Apple's app sandboxing and privacy protection means that 'Facebook for iPad' will not be able to mine as much user data as Facebook would like.
I suspect that this was the main reason why Facebook wanted users to use the browser instead of a native app (and why the app is being launched more than 18 months after the iPad was first launched)
However, the proliferation of native 3rd party apps meant that users weren't using the browser to get to Facebook and that may have led Facebook to finally decide to release the app.
[edit1: To the downvoters - I didn't say that sandboxing provides 100% privacy protection. However, it does prevent Facebook from knowing which other sites you've visited, it prevents them from telling search engines who you are etc.]
[edit2: To Xuzz and others: login to facebook on your iPad browser, log into a website that collaborates with Facebook, you'll see that Facebook is aware your visit to the website. This won't happen when you're logged into the app (instead of being logged in on Safari)
Regardless of the downvotes, this is a matter of fact.(in fact, it was recently discovered that Facebook can track some of your web-browsing even if you had logged out)
Btw I made no assertions about "attacks" and I have no interest in debating emotional outburts such as "Please stop assuming everything Facebook does is out to personally attack you or your data".
> However, the proliferation of native 3rd party apps meant that users weren't using the browser to get to Facebook and that may have led Facebook to finally decide to release the app.
or it could just be that the Safari on the iPad doesn't let you upload photos to the largest photo sharing website out there (Facebook).
I suspect the reason it took 18 months is because Facebook was waiting to figure out where the iPad fits into the ecosystem.
The "main reason...the app is being launched more than 18 months after the iPad was first launched" is because we have a lot of things to do and few engineers to do them.
We've got about one engineer per million Facebook users, and as Hacker News demonstrates time and again, those users have a lot of items on their wishlist. For instance, the bugginess and instability of our iPhone app has been a top user complaint for a long time. Turns out the set of skills required to improve an iPhone app is the same as required to build an iPad app. Something's gotta give.
As for the "main reason why Facebook wanted users to use the browser instead of a native app," I've never heard that preference expressed at Facebook. Like the rest of you, we use iPads. And like the rest of you, we'd prefer a fast, sexy, native, custom-made experience to a website designed for your desktop monitor.
Occam's razor, pure and simple. For a community that prides itself on rational debate, I'm consistently surprised at the level of discourse on certain issues here.
I completely agree. I have been saying for a year that FB would never release an iPad app unless they had a deal with Apple to have the native app be able to set cookies in Safari.
The good news is that I was wrong.
I downloaded the app and promptly logged out of FB on Safari.
You make good points, but won't the vast majority of iPad users be logged into Facebook both on the app and in Safari? I know on my iPhone (where I primarily use the FB app), I'm also logged in Safari (for FB connect, when sent FB links, using features not on app, etc).
That makes no sense, the browser is sandboxed significantly more than any native app. Please stop assuming everything Facebook does is out to personally attack you or your data. It's demonstrably not the case.
> Apple's app sandboxing and privacy protection means that 'Facebook for iPad' will not be able to mine as much user data as Facebook would like.
Sandboxing does prevent developers from accessing files that don't belong to their apps but developers still have unfettered access to users' calendars and address book. Facebook has already been known to grab users' address books from the iPhone version of the app.
http://m.facebook.com got a nice update today too. Adding that to the home screen will probably solve most of your complaints. With the caveat that you won't be able to upload pictures.
It's really not possible to launch something like this well: the app is progressively launching across the globe as the update propagates through the iTunes servers. There's no specific moment where it's available everywhere, it's a roll-out process that that Apple warns you can take up to a day.
I read that Apple and Facebook were planning on announcing the app and possibly other things at the iPhone event last week but that Apple "went dark" after learning of Steve Job's health over the weekend.
If that's the case a soft, muted launch would be more understandable especially considering direct competitor Samsung/Google postponed their launch indefinitely.
Would this be the "safest" way to use Facebook? Lets say that my iPad had no Facebook cookies and I installed this app, signed in, switches to a browser and started browsing. Is faceebook still tracking my every move?
I have no sympathy for that guy. Seems like he had a disconnect between the importance of his work and the greater strategy of the company, having a whinge over people putting his work on the back burner is very immature.
In comparison to Friendly, it is a bit less convenient for shared iPads. You have to enter your password every time you use a different account, and it always shows Facebook in the system language, not the user's language.
It's not a huge deal, but I find it really interesting to observe multi-user support on the iPad. Mostly because I think there is a huge disconnect between what "pundit" bloggers say about it and how every iPad I know is being used.
I really like the design of this landing page a lot. Very clean. It's a subtle touch, but the reflection on the iPad is more muted than you typically see for this sort of display (including what you'll see from Apple at http://www.apple.com/ipad/ .)
I don't understand why there is no feature parity between the different platforms? I rely on the "lists" feature (both the AI generated and my own generated ones) for filtering the wall.
The iPhone app implements it in a spotty fashion (half the time custom lists show, and half the time they don't), but the iPad app doesn't have support for them?
I get the desire for agility and keeping a startup vibe internally, even as the company gets very large, but some quality control would be excellent.
To be clear: I think FB is showing a huge turnaround in this aspect with the new oGraph verbs and timeline, but this app just... doesn't smell test well.
The one reason I still use the iPhone version was when I wanted to upload my photos , browser don't allows you to do this. The Facebook app UI is so antique, after seeing the super UI you see on iPad apps and also on 2x the fonts looked so awkward
After getting the iPad camera kit, it was feeling even more horrible, thank god the new iPad app is getting launched, will have one less reason to c
Just a heads-up. If you had the iPhone version already installed on an iPad and do an update you'll get the new universal version. That one is pretty crashy right at the startup screen.
