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Facebook and YouTube Apps Updated With iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Support

uplusd said:
text is way too small on the fb app... smaller than apple's own apps.. yet messenger is fine
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Glad I'm not the only one. I was thinking maybe it just looked smaller since it had been so large but I think it is quite a bit smaller than it should be. Maybe we'll see an adjustment in future updates.
 
Change notification sound?

Can anyone tell me if they updated the facebook app to let you change the notification sound? I hope more third party app makers start doing thing since its uber annoying to not be able to do this.

I was hoping to not want to jailbreak if I buy an iphone but there seems to be a few little tweaks that I like that would necessitate a jailbreak :(
 
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kilcher said:
Glad I'm not the only one. I was thinking maybe it just looked smaller since it had been so large but I think it is quite a bit smaller than it should be. Maybe we'll see an adjustment in future updates.
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I hope they don't change it or give people a choice cause I LOVE the text with the new update. It looks really nice and clean. What's the point of updating the app for the new iPhone 6 Resolution if your just gonna make the text massive.
 
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Well...

Looks like some Facebook Release Notes could be:
NewsFeed and Messages icons are slightly rounded.
The Requests icon now has a Man BEHIND the woman...previous was opposite
Notifications now shows some of Africa
Camera lens is smaller. and has a dot on the camera

Seriously though I wish Facebook would remove the Messages tab...it doesn't work. just put a notification blip

Also, I won't be downloading the new Messages App until the main FB app stops screwing things up. like I always click Most Recent. then two days later when I hit Most Recent it shows me (at the top) status from 2,3 or even 5 days later that people haven't JUST liked or commented on but are showing as "new" in my Most Recent. WHY????


ok, that's al.
 
mattlqx said:
Releasing a version of an application on a mobile platform should be the same non-event that it is on the web and ever slowly, inch by inch, we are making progress to that goal.
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Key word being "should".

Except in the real world, app updates often make things worse. Facebook is the poster boy for that.

I understand the reasoning behind not doing detailed release notes. But I never do an app update without first reading the reviews and seeing if the developers hosed something in the latest version. And for this reason I have tons of apps that I have intentionally not updated, some still on versions years old. Facebook I'm actually fairly up to date right now but that's mainly because the app is so bad I can't imagine it getting much worse so I take the plunge. But I'd definitely go back to the last version that had certain features if I could.
 
mattlqx said:
Full disclosure: I'm Facebook employee on the Release Engineering team.

Release notes are a contentious topic. While some people would very much like us to describe every one of the thousands of changes that go into our mobile applications each and every release, the plain fact is that is just impossible.

Many changes are under the hood for performance and bug fixes. Many changes are trivial (moved button X over Y pixels). I know you're probably not looking for that level of detail (some are though). You're probably most concerned with "what are the new features in the app that I may want to check out?". That is equally hard to spell out into release notes.

Why is that? For one thing, features typically don't release broadly to everyone at once. There's no point in putting in a release note for a feature that you can't yet use. We do this for scaling and quality reasons, it's a fundamental part of Facebook. If small scale tests of something new go smoothly, we release a feature more widely in a controlled way. Releasing new things to the many hundreds of millions of people that use our mobile apps is a methodic process.

Beyond that, there are logistical hurdles too. Release notes need to be approved and translated into *dozens* of languages. But before you can even get to that step, you need to write what the actual release notes are. This takes a lot of time away from a release manager that should be more concerned with what bugs are blocking the release than with collecting bullet points for notes that a vast majority of people don't care about anyway. And with dozens of new features (some large, but mostly small) each release and a limited number of characters to express what has changed, which features should make the cut? How should they be described in a flat text space? Do you really want a simple text description to be your first impression of a feature?

Ultimately, we can express new features far better with walkthroughs also known as NUXs. These dialogs can allow you to control whether you want to enable a new feature, explain what value the feature aims to give you, show you how to use it. None of these things can be accomplished by putting a blurb in the App Store release notes.

Also think about this, do you look for release notes when you go to a website? How do you know what's changed there? Are you bothered by that? Many major websites do frequent pushes of a large number of changes. Facebook pushes dozens to hundreds of changes to the main website twice a day, every weekday. Releasing a version of an application on a mobile platform should be the same non-event that it is on the web and ever slowly, inch by inch, we are making progress to that goal.

Release notes are useful for small applications with a few changes each release but are useless for large, complex applications with hundreds of developers. We're not trying to keep secrets from you. There are just simply better ways of telling you what's interesting when those features are ready for you.
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Come on dude, the only thing less trustworthy would be...hang on...I'll get there.

Many people would argue it's just a new strategy to remove bad reviews by releasing "updates" without actually disclosing what they do.

How accurate is the "active now", "last active x amount" on the mobile app and mobile site?
 
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rockhopper353 said:
Press the options icon in the corner then quality icon and set 1080p.
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Thanks for the reply, but I already tried that. Max I can choose is 720P. I am on Wi-Fi too as I know can't stream HD over 3G / 4G
 

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I find Facebook's "Paper" app to be better than the main Facebook app. I prefer the one-at-a-time viewing of each item in my feed.

However, neither app supports landscape mode :( On my iPhone 6, I'm considering using the mobile web version because of this.
 
jarrodg said:
How come I can't watch videos on YouTube in full HD? Max is 720p when I know the videos I want to watch are offered in 1080P?
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Can you even notice a difference between 1080 and 720 on a phone or iPad? I sure can't.
 
mattlqx said:
Full disclosure: I'm Facebook employee on the Release Engineering team.

Release notes are a contentious topic. While some people would very much like us to describe every one of the thousands of changes that go into our mobile applications each and every release, the plain fact is that is just impossible.
Click to expand...

Thank you for this detailed overview of how Facebook handles release notes. It goes a long way to possibly explaining why Apple's release notes are also so sparse.

I do think that not mentioning the major changes is a mistake. If translations take a long time, then find a better process for handling that. Don't leave out change notes altogether. The percentage of people that find the notes helpful may be small, but with millions of users, that's still a LOT of people.

As for NUXs, I find those very annoying and immediately dismiss them. They are too in-your-face when you just want to start using the app. A balance between release notes and NUXs (not one or the other) would be a far better approach, in my opinion.
 
While I understand the new iPhones just came out last, my impatience has me saying... about #*&#*& time!!

But seriously, happy to see more apps adopting the new screen. :) I can finally see cat pictures, wedding photos and baby photos in glorious HD. :rolleyes:
 
What is the point of the "Messages" tab in the app? Apple should reject this app for its non-functional Messages tab along with the Facebook Message App for being redundant. If Facebook doesn't give a darn when its customers dislike pointlessly stupid changes, maybe they'll listen when Apple smacks them with app rejections.

Not sure whether Facebook or Apple would stand to lose more if this happened and neither budged...
 
I downloaded the Facebook "update" to take a look. I see they decided to take advantage of the larger screen by making the text smaller for some reason. But the part I hate the most, and the reason I use Safari for Facebook now, is that the first post at the very top of my News Feed is from Monday afternoon and it is now Wednesday afternoon. Simple chronological order cannot seriously be too much to ask for. Is this the Twilight Zone or something? Are we all insane for wanting to see our News Feed in order and Zuck is the sane one?
 
Wow, I am with you that are saying the font is too small, that is tiny! At first I thought maybe my eyes had just adjusted to the larger font but compared to other apps it is really small.

On a positive front, the black screens have stopped! Yeah!
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
What is the point of the "Messages" tab in the app? Apple should reject this app for its non-functional Messages tab
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Absolutely, no small developer would get away with an app as badly broken as this. Coupled with the bug where it show posts in the wrong order and 'forgets' that you chose "most recent" every time you close it, the app offers a significantly worse experience than simply going to facbook.com in Safari.

Off to the app store to rate this 1 star, yet again.
 
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Imory said:
Many people would argue it's just a new strategy to remove bad reviews by releasing "updates" without actually disclosing what they do.

How accurate is the "active now", "last active x amount" on the mobile app and mobile site?
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Reviews will come in no matter what, especially for an app as widely used as Facebook. And really it doesn't matter to them how good or bad the reviews are ultimately as people will either get the app because they need it or want it or they won't, with reviews often not playing that much of a role for that many people (at least on a percentage level) when it comes to a largely used app like Facebook.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
What is the point of the "Messages" tab in the app? Apple should reject this app for its non-functional Messages tab along with the Facebook Message App for being redundant. If Facebook doesn't give a darn when its customers dislike pointlessly stupid changes, maybe they'll listen when Apple smacks them with app rejections.

Not sure whether Facebook or Apple would stand to lose more if this happened and neither budged...
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That's an interesting point. I wonder if the Messanger button in the Facebook app would fall under this restriction: App Store Review Guidelines 2.14 Apps that are intended to provide trick or fake functionality that are not clearly marked as such will be rejected.

Does the Messenger button within the Facebook app that clearly looks like other buttons that function only within the app "trick" users?
 
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