore thumb; an odd, translucent black window in a sea of chrome. I resolved to stay with it for a couple of days, though, and fell in love with the application regardless of what it looked like.

Twitter, the micro-blogging site where you can upload posts of just 140 characters, is designed for the mobile. In fact, it’s built around the SMS, with the idea that people could answer the question “What are you doing?” from any cell phone or web connection. Twitterrific from the Iconfactory gives access to most of the popular features in a simple, easy-to-understand interface. It comes in two versions, plain (free) and premium, which are identical, except that once per hour the free version displays a small ad.

Twitterrific, the Twitter client developed by the fine folks at the Iconfactory, has been updated to version 3.2. This update is for the desktop client, not the iPhone/iPod touch version. In addition to numerous big fixes, Twitterrific now uses encrypted HTTPS when communicating with Twitter’s servers, old Tweets are marked as “read” when you open the program, and if your computer connects to the internet via proxy servers, Iconfactory has adjusted the program to make HTTP authentication more reliable.

Every year, Apple gives out awards to some of the best designed and most innovative apps out there for their operating system, and this year was no different. Coming in from many different categories, there are a variety of apps on the list this year. The iLife has a complete gallery and live blog from more »