
Facebook’s iPad App Has Been Done Since May, But They Won’t Release It - aaronbrethorst
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/facebook-ipad-app-saga/
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featherless
I want to clarify here that feature complete and "done" are two different
things. The app was not finished when it leaked and is still actively being
worked on.

I also really want to emphasize that my time at Facebook was incredible and my
reasons for moving on were remarkably complex, none having to do with any
dislike for Facebook or ill feelings. The number of hours I put into the
project were out of genuine passion for the product, not because anyone was
forcing me to do so.

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marcomonteiro
How is this going to affect Three20 or your work on Nimbus? I'm really looking
forward to seeing Nimbus develop as I've been fairly frustrated with Three20
so far. Best of luck on the new job and thank you for your contributions to
the iOS community.

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featherless
Three20 is mostly in a bug-fixes only state right now. The fact is that the
framework is complex enough that the cost of adding a new feature often
outweighs the benefit. This is the main reason why I've decided to start anew
with Nimbus and so far the progress has been really great.

Going forward I'm planning to dedicate a chunk of my mornings to working on
Nimbus, splitting my time between going over pull requests and building new
features. I love building tools to accelerate the development process of other
iOS developers and plan to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.

~~~
marcomonteiro
I'm definitely watching it and hope I can contribute in some way to the
project.

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atmz
The lack of a Facebook app for the iPhone hurts Apple more than it hurts
Facebook, in my opinion. Facebook has a near-monopoly in feature-rich social
networks (yes, the specifier was inserted to discount Twitter, but I believe
Twitter has a very different market/userbase from Facebook and isn't in direct
competition; I'd be happy to argue about it) and its most threatening
competitor, Google+, probably isn't going to have a native app for iOS anytime
soon.

In addition, a native app will make it actually harder for users to run
Facebook apps; apps that require micropayments will be especially problematic
within Apple's framework.

Is the user goodwill from releasing an iPad app worth potentially driving
users away from Facebook apps? Probably not. Apple, on the other hand, lives
and dies by user experience.

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flocial
Techcrunch seems to relish in taking a little bit of fact and embellishing it
with enough drama and politics. Now when the developer in question tries to
correct it he looks like he was pressured into backing off.

Facebook's iOS app has been buggy for some time. There's no reason to justify
a delay unless Apple blocks them so it's plausible that management is
interfering in some way.

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ltamake
> Techcrunch seems to relish in taking a little bit of fact and embellishing
> it with enough drama and politics

Welcome to the press...

And I agree, Facebook's app is bloody awful. Crashes randomly, sometimes
doesn't load for unspecified reasons, and it randomly logs me out and forces
me to log back in.

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ChrisLTD
Normally I don't think companies should focus on making tablet specific
versions of their site (normal desktop pages work just fine), but Facebook
relies too heavily on Javascript for the limited power of today's tablets.

Edit: I have an iPad version 1

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msh
Huh? Fb works just fine in my iPad browser (except for the flash games, but
that's not related to java script).

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ChrisLTD
The AJAX content loads were slow, the action buttons were too small and easy
to hit by mistake, and I don't recall pinching and zooming being smooth
either.

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msh
I have a iPad 2, maybe that does the speed difference, I don't have speed
issues and pinch to zoom is smooth.

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daniellicht
For any UW students out there he's from University of Waterloo Velocity.

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Angostura
From the article:

"The Facebook iPhone app is the most downloaded app of all time."

Is this really true? I don't recall seeing it at the top of the charts.

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joehewitt
It's rarely at #1, but it has been a permanent fixture in the top 20, while
most other apps are only on the chart for a short time. That adds up.

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ja27
What is Facebook's plan for credits? I rarely even remember that they're
there. Does anyone use them?

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timluckow
Definitely just waiting until iOS5...

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stfu
Facebook's new corporate statement should be "Let's be evil".

