Twitterrific 5 for Mac and Twitter's war on developers
Twitterrific, a Twitter client from developer Iconfactory, has been a popular cross-platform way to send and receive tweets for years. Now Mike Beasley at 9to5Mac is reporting that the company may never release the long-awaited Twitterrific 5 for Mac, explaining that Twitter's policy of limiting the number of users for third-party apps through a limit on API tokens is making it difficult for developers like Iconfactory to consider creating Twitter apps at all.
Twitter set an API token limit of 100,000 per application back in August of 2012, with the social media giant promising to work with developers who needed more tokens. Almost immediately, several Windows and Windows Phone apps ran into the limit, and the developers were forced to discontinue their apps since new users would be unable to log into Twitter. The issue has since spilled over into the Android world, and now it seems to be causing Iconfactory to reconsider updating the desktop Twitterrific app.
Beasley talked with Ged Maheux of Iconfactory about the API token limit, who confirmed that it's one of the main reasons Twitterrific for Mac hasn't been updated to version 5 and may never be. Sadly, Twitter itself has seemingly given up on development of its in-house Twitter app, with no progress on a revised Twitter for Mac since project lead Ben Sandofsky left the company in May of 2014.
The bottom line, as noted by Beasley, is that Twitter appears to want to make web browsers the default gateway into the social network rather than native apps. The service forces desktop users into less-than-stellar first-party apps (Twitter for Mac and TweetDeck, for example) instead of working with developers to create a better experience for all.
The solution to the problem is for Twitter to get rid of the API token limit. Whether or not that will ever happen is up to Twitter, of course.
There's more detail in Beasley's post, so be sure to give it a read.
