While new hardware has been limited to an updated entry-level iPad, the software changes have more than made up for the dearth of hardware updates. This fall has been a significant season for the iPad. Twitter was founded in 2006, but it wasn’t until the iPhone launched about a year later that it really took off, thanks to the developers who built the first mobile apps for the service. Twitter’s actions also show a total lack of respect for the role that third-party apps have played in the development and success of the service from its earliest days. Whether or not they comply with Twitter’s API terms of service, the lack of any advanced notice or explanation to developers is unprofessional and an unrecoverable breach of trust between it and its developers and users. To say that Twitter’s actions are disgraceful is an understatement. More than two days later, there’s still no official explanation from Twitter about why it chose to cut off access to its APIs with no warning whatsoever. The shut-down, which happened Thursday night US time, hasn’t affected all apps and services that use the API but instead appears targeted at the most popular third-party Twitter clients, including Tweetbot by Tapbots and Twitterrific by The Iconfactory. Late yesterday, The Information reported that it had seen internal Twitter Slack communications confirming that the company had intentionally cut off third-party Twitter app access to its APIs. If you’ve already deleted either app from your devices, both Tweetbot and Twitterrific can still be downloaded from the App Store. Many of us have moved on from Twitter, but let’s not leave behind the developers who made it a place where we once enjoyed hanging out. The App Store’s success is built on many things, but its cornerstone is the developers who care enough to make apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific. If you were a subscriber to either or both apps, you’re absolutely entitled to a refund, but we’d ask that you open the app you use and tap the button to decline a refund as a final act of support for their developers instead. It’s been hard for us at MacStories to watch as the makers of two of our favorite apps have been treated with such callous disregard by Twitter, which owes no small portion of its past success to both apps. Tapbots and The Iconfactory have played an important part in the Apple developer community for a very long time, and their Twitter clients were two of the best ever created. If users do nothing, they’ll receive a refund that will be credited to their App Store account automatically by Apple. Tweetbot also offers to transfer a user’s Tweetbot subscription to Tapbots’ new Mastodon app, Ivory, which Federico recently reviewed and is excellent. Now, both apps give subscribers the option to indicate that they don’t want a refund. To try to mitigate the damage, both Tweetbot and Twitterrific were updated this week with new interfaces. That’s how the App Store works, and it’s potentially devastating to both companies given how events played out. As a result, both Tapbots and The Iconfactory are faced with refunding the 70-85% of subscription revenues that they received on a pro-rated basis. Because they had no notice, neither company had a chance to suspend new subscriptions or take other actions to deal with a change that, under the best of circumstances, would pose massive challenges to their development teams. Tweetbot and Twitterrific were both subscription-based apps. The ramifications of Twitter’s actions are unlike anything we’ve ever seen before on the App Store. One moment the apps worked the next, they didn’t. Instead, as I wrote in January, Twitter eliminated access to its API for many third-party apps, including Tweetbot by Tapbots and Twitterrific by The Iconfactory, with no notice at all and then made up an excuse for why they did so after the fact. That’s not how things went down with Twitter. It’s the right thing to do regardless of what any terms of service say. Usually, when a big company shuts down an API, they give customers time to prepare.
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