Guys, bad new, the Token limit has been reached sooner than expected. Getting reports that new users can't login... Thanks @twitter.

— Falcon for Android (@falcon_android) February 23, 2013

Expect to see a lot more tweets like the one above in the near future as popular Twitter clients across a variety of platforms reach the 100,000 API token limit imposed by Twitter, forcing them to stop accepting new users.

If you’re not familiar with the idea of API tokens and Twitter’s arbitrarily-set limit, I’ll attempt to explain this very quickly. Essentially, every user that logs into any given Twitter app requires a special string of text (a token) in order to use that app. Due to recent changes, Twitter only allows apps to hand out 100,000 of these tokens. What that means is that 100,000 people are allowed to login to any given Twitter app ever. Now, it’s possible for users to revoke their token for an app if they don’t use that app anymore, but the majority of users won’t do that. If the token is revoked, someone else can take that user’s spot in the 100,000. If not, that user will be counted as one of those 100,000 tokens forever, even if they aren’t using the app. So if you buy a Twitter app, login, decide it sucks, then delete it, you have taken up one of those limited slots and wasted it.

When a Twitter app runs out of tokens, people will no longer be able to login through it. Twitter simply blocks all new logins. App developers can request more tokens from Twitter, but Twitter is not obligated to comply.

Twitter emailed me. They refuse to extend the token limit because Falcon doesn't provide any features that their app doesn't have already...

— Falcon for Android (@falcon_android) February 26, 2013

Because of this, developers are forced to charge absurd amounts of money to ensure that only truly dedicated users will buy their apps, and that people who simply buy a cheap app and then stop using it won’t waste a token.

But what if there was a way around that limit? As it turns out, there kind of is, and it’s kind of a bad idea.

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Update: This post seems to be getting a lot of attention for some reason. Let me just clarify a few things. Tweetbot was updated a few days after this was published, and many of the changes below have been implemented. Others have not, and I suspect that Twitter will probably not care enough to say anything. Specifically, some of the display options like timestamps and username display style are optional in Tweetbot, even though they are specifically required to look a certain way by Twitter. The branding note in the last section seems to have been ignored entirely. There is no Twitter logo anywhere adjacent to the Timeline. Again, I don’t think Twitter will make a big fuss over it.

Per the above request, I’ve decided to make a list of all of the user-facing changes that will need to be made to one of the most popular Twitter clients on the market to comply with Twitter’s latest demands. I’m only covering the iPhone version here, but most changes will apply to the iPad and Mac versions as well. These changes must be made by March, 2013.

This list is by no means guaranteed to be exhaustive or 100% accurate, but to the best of my knowledge is fairly complete and accurate. What I won’t be covering here is changes that only apply to the backend and don’t impact users at all. I’ll go through section-by-section of the Display Guidelines.

Also, In case you’re wondering why I keep capitalizing “Tweet” in this post, it’s because that is also required by the Display Guidelines. I know, I know: ugh.

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UPDATE: Saurik emailed me about thirteen hours after this post when live and told me that he had read my suggestion to add a similar service to Cydia. Effective immediately, all cydia.saurik.com links will include a button to open the tweak/theme in Cydia when viewed on the iPhone. To try this out for yourself, tap here on your iOS device.

The post below is being left intact for archival purposes. I guess I should also mention that I planned to turn this into an affiliate system where you would be able to post links that contained a special code and you’d get Google Adsense revenue from each time someone viewed the “This will open Cydia” page. Oh well, guess that won’t happen now.

The original post is below the page break. Continue reading →

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg said that the biggest mistake Facebook made was using HTML5 for their iOS app instead of native Objective-C. While it’s probably true that this was the biggest mistake they made, it’s not actually the reason Facebook for iPhone is so bad. Even the new all-native app is bad. It has nothing to do with the code that makes up the app, though.

In fact, HTML5 itself is not inherently evil. The Instagram app uses some HTML5 on the iPhone, and you can hardly tell. Instagram is a fairly well-built app that works like it should (and coincidentally was recently bought by Facebook).

The problem is not HTML5. The solution is not native code. The problem is that Facebook was designed for a desktop browser, while Instagram was designed to be used primarily on a phone. Every feature that Facebook has rolled out has been rooted in the desktop paradigm. Porting them to mobile devices has made them cumbersome and painful to use.

Look at Twitter as another example. Twitter was always primarily used on mobile devices. Initially it was based on SMS messaging, but eventually evolved to include mobile clients. The thing is, desktop clients for Twitter tend to be based on mobile clients. That’s because mobile devices are the primary way people use Twitter. The interface of the website, desktop apps, and mobile clients all reflect this. They all (mostly) look good on a mobile device.

