Twitter released a god awful update to their iPad app today. Some brilliant engineer decided that it was wise to dump all its tablet friendly features. Why not make it exactly like the iPhone app but add a nice 3D cube effect? Oh, and it's useless for people like me who have multiple accounts. The handy tool bar at the side, that lets you quickly navigate, is now gone. It's replaced instead with the same "switch accounts" menu in the iPhone version.

So what do you do when an app maker releases a bad update. If you're like me, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have a bad habit of not backing up my iPad. I have committed tech's greatest sin, I know. Thanks to iCloud, it's not something I have to consider. All my important information is stored there. Apps? They hog a lot of space on my laptop. If they're large in size and I don't use them that often, they get stored on there. The others don't. So I have no way of reverting back to the old, functional Twitter app I loved so dearly.

What sort of devilry is this?

Installous to the rescue. The infamous repository for pirating iOS apps. Welcome to the seedy underbelly of jailbreaking. If you're not a pirate, it's good for two things. Apps that have been pulled from the official store can usually be found there. It also tends to carry multiple versions of popular apps. Don't like Twitter 5.0? You can still get Twitter 4.0 and get your beloved tool bar back. It's still visiting the grey market, and still questionably legal, but it gives you at least one way around a bad app update.

To use Installous, you must jailbreak and add the app via Cydia. You can Google Installous to find the repository address. Since the app is mostly used for black market purposes, I will not share those links here.

Images courtesy of DomainGang and Twitter