

Here’s why the Facebook iOS app is so bad (UIWebViews and no Nitro) - dirkdk
http://blog.mobtest.com/2012/05/heres-why-the-facebook-ios-app-is-so-bad-uiwebviews-and-no-nitro/

======
luke_s
As an Android user, I can assure you the android facebook app is just as bad,
if not worse. It seems the cross platfom support allows the same horrible
issues to exist on all devices. For example I see the same buggy timeline [1]
that he shows, on an almost daily basis.

I'm sure FB could increase their engagement by having a better mobile app.
Often I want to see what my friends are up to, but just give up in frustration
after waiting literally minutes for the timeline to display. I guess with such
a large market share, they see no need to improve.

[1] - [http://blog.mobtest.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/facebook-...](http://blog.mobtest.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/facebook-buggy-timeline-200x300.png)

~~~
SCdF
The performance is beyond terrible.

I have a Galaxy S, which is not the fastest phone in the world, but if I get a
notification that someone has commented on my post or something, it can
literally take _minutes_ for the FB app to:

\- Start when I click the notification

\- Replace the pointless blank screen with my timeline (not that I wanted
that, I wanted the notification) and the now-red notification bar

\- After tapping the notification icon in the FB app (the second time I've now
indicated I want to read the notification) watching the little bubble appear
and wait for it to be populated with notifications

\- Once it's populated, tap the notification I want (3rd indication now), and
wait for that page to load.

Each of these on a 3G NZ mobile network can take 10s of seconds to complete.
All the while I can't use my phone for anything else, or indeed let the screen
go black and lock, because that will often drop me out of the particular step
I'm up to (this may be more my phone than fb, I'm not sure of the internals).

Thinking purely as a user and ignoring the technical issues, there is
something very wrong somewhere when it takes a few seconds to start a youtube
video streaming but it takes a minute to view my friends 6 word sardonic reply
to my kitten picture.

~~~
freehunter
The FB app experience is pretty awful on Windows Phone as well. Made tolerable
only because there's a better app built into the contacts list (as part of the
Me panel). One thing I really miss is being able to Like comments on a post
(can only like the post) and being able to see who liked a comment (can only
see that someone did).

The FB app on WebOS was bloody perfect. So many things WebOS did right... I
miss that platform.

------
marknutter
Wait, the Facebook app is bad? I honestly hadn't noticed these nitpicks until
I read the article, and even now they don't really bother me. I'm convinced
that the only people who can tell and even care about the performance
difference between Path and Facebook's native apps are software developers. My
wife was using the web version of Facebook's mobile app for months before she
discovered she could download the app, and she's never complained about
either.

If I'm right and most people don't care, then it's a huge win to mix in HTML
when convenient for the same reasons mentioned in the very article this thread
is linked to that's lambasting Facebook's app.

~~~
iamgilesbowkett
"I'm convinced that the only people who can tell and even care about the
performance difference between Path and Facebook's native apps are software
developers...most people don't care"

the story you're commenting on presents evidence which contradicts what you're
saying. unless you count a brief introductory paragraph, it is literally the
first point they make.

the article says that the app has nearly 12K one-star reviews and an average
of 2 stars, indicating that people don't like the app. the writing is not 100%
clear, but it appears to be saying that the app only has a little over 21K
reviews total, which means more than half of all reviews for the app are one-
star reviews.

how could you possibly square this information with your belief that most
people don't care? they counted the number of people who care and not only are
there thousands of them, but more than 50% of the reviews are as negative as
it is possible for a review to be.

seriously, dude, "people hate it" is the first point this article makes, and
it does so with plenty of compelling evidence.

~~~
codeka
The 21k reviews is for "this version" -- there's actually nearly 2 million
reviews for "all versions" with an average of 4 stars.

The Android app has 3.2 million reviews (averaging 3.6 stars - 600,000 or so
are 1 star).

So it doesn't seem as bad when you consider "all versions" instead of just
"this version". I wonder if it's a matter of more tech-savvy people reviewing
the newer versions when they come out? Or it could just be that the app really
is getting much, much worse with every release...

~~~
RandallBrown
The app used to be all native objective-c. It was actually pretty good. They
made a switch to make their different platforms share more code and be more
consistent with each other and quality took a HUGE nosedive.

~~~
codeka
Ah I see, that would explain it.