The problem with the Facebook app is not that it was written in HTML5 at some point. The problem with the Facebook app is that it’s attempting to take the entire Facebook experience—which is designed for desktop devices—and shove it into a mobile interface. It just doesn’t work.

Please stop complaining about the iPhone 5 name. There is no reason for Apple to drop the number and call it “the new iPhone” at all. Consumers want to be able to differentiate between models. Especially when multiple models are being sold simultaneously.

There’s this stupid graphic floating around the internet showing the iPhone generations all lined up next to each other, numbers 1-5, with the iPhone 4S being number 5. It’s stupid and dumb and I hate it. Let me explain why this is the proper name for the phone.

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In case you missed it, former Gizmodo contributor @Mat Honan’s Twitter, email, and iCloud accounts were all hacked a few days ago, leading to @Gizmodo‘s Twitter also being under the hacker’s control. Mat noted on Twitter that while he had originally believed the hackers had guessed or hacked his password, he later found out that they actually called Apple tech support claiming to be him and got his password reset. After that, they used “forgot my password” links on Twitter and other sites to have password reset emails sent to his iCloud email address, which they now controlled. Then they used Find My iPhone to remote-wipe his computer, iPhone, and iPads. He didn’t bother keeping a backup of his computer and lost several years’ worth of data.

I’m going to teach you how to learn from his mistakes avoid becoming the next Mat Honan.

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Yesterday I emailed iTunes (actually the Mac App Store) support to try and get something straightened out with my copy of iLife. Their responses were polite and VERY quick. Also, they were incredibly enthusiastic. Like, too enthusiastic. Check these replies out.

Initial response to my support ticket:

Hi Mike,

Good day! Thank you for contacting iTunes Store Support. I’m [Name] and it’s a great pleasure to assist you with your concern.

I understand that you would want to convert your iLife DVD apps to App Store version. I know how eager you must be to have this issue resolved. Rest assured that I will do everything I can to assist you with this.

Mike, in order to make sure this was thoroughly investigated I contacted a senior advisor regarding your case. We would like to advised you that only apps purchased on the Mac App Store can be updated or accepted through the Mac App Store. Apps that were purchased at retail stores or websites cannot be updated via the Mac App Store. Apps purchased from the Mac App Store cannot be updated using the Apple Software Update feature in Mac OS X.

When a new update is available for an app you’ve purchased on the Mac App Store, the icon for the Updates pane at the top of the Mac App Store changes to indicate the number of updates available. These updates can be downloaded and installed through the Updates pane of the Mac App Store, free of charge.

Thank you for understanding this matter. If you have any other questions and concerns regarding this matter, please feel free to email me back. Thank you for choosing the iTunes Store. I hope you have a fantastic day!

Sincerely,

[Name]
iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

I love the part where they know how “eager” I must be to have my problem solved. I’ve never gotten an email like this from Apple before. Usually they’re short and polite, but they’ve never automatically assumed I’m eager to have my issue resolved. It’s not bad, just unexpected.

Click here to read the rest of the emails

If you’ve been alive in the past five years, you’ve definitely heard of Apple’s iOS App Store. If you aren’t into modifying your iPhone, you may not have heard of Cydia, an App Store alternative for software that Apple would never allow because it changes how the actual operating system functions to add or change features.

I’ve been using the App Store since it was created. I’ve also been using the Cydia Store (the paid section of the Cydia app) since it was launched. Over the years, I’ve come to trust the Cydia Store a lot more than the App Store. That’s not just because the software available in Cydia can do things the App Store apps can’t. It’s about more than that. Let me explain…

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Brewster is a new contact management app for the iPhone. It’s got a nice interface that kind of looks like Microsoft’s Metro design and Square. Unfortunately, good looks aren’t all that make an app, and Brewster suffers from some big UX and privacy issues.

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A lot of people had this dumb idea in their head that Apple would be announcing a new iPhone at WWDC this year. Not sure why, but that somehow became a popular opinion. It obviously wasn’t going to happen, but nonetheless, people seemed to genuinely to believe that Apple would screw over iPhone 4S buyers by releasing a phone so quickly. Today I got to thinking that maybe Apple pushed the iPhone 4S back to the fall so that they could use the summer for announcing Mountain Lion, and suddenly everything made sense.

This is the update cycle Apple is sticking with this year. At the beginning of the year, the iPad got an update. Next, the Mac notebook lineup was updated in the summer. OS X will also be updated in the summer. Finally, the new iPhone is widely expected to launch around the same time the iPhone 4S did last year, in the fall.

If you think about why they would update those products at that time, you’ll realize there’s a very good reason for it. I’ll explain all on after the break.

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