Yeah, but that was then and this is now. Thinghs kinda settled down since then.
The real danger of opening the API and marking all tweets made through API as BOT is that this label looses impact if some alternative client that uses API raises to prominence.
I'd say that current setup where users have no indication that something might have been posted by bot is way more horrible.
That's horrible for users.
Twitter's iOS app is a third-party app they bought because it was so much better than their own at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweetie