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Facebook Recruiting Former Apple iPhone Engineers for Facebook Phone
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A lot of people, including me, were skeptical of the iPhone when it first came to light. It did not really contain anything that considered to be revolutionary, and my experience with touch screens was that they always sucked, no matter what. But I was wrong, Apple NAILED a touch only device in a way that no one else had ever done. The absolute fluid and sexy interface of the iPhone is what made it such a hit, in my opinion.
Android is a hit because it basically does what you can't already do with iOS, and that is what a good chunk of people are after.
Blackberry might as well just roll over and die at this point.
Windows phones are kinda cool again, the OS is pretty nice and slick, and it offers a much different user experience than iOS or Android, so it should be here for a good while.
A facebook phone would have to have something those other phones don't have in order to not immediatley fail at launch. Facebook certainly has the money and resources to create a great device, but I'm not sure they have the imagination to create a "new" experience. Simply having good hardware is not enough, and the OS will need to be different enough from the current big 3 yet still easy enough for average users to enjoy. Plus I can't imagine certain apps being available on a "facebook OS" phone. Google+ app for facebook? Seems counterintuitive to me.
Good luck, facebook, you have your work cut out for you. But I welcome any decent competition to the market.
Android is a hit because it basically does what you can't already do with iOS, and that is what a good chunk of people are after.
Blackberry might as well just roll over and die at this point.
Windows phones are kinda cool again, the OS is pretty nice and slick, and it offers a much different user experience than iOS or Android, so it should be here for a good while.
A facebook phone would have to have something those other phones don't have in order to not immediatley fail at launch. Facebook certainly has the money and resources to create a great device, but I'm not sure they have the imagination to create a "new" experience. Simply having good hardware is not enough, and the OS will need to be different enough from the current big 3 yet still easy enough for average users to enjoy. Plus I can't imagine certain apps being available on a "facebook OS" phone. Google+ app for facebook? Seems counterintuitive to me.
Good luck, facebook, you have your work cut out for you. But I welcome any decent competition to the market.
so.... exactly what tells you that? because the NYTimes piece certainly doesn't. Besides, it's not like the FB app makes tha whole phone crash, but rather the app crashes almost 30% of times while being accessed.
Personally, I'll go with the inflated ego explanation, plus an urge to justify the IPO cash. It's simply moronic.
If it's all about the software and FB can't make decent iOS apps, how do you think they'll be able to make a phone???
All-in-one is a predominant Apple's philosophy too (all-in-one iMacs and iTunes being just two examples) but you seem to be OK with that.
I think Zuckerburg needs to make things better with the current apps/website of Facebook. Simply put, Facebook could be much better and no, timeline is not better.
The current fb apps on android and iphone should be rewritten and the current app developers fired for making such lousy apps. It lags, hangs up, crashes, takes ages to load. While if I go to the Twitter app I get none of these things.
Zuckerburg making a phone isn't going to fix your company.
The current fb apps on android and iphone should be rewritten and the current app developers fired for making such lousy apps. It lags, hangs up, crashes, takes ages to load. While if I go to the Twitter app I get none of these things.
Zuckerburg making a phone isn't going to fix your company.
I am not sure Twitter and FB are quite comparable apps. Could there be a more trivial app than twitter (client side)?
That would be the dumbest move, ever; Force people to buy a FacePalm(tm) by dumbing down (even more) the apps that are available on other plaforms, or removing them altogether?
The backlash would be enormous and would make no business sense at all.
RTP.
hey, i didnt say it made sense, but its a possibility that it could happen.
There's a big difference between buying an entire company or division of a company (like Google did with Android), and just hiring some guys who used to work on product X. And Apple also had decades of experience in hardware design before the iPhone, whereas FB has none. Apple understands manufacturers, materials suppliers, transportation, supply chain, import/export, etc. FB has zero experience in this kind of design.
Yes, I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs had a good idea about what chips went into the iPhone. He was a control freak and a perfectionist, in addition to being fairly technical. Do you really think he didn't know which chips went in?
Do you really think he didn't know which chips went in?
Steve Jobs knew how to sell and he knew a lot about industrial design. But he never was an engineer or a technical person. Read "Revolution in the valley" if you want to hear anecdotes from people who worked with him on the Mac.
Everyone starts from somewhere. Apple had zero experience with making phones, antennas and retina displays. They hired all that talent.
It's not an uncommon situation.
There are a zillion places like Foxconn who will gladly take on manufacturing, materials, transportation, and import problems.
Heck, I've done consulting for multiple software projects that actually created a manufacturing subsidiary that lasted just long enough to build custom devices for deployment.
Yes, I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs had a good idea about what chips went into the iPhone. He was a control freak and a perfectionist, in addition to being fairly technical. Do you really think he didn't know which chips went in?
Sounds like you're mixing up Jobs with Woz.
Jobs had almost zero technical training or talent. He used others for those abilities.
He likely would've had a typical CEO's overview of what kinds of chips were needed, and how much they were paying for them from what companies.
well I would rather have limited functionality and it be reliable. My entire high school is moving to twitter simply because facebook is a hassle to post on the go. You can't say twitter is at all as unstable as facebook. On iOS anyway.
I have to admit it is scary when an advertising company has access to your phone your emails and everything else. This is one of the reason I have stayed away from android phones and gmail. I would love to use gmail but for the reason of privacy I have chose to stay with apples email service (i.e. @me.com). Now I am not saying that this is by all means safer that paper mail but I believe from the choices I have that Apple may be the safest
I really struggle to see how a Facebook phone would contend in the market.
But Mark, I have a great name for your new device
Buy an established smartphone name from, ohhh.... I don't know, someone like HP. Like Palm.
Get your marketing team to work on a catchy name, incorporating Facebook and Palm.
And here you have it. Your new phone: The FacePalm
I reckon we at Macrumors should henceforth refer to the Facebook phone as the FacePalm
RTP.
Seeing that Microsoft has invested heavily in Facebook, they should adopt a Microsoft-like naming scheme for their phones. They could have the FacePalm Live Home Edition, FacePalm Live Enterprise Edition, FacePalm Live Home Edition Lite, FacePalm Live Enterprise Server, FacePalm Live Server Home Edition, on and on, and guaranteed to be instantly recognizable and successful.
It worked great for Palm, should be even better for FB
Now that it's Facebook Inc., I know a more appropriate acronym for it than FB
Too funny. Anyone with an IQ of 20 can smell the desperation. Oh maybe on Wednesday we'll hear how they are going to compete with Space X and Telsa. I'm willing to bet the stock will dive even faster on this news....a nice 10% by the end of tomorrow. It's funny too how the stock inches up and up and then takes a major dump. As Gordon Gekko would say...Facebook is a dog with fleas.
Yeah, seeing Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, and T-Mobile vs Facebook will be great. Dang, too bad I can't short FB!
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Will the Facebook phone have all of the apps I enjoy on my iPhone? Or only 2? Wait, only 1, because I don't have the Facebook app on my iPhone.