Lounge brings a rich Twitter client to iPhone and Mac OS X

There is no shortage of Twitter clients these days, but Goose Apps is bringing a unique two-punch approach to the table with Lounge. Offered as a client for both iPhone and Mac OS X, Lounge is perhaps the first Twitter app that works the same way on the desktop and in your pocket.

Lounge for the Mac, currently in public beta, offers a broad set of Twitter tools. Separate, reorderable lists allow you to view the timelines of your friends, the public, replies, and even a "vanity" section that includes any mention of your Twitter user name. A search section keeps a list of your latest terms, and you can save searches to the left sidebar for easy access. Multi-account support also lets you get your alter ego on.

Lounge for iPhone, available now in App Store for $1.99 (iTunes Link), takes the desktop UI on-the-go. You have access to all the same separate lists of tweets, and multi-account support is again available. A clever new feature in Lounge for the Mac (in private beta testing for iPhone) is the synchronization of tweet read states and categories. If you need to keep up with every single tweet and your custom searches, this will help you pick up where you left off when switching between your iPhone and Mac (syncing requires both devices to connect to the same LAN). It can also be used to sync this info between two Macs.

Lounge on the Mac offered us a pretty good experience during our brief runthrough. Polish is sprinkled throughout, such as a colorized pop-up panel that confirms whether you are publicly replying or direct messaging a user, as well as support for linking, copying, and retweeting your friends' posts. Lounge's icons are a bit too Rainbow Brite for my personal tastes, but this is cancelled out by the fact that you can hide the categories column and slim down a stream of tweets. Lounge for Mac cannot, however, change your iChat or Adium status messages, a favorite feature among Twitterrific users.

There is no price listed for Lounge for Mac once it comes out of beta (10.5 Leopard is required, by the way), though users are reminded that it is definitely a beta. Specifically, you cannot yet delete tweets or accounts. Still, Lounge for Mac is a strong client if you are looking for alternatives to incumbents and ho-hum Adobe AIR clients.