After 16 years on the App Store, Twitterrific maker The IconFactory has announced the app is no longer being updated.

Last week, Twitterrific and other third-party applications suddenly lost access to the Twitter API for no apparent reason. After days of silence, Twitter finally admitted that the change had been deliberate, explaining that it was following its own long-standing policies.

As of that time, nobody in the development community, not even The IconFactory, knew which guidelines had been reportedly breached. There is now apparently no turning back for applications like Twitterrific after new guidelines were added to its developer documentation.

A game-changing mobile app

Developer Sean Heber confirmed Twitterrific’s demise in a blog post, where he reflected on the app’s history as the pioneering desktop and mobile Twitter client. The software was also groundbreaking since it was released on the App Store quite early on.

However, Twitter’s third-party app developers deserve a lot of credit, despite the company’s denials. And much more so on Twitter.

Heber argues that Twitterrific “helped redefine the term “tweet” in the dictionary,” and he goes on to state that the Twitterrific image became so well-known that Twitter adopted the blue bird design as its own.

Twitter has disabled Twitterrific by removing access to the API it relies on. As a result, developers like The Iconfactory may run into issues with refunds.

Finally, Heber asks Twitterrific for iOS subscribers to think twice before petitioning Apple for a refund, explaining that the developer will get the cash instead of Apple. Simply told, hundreds of returns would be disastrous for a tiny firm like ours.

For those who would rather not utilise the website, the official Twitter app is now their sole alternative. This is not the finest Twitter app for iPhone, but it is the only one I’ve found that is still functional.