News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Facebook’s iPad App Has Been Done Since May, But They Won’t Release It. Parent comment

Re:Facebook’s iPad App Has Been Done Since May, But They Won... by cletus on Monday September 26, 2011 @03:45PM (#3040426)
"Feature complete" is subjective. Facebook has had the option of scaling the iPhone app to the iPad resolution and releasing it with feature parity for probably at least a year.

Of course a better iPad experience comes from an app designed for that form factor but there's nothing to stop you releasing one version and then iterating on it.

So one can quite reasonably argue that Facebook has been holding back the iPad app, which raises the question of why.

I can't believe Apple doesn't want this app released given the popularity of Facebook. The original version of Ping was also integrated with Facebook that was pulled at the last minute due to "onerous terms" [1] (according to Steve Jobs).

The prima facie evidence is that there is some kind of tussle going on between Apple and Facebook. Perhaps Facebook's "onerous" terms included demands on the iTunes service and Facebook integration (which is lent more credence given Facebook's recent moves into music)? Perhaps Facebook wanted Facebook login to iTunes and other Apple properties? I don't know.

What I suspect is the iPad app is another bargaining chip.

To argue it's not "feature complete" is disingenuous. This is a subjective measure of simply deciding "that's enough".

[1]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20015402-37.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Facebook’s iPad App Has Been Done Since May, But They Won... by aaronbrethorst on Monday September 26, 2011 @03:52PM (#3040456)
Facebook has had the option of scaling the iPhone app to the iPad resolution and releasing it with feature parity for probably at least a year.

This is not to say that your conclusion is incorrect, but unless something significant has changed with Three20 since the last time I used it, it isn't super-usable on iPad.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Facebook’s iPad App Has Been Done Since May, But They Won... by saurik on Monday September 26, 2011 @04:18PM (#3040570)
This is not true: the iPhone Facebook app has worked nearly perfectly on the iPad for some time now (I think almost a year, in fact). On jailbroken devices we have a hack called "FullForce" that flips the "this is an iPad-native app" flag for any app (its a new panel under Settings), and a lot of people jailbreak just so they can get a quite reasonable iPad Facebook app.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Facebook’s iPad App Has Been Done Since May, But They Won... by ltamake on Monday September 26, 2011 @09:23PM (#3041407)
I'm still using FaceForward with Facebook version 3.4.4, and that's worked out well for me so far.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Facebook’s iPad App Has Been Done Since May, But They Won... by aaronbrethorst on Monday September 26, 2011 @05:32PM (#3040828)
Good to hear that this has changed. Thanks for the info.
[ Parent | on HN ]