Twitter updates its Mac app, reinforcing its current consume-first, tweet-last philosophy

Sometimes in the rush to mobile everything, we forget that a lot of us spend a lot of time on our laptops. Twitter, however, remembered that today, and updated Twitter for Mac with new features for photo-sharing, retina displays, and languages.

I had to smile though when I updated the app.

Not only did the app’s marketing pic showcase Twitter’s current brand messaging around watching, getting, and reading, all of which are higher on the priority list than, God forbid, actually tweeting, but the app itself is designed for consumption, not creation. Watch the world unfold, indeed, while you consume media.

Here’s the Twitter app user interface (at right). Please tell me, at first glance, where you go to tweet.

I’m not a regular Twitter app user, preferring to simply use the web or a mobile app, and it took me a few seconds to find (it’s that tiny little icon at the bottom left corner).

The big, noticeable icons are all at the the top: my account, my home stream, mentions, messages, and more.

In any case the updates add better multimedia integration — you can click and add photos in multiple ways — and support for retina displays. With a presumably straight face, Twitter says with this update, “Tweets will be clearer and sharper, creating a more vivid experience.”

In addition, the app now supports 14 more languages, including Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, and Turkish.

The update is available in the Mac App Store, where the app has to date received 3.5 stars.