We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve entered into an agreement with Atebits (aka Loren Brichter) to acquire Tweetie, a leading iPhone Twitter client. Tweetie will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (currently $2.99) in the iTunes AppStore in the coming weeks. Loren will become a key member of our mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world. Loren’s work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.

So we can look forward to an iPad version of Tweetie, and possibly more frequent updates since Loren Brichter is joining Twitter’s mobile team.

One burning question has plagued exiting Tweetie users in the hours after the announcement: what will become of Tweetie for Mac? Good news, a beta of version 2 is sill on the way, according to an Atebits posting on the MacHeist forum. (Loren had previously promised buyers of the recent MacHeist bundle early beta access.)

Hey all – first of all I apologize for any confusion, things have been a bit crazy!  I just want to says I’m blasting through the todo list to get a beta put together as fast as I can, the Mac UI stuff I’ve been prototyping is just too cool to have anything else happen to it.  Sorry for keeping it short, gotta get back to coding!

The applications included aren’t necessarily as impressive as those from previous bundles, but there are some good ones.

If you ever need to backup a DVD, RipIt has replaced the difficult to obtain “Mac the Ripper” as the most prominent solution. It’s very simple to use, and it works with pretty much any disc you can throw at it. It’s usually $20 or so when your trial period is ends, so the MacHeist bundle is a pretty good value if you’re already looking for a good DVD ripping application. I haven’t tried out all of the other apps yet, but the clipboard enhancer Clips and the CoverScout album artwork-finder sound like they might be useful.

Oh, and one of the software packages included is Tales of Monkey Island, the latest installment in the infamous Monkey Island series of video games. As usual, don’t worry about the fact that it and RapidWeaver are not “unlocked” yet; they will be.