Facebook's Team of Former Apple Engineers Focused on Improving iOS App

[srazz]

Thank god because their app is a piece of crap. Has to be the slowest and most unreliable app I have.

 

[SurferMan]

Good, because the Facebook app is truly awful.

What really doesn't make sense, they've had years to develop and tweak the app and both the Android and iOS versions are still mehhh and glitchy. Seriously, these are dev engineers and all this time they can't get a mobile app to work right??!?

 

[skellener]

Why can't you share posts on the FB app for iOS??

 

[WannaGoMac]

It's ok, the app sucking has done a good thing for me -- helped me use Facebook less and less. Somehow when facebook members started having 1000s of friends, facebook became less and less a fun/useful social experience.

I miss the days when Facebook connections were actually FRIENDS and not random acquaintances.

 

[ComputersaysNo]

I'm thinking that Google is working on an app for their (to come) tablet and or phones. If they make the best app of all times for Iphone, how would it be possible to sell your own upcoming products? Iphone is just next in line.

 

[b_scott]

whoever coded the new app that uses Timeline is truly an idiot. It's so bad that I rarely even use it. However the new Camera app for Facebook is great.

 

[edk99]

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that transitioning to mobile devices is among the most difficult tasks for the company, given the differences in user experiences between mobile and desktop. While the company has embraced mobile with apps for iOS and Android, it is still seeking ways to improve the user experience on those devices and bring new features to those platforms.

The transition is difficult because currently they are not able to generate the same revenue they generate from someone using the web site. As more and more people use mobile devices and use less and less of the web site this is a huge problem for them to increase revenues going forward.

So I would imagine a total rewrite of the mobile platform will incorporate more revenue generating ads and so on to make up for that.

 

[Cameron Hood]

What took so long?

[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]


Last month, The New York Times reported that Facebook has been working on a major overhaul of its iOS app, seeking to improve performance by transitioning from the current HTML5-based app to a native Objective-C one. At the time, Facebook was said to be releasing the app the following month.

Image

Facebook's current iPhone app​

Bloomberg now follows up with a more extensive report looking at Facebook's mobile efforts, which reportedly include work with HTC on a Facebook smartphone targeted for mid-2013. That effort has been previously disclosed, with the company reportedly having hired former Apple engineers to drive the project.

Today's report indicates that this team of former Apple engineers has actually been focused primarily on the iOS app rebuild, although the company's timeline appears to be a bit longer than suggested last month.Facebook's team of former Apple employees includes Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, two iOS interface designers who left the company to start digital publishing company Push Pop Press, which Facebook acquired last year.Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that transitioning to mobile devices is among the most difficult tasks for the company, given the differences in user experiences between mobile and desktop. While the company has embraced mobile with apps for iOS and Android, it is still seeking ways to improve the user experience on those devices and bring new features to those platforms.

Article Link: Facebook's Team of Former Apple Engineers Focused on Improving iOS App

Did they ever even TRY this thing? It has sucked for years. 'Bout time.

Cheers,
Cameron

 

[peter.black]

"...it is still seeking ways to improve the user experience on those devices and bring new features to those platforms."

Google Translate:

"...it is still seeking ways to ensure you see ads on those devices and bring new ad delivery mechanisms to those platforms."

 

[herocero]

Yeah because the stock app was a such a home run ... /sarcasm

 

[Intarweb]

It's ok, the app sucking has done a good thing for me -- helped me use Facebook less and less. Somehow when facebook members started having 1000s of friends, facebook became less and less a fun/useful social experience.

I miss the days when Facebook connections were actually FRIENDS and not random acquaintances.

Then it's your fault for accepting and sending out so many friend requests.

 

[Ambient80]

I don't know why they have such a hard time with it. When the App Store was first introduced, the Facebook app was great, and was often cited as one of the best looking and operating apps available. Since then it has been one horrible update after another.

 

[The Phazer]

i cannot believe that the iPad app still has no timeline. how hard could it be ... the app itself is basically just the mobile web page anyway

Given how slow Timeline works on the iPhone or even on a Mac, they’re probably withholding it as an iPad version would be so slow it might collapse the entire spacetime continuum.

 

[Illusion986]

Yeah because the stock app was a such a home run ... /sarcasm

LOL that was my thought as well!

 

[PJMAN2952]

What about for Android?!

Wow. I hate the Facebook App for Android. It's really slow and doesn't update in real time. Facebook needs to update the app for iOS AND for Android. Not just for iOS. That's not fair.

 

[Mess]

Thank god!

Ive givrn up with th app on the ipad. I now login via safari. Much easier.

 

[S.Jobs]

They need to hire the safari team from Apple. Safari is just so snappy these days.

 

[NeoMayhem]

This can't come soon enough. FB is easily the crappiest app on my phone. Just using their mobile site is faster. Also, their push notifications are really hit or miss reliability wise.

I have gotten into more into twitter recently due to how amazing some of the clients are. FB could really learn a lot from some of them.

 

[pittpanthersfan]

Get ready for ads.

 

[mikerudolph22]

Ads

Read as: Facebook now working on a way to bring ads to their app so they can actually make money off it, thereby making it suck more than it already does.

 

[Mike Oxard]

Facebook's team of former apple engineers focused on improving iOS app

It won't be hard, a team of trained monkeys couldn't possibly make a worse job of the Facebook App.

 

[throys]

I hope it will be mind blowing on the iPad and not just replica copy of the iPhone.

 

[MarsDude]

I had been wondering why FB could spend a billion to buy Instagram, but wouldn't afford a fraction of that for development of a decent Facebook app...

 

[ipedro]

I actually stopped using the Facebook app because it's so damn horrible. I moved to using the mobile site which can be a little bit better, but I did this because I can wait out a month for the new app to arrive. But "months"? FB's mobile app has been in the dumpster for months already with an average of 2 stars and 99% of the reviews negative.

You'd think that a multi-billion dollar company -- who's users are more and more coming from mobile -- would prioritize this to the very top of the line...

I use Facebook for work or I'd already be out of there. In the meantime, I won't be using FB for personal reasons anymore. I've already transitioned to Twitter for my thoughts and Instagram for my photos.

 

[nickgri]

faceoff

Are they saying the HTML5 thing sucks-after all this hype about it and replacing Flash etc. are we about to find out it's not what they are touting it to be?
I still wish the layers interactivity and vector part of Flash was available on iOS let the video thing be whatever works best but nothing has replaced Flash yet for interactive functions.