
Introducing Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram Windows Apps - asp2insp
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/04/introducing-facebook-messenger-and-instagram-windows-apps/
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mwcampbell
The real story here is that now we know what Osmeta, the stealth startup
Facebook acquired a few years ago, has been up to. Look inside the
installation directory for the Messenger app, and you'll find that it's using
an iOS compatibility layer. Unfortunately, that's bad news in terms of
accessibility for blind users, at least in its current form; this thing isn't
firing any focus events. But I'm sure that can be fixed.

Edit: I referred to the Messenger app, but the same applies to the Facebook
app. The Messenger app was just the one I looked at first.

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Gorbzel
It it doing binary compatibility with iOS apps or just some cross-compilation
approach?

Don't have access to a Windows machine and if this is the mentality behind
getting apps on the platform, not sure there's any reason to change that.

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mwcampbell
The iOS APIs were reimplemented on Windows. The binaries are DLLs, with a few
small EXEs as entry points, but the filenames make it obvious what's going on.

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tluyben2
I did that for running iOS apps on Android; just recompile with another dll
and the app works. It's not perfect but allows fast delivery for those clients
who start with iOS and then don't really want to invest in Android (at that
time) which, at least here, most of them.

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MiddleEndian
Remember when all the major IM platforms supported xmpp and you could just use
pidgin/adium/trillian/your client of choice for everything at once?

That was a fantastic time...

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JBReefer
I remember it as a bunch of applications that supported half of the standards,
were buggy, and had clunky fits-none-well UX

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lj3
I feel that way about every windows and linux app, though. Adium on OS X was
brilliantly designed. And if you didn't like the design, there were tons of
skins for it.

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aaronbrethorst
Skinning support != user experience.

That said, Adium is one of the best designed OSS apps I've used.

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dmix
Adium OTR on the other-hand had a really bad UX. So I'm happy
TextSecure/Signal figured that out.

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electic
This is exactly what I needed. Now I have a Telegram, HipChat, Slack, Skype,
and now FB apps. I think my computer is complete.

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hengheng
Time for the next Trilian/Adium/Pidgin.

~~~
Pxtl
I was a Miranda fan myself. Simple, clean native windows UI. Alternately,
Winphone 7 had great twitter/fb integration for contacts, feed, and IM. I'd
love to see somebody make that happen again.

~~~
juliand
Oh I remember miranda. Good old times.

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sirkneeland
Shame they're rolling out separate Windows 10 desktop and Windows 10 phone
Facebook apps. One would think this would have been a great opportunity for a
high profile example of how to do a Universal Windows Platform app.

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lewisl9029
Curious if these were built with the recently revealed React Native for UWP:
[https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/04/13/react-
nati...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/04/13/react-native-on-
the-universal-windows-platform/)

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takno
What does a Facebook app offer over just giving the website notification
permissions in Chrome or Firefox?

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gkoberger
Personally, I like being able to Cmd+tab to commonly-used chat apps. Really
hard to have a conversation (while doing other stuff) when you have to Cmd+tab
to Chrome, and then find the tab.

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Pxtl
In general is there a good browser extension or something for a "browser chat
tab" that you keep open and don't want to manage as a normal browser
tab/window? With a pulse-on-change feature?

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jmiserez
Chrome->File->Create Application shortcut does this. Or is that not what
you're looking for?

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kyriakos
Unfortunately they chose to make Instagram a phone-only app. I don't
understand why Instagram ignores non-phone devices.

~~~
Freak_NL
This looks like a trend for certain types of services that focus on users
active predominantly on a tablet and/or smartphone. I am assuming that these
services usually turn a profit via monetisation of advertising 'eyeballs' or
user data acquisition and sales, and that losing a small percentage of users
who want to use their service with a browser are less profitable.

WhatsApp seems similar in that regard.

I am not particularly interested in these apps, but I am starting to see a
disturbing pattern where parts of the internet are being segregated by
operating system and the willingness to install and run software (apps)
instead of accessing on-line services with a web browser or via open protocols
(e.g., IMAP or XMPP).

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newscracker
Putting my highly pessimistic privacy hat on, this gives (and has the
potential to give) Facebook a lot more information than a web browser would:

* The ability to serve ads without being blocked by a browser based ad-blocker.

* The ability to use its own web view to open web pages and have more tracking of the user's activities.

* Read through all the browser histories and caches that exist on the system to get a good picture of what the user does online.

* Read email files (if not encrypted) on the system to get more information about who the user corresponds with, subjects, etc.

* Read the entire filesystem and probably upload interesting looking file metadata on to their servers for analysis.

* Read what other applications are in use, at what times, for how long they retain focus, etc., building a (somewhat) complete profile of how the user spends time while one of the FB apps _is not_ in focus.

* Get to know all the locations the user uses the computer at and also get more information about the networks (wired or wireless) that the user uses.

* Is a key logger possible with an application on Windows 10???

* Perhaps many more things I've missed...

The above points are slightly similar to what the smartphone apps already have
(although the privileges vary across smartphone OSes and versions - not
everything applies to all of them).

It would seem strange for anyone who cares about privacy but needs to use
Facebook (yes, that sounds like an oxymoron) to use an official app from a
privacy breaking company instead of a browser with extensions to thwart
tracking and to block ads.

In the interest of all of humankind, I can only hope these apps get neglected
by the users, get abandoned and die a quick death!

P.S.: All the points above apply to any program you run on your computer, but
these points become more disturbing when it's related to a company like
Facebook.

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satysin
These new apps are UWP based so a lot of things, such as access to the whole
file system, running processes, etc. is not possible as the app is sandboxed.

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newscracker
Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't aware of this. This makes things better
on several points I listed.

