Back in May 2011, Twitter bought TweetDeck for $40 million. Now they’ve taken the power users’ Twitter client of choice and, well, fucked it up.
OK, the fact that the new TweetDeck doesn’t run under Adobe AIR but directly as an OS X program will improve the battery life of my MacBook Pro. Eventually. When the program catches up to what we’d all been used to.
Whenever the heck that’s likely to be.
I’m not holding my breath.
Until then, here’s TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for OS X [2.4MB .zip], the final Adobe AIR version. Enjoy.
[Update 0840: You can download the equivalent TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Windows from OldApps.com. It’ll do you for Windows XP, Vista, or 7.]
[Update 0850: Can we trust that website? I’d better mirror it here. Here’s TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Windows [2.4MB .zip]]
[Update 0900: And now we also have a Linux installer! For your enjoyment, TweetDeck version 0.38.2 for Linux. Thank you, sylmobile.]
[Update 17 March 2012: As Wade points out in his comment today, the same Adobe AIR file should work across all platforms. That’s the point of AIR. In my response I explain how the post ended up this way. I’ll fix it in due course.]
I’ve kept the AIR version for exactly the reasons you describe. We could detail the damage they did, but “fucked it up” pretty much covers it.
+ infinity, sir.
Much appreciated, sir. A scholar and a gentleman.
Thanks! Have been looking for it
After installing the new TweetDeck, I started using web.tweetdeck.com in Google Chrome and have become quite fond of it as an alternative.
Yes, TweetDeck/Twitter fucked this up big time.
I don’t suppose anyone knows where I can get the old Google Chrome Tweetdeck App? It was far superior to anything else.
@Alan: Surely a search on “download tweetdeck version 0.38.2 for chrome” will soon turn up what you need? That’s really all I did to find OS X versions. And that said, isn’t Adobe AIR a cross-platform thing anyway?
I haven’t look in the last week or so, but I couldn’t find the Chrome app when TweetDeck changed it – it’s been replaced in the Chrome Web store. It was a Chrome app and didn’t use AIR – it was a bit different to the AIR app, but better in several ways.
@Alan: Ah, Chrome is a foreign land for me. We’ll see if anyone adds some info here, I guess…
Hey, Stil,
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
I battled with the new Twitter version for a couple of weeks or so, hoping it was me, but I agree. Fucked up.
Why do so many tech companies manage to do this to their multi $M investments (except to otherwise kill them off completely by neglect) ?
Cheers
CST
I nearly cried when I found this. New Tweetdeck has been making me want to throw my computer across the room. The new version added nothing good, and took away a lot of the functionality that I really appreciated about Tweetdeck. Maddening.
Thank you!
I don’t understand why you have three different versions. The same .air file will run on all platforms. I know I’ve handed the 0.38 AIR file I’ve installed on Linux to a Mac user and they’ve installed it with no problems.
@Wade: Indeed. That’s the entire point of AIR, right? But the post ended up like this because it wasn’t planned and constructed. It simply evolved. On an evening when my main focus was very much elsewhere. I’ll tell the story because it explains why all sorts of things online — and in the rest of life, for that matter — are the way they are.
On the evening of 8 January, I’d just done three or four days of solid work with little sleep, including one almost-all-nighter. Some of that had been incredibly frustrating because my MacBook Pro was getting a bit crashy. A bit too crashy, across multiple applications. And the AIR version of TweetDeck was being one of the crashiest.
I made the decision: nuke it from orbit and re-install everything.
Since this is my only computer and I was at the Bunjaree Cottages and a long way from assistance, I started compiling an archive of installers and serial numbers for all my software. I threw them into a directory with “OS X” in the name. When it came to TweetDeck, I simply retrieved a known-good version from my Time Machine backup. I called the file TweetDeck_OSX.zip because everything else was being labelled like that.
I figured this could be useful for other people, so I wrote this post, tweeted a link, and went back to work. Very little thought went into it. According to the revision history, the entire process took five minutes.
Twenty minutes later someone who saw my tweet emailed me “the Windows version”. So I added it. Amount of thought involved: two-fifths of fuck all. And so it went. And there you have it.
What amuses me is that the crisp formatting of my website gives the overall impression of order. What this post should really look like is pure chaos. A dining table still strewn with dirty crockery and an empty wine bottle from a rushed dinner, scribbled notes and me — unshaven, tired and very stressed.
What also amuses me is that you’re the first person to mention this, more than two months later.
I’ll fix the post is due course, and I thank you. But I’m actually concentrating on other things today. And so it goes. And there you have it.
FYI – I can’t view Flickr photos on TweetDeck anymore, all I see is a grey box. If I click through to Flickr I don’t see the specific photo, just a general ‘explore Flickr’ page.
The problem seems to have occured near to when I upgraded to TweetDeck 0.38.2 (on a Mac). My husband (also using a Mac) has no trouble viewing images from Flickr, and is still using 0.38.1.
I don’t have time/interest/energy to troubleshoot further, but someone else might.
@Ginevra: I can confirm that the problem exists, at least on OS X, but we won’t be able to fix this. The URL re-writing is going wrong between the Twitter API and TweetDeck — and of course we don’t have access to that layer. Twitter is no longer supporting this version of TweetDeck, nor do we access to the source code, so we can’t fix it ourselves. And I can’t suggest a workaround because, again, we have no access to the software layers in question.
I don’t know that this appeared in the change from TweetDeck 0.38.1 to 0.38.2, though. My gut feeling is that it appeared when Twitter introduced their t.co URL shortener into the loop.
So why don’t you just roll back to version 0.38.1? If you don’t have your own backups — and why not? — just copy the application file from your husband’s Mac. That’ll soon confirm whether it’s that version number difference or not.
Just a note – the Flickr link issue, which exists in 0.38.1 & 0.38.2 (at least on Windows) can be worked around quite easily. Click on the status link in the tweet and it will open the status page in your browser. The link to the image works fine from there.
The issue was introduced by Twitter’s URL wrapping. For some reason, t.co adds an extra slash after http:// and removes all characters after the Flickr domain. Nothing we can do about it but unless you get hundreds of Flickr links a day in your tweetstream the workaround takes the pain away.
I don’t like this new version either but can’t get the older version to re install, I keep getting an error message. Can’t even find the tweetdeck in my add/remove section of my control panel. This is SO frustrating and like everyone else not sure why they had to change something that worked!!! arggghhh!! Yes it’s fucked
@Erica: I can’t provide technical support. However this version of TweetDeck was an Adobe AIR application, so you’d presumably have to manage it through AIR and not Windows’ program manager. Assuming you’re using Windows.
I just “RE” downloaded after I bought a new computer drive. I will ALWAYS love this version! Download Adode Air and Tweetdeck “Original” then on my way to Success!
Thanks!
M