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App piracy is obviously hurting developers and often puts a strain on customer support for those paid apps because developers have to spend time dealing with complaints from these software pirates when they are clearly not entitled to complain. Over the years, developers have come up with ways to discourage piracy and to identify pirated copies so they don’t have to waste their time. The most popular of which is disabling features. Tapbots, the company behind the popular Twitter app Tweetbot decided that pirated copies will automatically load up this text into the composition window and let people send them on their own. These are not automated text, these are voluntarily tweets sent by app pirates.
Tweetbot for Mac hits number two on the US Mac App Store
Tapbots finally launched Tweetbot for Mac on the Mac App Store around midnight last night Jakarta time. Sold for $20, the app is arguably rather expensive for a Twitter app since it costs the same as OS X Mountain Lion itself, but considering how elaborate, detailed, complete, and well polished it is as a Twitter client, it’s probably well worth the price for those looking for the best Twitter app on the OS X platform.
Tapbots knew that asking $20 for a Twitter app would be seen as ridiculous by many people so it preempted the questions and complaints about the price by publishing a blog post explaining the entire deal. Essentially the team lay the blame on Twitter for limiting the number of accounts that a third party app can use in its entire installed base. Tapbots even had to ask Twitter users who are using the beta release of the app to revoke permission so other people can download and use the app.
$20 may be very steep for a Twitter app but it seems necessary to deter those who would only use the app casually which means the app will go to those who are super enthusiastic about using Tweetbot for Mac for their Twitter experience. Macstories has a glowing review of the app.
Fortunately for Tapbots, this strategy seems to work rather well. There had been enough buyers in the last 14 hours or so to push the app to number two in the top grossing apps in the US Mac App Store, second only to Mountain Lion itself. Out of the top ten apps, eight are from Apple and sitting at number 10 is Omnigraffle Pro which sells for $200.
What does being number two on the top grossing list mean? It means Tweetbot for Mac has made more money than Apple’s latest versions of Final Cut Pro, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Logic Pro, iPhoto, and Aperture.
Twitter users running Tweetbot for Mac version 0.8.0 may be seeing their app timing out or refusing to launch today seemingly for no apparent reason. As it turns out, Tapbots has released version 0.8.1 of the beta release which doesn’t actually offer anything new in terms of features but perhaps as a maintenance update to replace the previous version which presumably expired today.
Version 0.8.1 has a creation date of September 26, 2012 and still does not allow existing users to add more accounts to the app, which the company is purposefully doing to prevent exhaustion of valuable user tokens. As it explains on the blog post, accounts that are removed from the app cannot be added back until the app is available from the Mac App Store.
For all intents and purposes, the app seems identical to v.0.8.0 and requires OS X 10.8.1.
A few days ago Tapbots had to remove its alpha release of Tweetbot for Mac to stem the influx of new users eating up its quota of users which was imposed by Twitter. It apparently also marked the end of the alpha program as on Saturday Tapbots released Tweetbot for Mac version 0.8.0, which it considers a beta.
While a lot of things were improved in this version, such as expanded keyboard navigation, there’s a catch, a rather inconvenient one. The beta version will not allow users to add accounts, so as to maintain it from growing too fast.
It’s not that Tapbots don’t want new users, it’s concerned about those who download the app and later abandon it, because these accounts will take valuable spots from those who actually want to use the app. Tweetbot will have account addition back but it won’t be until the app is in the App Store. If an account is removed from the beta version, it will not be usable on the app until then.
We’re pretty big fans of Tweetbot here on DailySocial and this whole situation with Twitter just doesn’t sit right with us. The recent changes to Twitter’s terms for third party developers is pretty damning so when Tapbots decided to go ahead with Tweetbot for Mac, we figured we might as well enjoy it while it lasts because it’s not gonna be for long. Sure, the Tapbots team announced that it is staying the course, but Twitter’s token limit on app users forced Tapbots to pull the app until they can start selling it on the Mac App Store. Somehow it seems that Tapbots might as well prepare a backup plan to alter the app to deliver streams from several different sources, not just from Twitter.
Despite what Twitter has announced, the folks at Tapbots are marching on with Tweetbot for Mac. The release of alpha 3 today adds the ability to split columns into their own windows which are dockable to create a multicolumn interface. This puts the app in direct competition with Twitter’s own TweetDeck in addition to the long-neglected Twitter for Mac. While this is perhaps the best Twitter app yet, you can sort of imagine Twitter’s executives sharpening their knives ready to cut access to its API from developers like Tapbots. The app can be downloaded for free here.
Tapbots releases public alpha of the long awaited Tweetbot for Mac
Despite the warnings and the ominous sign that Twitter is closing up its ecosystem to external developers, the team at Tapbots is going ahead with the Mac version of Tweetbot. When Twitter acquired Tweetie in 2010, Tapbots was in the middle of working on Tweetbot. The team then took a pause to assess the situation but eventually forged ahead and went on to develop the app that has since become one of the most beloved and popular apps among iOS users.
That blog post from 2010 seems eerily applicable today, with the recent announcement from Twitter and the release of Twitter’s latest mobile apps which no longer show which app is used to send individual tweets, but which a much more grim outlook. Since the official Mac app has been left alone for over a year as Twitter focuses on its revenue efforts and mobile apps, Tweetbot for Mac may have a chance of surviving but unfortunately it seems that it may not be too long before Twitter shuts down access to third party apps that replace their own.
