Twitter’s Shit Sandwich
I'm OK with requiring OAuth.  It's hard to trust third parties with data they collect themselves: see Sony and Gawker.  It's even harder to trust them with data that belongs to someone else: they might one-way-hash their own passwords, of course, but they can't do that to your Twitter password.  It's probably sitting in a database, cleartext, for every rogue employee or cracker to see.<p>Even if you don't care about someone having your credentials, you can't trust them not to intentionally or accidentally misuse your account.  The only way to trust a third party is to give them an account that can only perform the actions that you specify, and that's exactly what OAuth does.  Of course you have to use Twitter's site for that: that's where the trust comes from.<p>Anyway, I've used Android apps that pop open a web browser for the authentication part and then return you to the native app.  It's, by definition, not seamless... but it's not confusing or slow or difficult or annoying.  I imagine the experience is similar on iOS and Blackberry.  So I don't see a problem here: all I see is the ability for users to have better protection over their personal information.  That means they will be more willing to try your product, because the damage it can cause is limited.  Less risk, more opportunity for innovation.<p>Hardly a "shit sandwich".