Personally, I'm waiting for them to fix contact sync on Android ICS. That's
the only reason I have the app installed...

~~~
ChrisClark
They stated they would never do that though. Because that will allow you to
export emails from Facebook to Gmail. Facebook said they are protecting you by
not letting you export them to Google. Never mind the fact you can do that to
Yahoo with the click of a button.

The sync worked before because Google allowed them to use a special API to
allow them to show contacts on your phone without actually syncing them to
your account (removing the Facebook app removed the contacts)

------
nicholassmith
Lets cast our minds back to when Heelys were popular and iOS had opened the
app store, everyone collectively held their breath for the Facebook app. And
it was good. In fact it was a shining light of why native apps were so good,
it was smooth and fluid. There was bugs, it was a new thing without a lot of
time in the field but they improved with every version.

Skip forward 3 years and remove Joe Hewitt, in an attempt to simply their
development portfolio the Facebook app is everything it shouldn't be. It's
slow, it's glitchy, occasionally when you tap something it'll decide that
you've requested something completely different. At the end of the day a
company needs to simplify development eventually, but not at the expense of
crippling their application.

------
progolferyo
Although I agree with the Facebook App sucking (and seeming to get worse and
worse), I do feel like the article is a bit misguided. I don't give 100% blame
to UIWebView and no-Nitro simply because the entire way Facebook has developed
the mobile app has been hacky and misguided.

The code itself is poorly designed, the API's are all over the place, there
are inconsistencies everywhere and the performance is clearly lacking. On the
flip side, take a loop at the LinkedIn app for iPhone. It's super slick, easy
to use but still has a ton of features and the performance is far better. Yes,
it's not as slick as Path but its miles ahead of the Facebook app.

So if I were Facebook, I'd rely a bit less on the 100% platform agnostic
approach, take it back a bit and build the things that make sense cross-
platform with HTML and build the parts separately that make sense to build
using native code. This approach to me accomplishes much of the same cross
platform success without creating such a crappy and laggy app.

~~~
dirkdk
yes, the new LinkedIn app on the iPad is gorgeous, performs really well and
apparently is mostly made out of HTML5. They use local storage to cache data,
FB app does not do that. [http://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-
ipad-using-l...](http://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-ipad-using-
local-storage-snappy-mobile-apps)

------
outworlder
The question is: why even bother, when they have the mobile HTML version?

Probably just to cross a bullet point somewhere. Still, with their warchest,
they could easily dump money on a small company and get it over with. At least
something basic, but usable.

Say, timeline plus chat.

~~~
m0nastic
As far as I know, you still can't upload pictures from the web browser, so you
need a native app to interact with photos.

~~~
stuartjmoore
They have a very well hidden email upload feature.

------
bherms
I have always assumed they don't put the time/engineering into the mobile apps
because it is much harder to monetize. Where do you stick the ads so that they
don't completely ruin the experience? Nowhere, that's where. Why provide an
app that draws people away from your web app (the one covered in ads) when you
can frustrate them and keep them where you can monetize?

~~~
diminish
Using mobile app just once, they are able to access your phone contacts. I
guess that is enough reason for them.

------
skeletonjelly
Some relevant interesting threads on reddit by the devs for Facebook for
Android

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/h7nx1/we_are_the_de...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/h7nx1/we_are_the_dev_team_for_facebook_for_android_help/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n5my6/we_are_the_de...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n5my6/we_are_the_dev_team_for_facebook_for_android_help/)

------
kristofferR
"there are no other iOS FB apps out there" is completely wrong actually, there
are tons of alternative Facebook apps. Most were created mainly because of
Facebooks' long delay in creating the iPad app. However, they're all worse
than the official app though.

~~~
dirkdk
well any that would be good enough to rival FB's own app :)

------
mvkel
"why it's bad," followed by great reasons FOR it.

~~~
Fizzer
Most of the reasons they presented for it were reasons that benefited the
developer, not the user. I assume the headline is referring to why it's bad
for the user.

~~~
dirkdk
yep, that's the issue. with all technology you have to balance the pros and
cons for the user and developer. Path took 100 % the user as focus point,
Facebook a bit more the developer

~~~
gurkendoktor
iOS developers are certainly expensive. But if you have to balance 500 million
users and a single development team, I don't think anything less than 100% on
the user makes sense.

------
filmgirlcw
I was always under the impression that the delay in push notifications (which
you also see with Twitter for iOS, even in the Tweetie era) was a result of
NoSQL databases used for notification points. I know Facebook is MySQL, but it
would make sense that they might use a non-traditional database for push
points.

------
gte910h
Nitro is available in UIWebViews now.

[http://www.theprintlabs.com/with-ios5-the-faster-nitro-
javas...](http://www.theprintlabs.com/with-ios5-the-faster-nitro-javascript-
engine-comes-to-the-uiwebview-used-in-html5-magazines/)

~~~
Xuzz
That post is incorrect, from what I can tell. Home screen shortcuts to "web
apps" that hide the Safari UI (which are actually run in the hidden "Web.app"
application) now have Nitro with iOS 5, but App Store apps do not. This is
because a JIT requires memory to be both writable and executable, which is not
generally allowed on iOS (without specific permissions that only Apple can
use).

~~~
bryne
Yes (the article is incorrect). Native apps (that aren't Safari) don't have
JIT.

------
ZenPsycho
I use flipboard to read and post on facebook. It's divine.

------
saket123
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobi...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobile_was_designed_to_write_once_run.php)

This was how app was designed. With so many technologies involved things are
bound to go wrong

~~~
dirkdk
never seen that piece, thanks!

~~~
saket123
After reading that, I felt they are over engineering a app which would run on
small screens and slow networks. They could have easily waited a couple of
years more to slowly build this in and in meanwhile do a native app like G+ is
doing