Deleting and reinstalling it from scratch seems to solve the problem. Nice looking app.
I had to completely remove and reinstall the Facebook app from scratch on both my Verizon iPhone 4 (4.2.7) and my wifi-only iPad 1 (iOS 5 GM) to get it to work. The iPhone just sat and "pinwheeled" for 4-5 minutes, and the iPad would dump back to Springboard on launch.
So, with more and more users using some mobile device as an access point to their computing experiences, how does it help FB to have ad-free, FB credits free apps? I mean, I would rather have ad free experiences and I don't care for FB apps much. Just wondering..
The screenshots clearly show an iPad-friendly UI. Sounds like you got the old iPhone-only app - likely the app hasn't propagated to all of the App Store yet.
Same thing happened to me, I did however just read on another blog post that its apparently cached and propagating through Apples servers. So I guess try again in a few hours.
EDIT: I downloaded via iTunes and it worked, downloading via my iPad seemed to download the wrong version. So I guess its proportion, some servers probably haven't been updated yet.
There's nothing here that's orientated around doing what's best for the user (C'mon Zuck, I thought that was your mantra) -
* we know from Jeff Verkoeyen that this app has been V1 ready for some time
* the delay was so Apple and Facebook could do some biz-dev shenanigans - that ultimately broke down
* now this has been 'launched' in some slap-dash, careless manner.
Facebook for iPad may be the most anticipated/demanded app for iPad but if that means Facebook feels it can get complacent and use it as some (failed) bargaining chip with Apple then I refuse to want to be the pawns in the middle of all this.
Not downloading, not using, chalking this up as another reason to be done with Facebook and it's Empire.
[+] [-] credo|14 years ago|reply
I suspect that this was the main reason why Facebook wanted users to use the browser instead of a native app (and why the app is being launched more than 18 months after the iPad was first launched)
However, the proliferation of native 3rd party apps meant that users weren't using the browser to get to Facebook and that may have led Facebook to finally decide to release the app.
[edit1: To the downvoters - I didn't say that sandboxing provides 100% privacy protection. However, it does prevent Facebook from knowing which other sites you've visited, it prevents them from telling search engines who you are etc.]
[edit2: To Xuzz and others: login to facebook on your iPad browser, log into a website that collaborates with Facebook, you'll see that Facebook is aware your visit to the website. This won't happen when you're logged into the app (instead of being logged in on Safari)
Regardless of the downvotes, this is a matter of fact.(in fact, it was recently discovered that Facebook can track some of your web-browsing even if you had logged out)
Btw I made no assertions about "attacks" and I have no interest in debating emotional outburts such as "Please stop assuming everything Facebook does is out to personally attack you or your data".
[+] [-] Me1000|14 years ago|reply
or it could just be that the Safari on the iPad doesn't let you upload photos to the largest photo sharing website out there (Facebook).
I suspect the reason it took 18 months is because Facebook was waiting to figure out where the iPad fits into the ecosystem.
[+] [-] blakeross|14 years ago|reply
The "main reason...the app is being launched more than 18 months after the iPad was first launched" is because we have a lot of things to do and few engineers to do them.
We've got about one engineer per million Facebook users, and as Hacker News demonstrates time and again, those users have a lot of items on their wishlist. For instance, the bugginess and instability of our iPhone app has been a top user complaint for a long time. Turns out the set of skills required to improve an iPhone app is the same as required to build an iPad app. Something's gotta give.
As for the "main reason why Facebook wanted users to use the browser instead of a native app," I've never heard that preference expressed at Facebook. Like the rest of you, we use iPads. And like the rest of you, we'd prefer a fast, sexy, native, custom-made experience to a website designed for your desktop monitor.
Occam's razor, pure and simple. For a community that prides itself on rational debate, I'm consistently surprised at the level of discourse on certain issues here.
[+] [-] jaxn|14 years ago|reply
The good news is that I was wrong.
I downloaded the app and promptly logged out of FB on Safari.
[+] [-] 2arrs2ells|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xuzz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martingordon|14 years ago|reply
Sandboxing does prevent developers from accessing files that don't belong to their apps but developers still have unfettered access to users' calendars and address book. Facebook has already been known to grab users' address books from the iPhone version of the app.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Me1000|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamedh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liuliu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bud|14 years ago|reply
Don't announce it and provide a link to it til you check that the link actually works, Zuck!
Sheesh.
[+] [-] Xuzz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] featherless|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teoruiz|14 years ago|reply
If I did that at my company I would get quite a reprimand from the CEO :)
[+] [-] schraeds|14 years ago|reply
If that's the case a soft, muted launch would be more understandable especially considering direct competitor Samsung/Google postponed their launch indefinitely.
[+] [-] emehrkay|14 years ago|reply
Just curious.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoffhill|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gurkendoktor|14 years ago|reply
It's not a huge deal, but I find it really interesting to observe multi-user support on the iPad. Mostly because I think there is a huge disconnect between what "pundit" bloggers say about it and how every iPad I know is being used.
[+] [-] aculver|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethank|14 years ago|reply
The iPhone app implements it in a spotty fashion (half the time custom lists show, and half the time they don't), but the iPad app doesn't have support for them?
I get the desire for agility and keeping a startup vibe internally, even as the company gets very large, but some quality control would be excellent.
To be clear: I think FB is showing a huge turnaround in this aspect with the new oGraph verbs and timeline, but this app just... doesn't smell test well.
[+] [-] reaganing|14 years ago|reply
http://itunes.apple.com/app/facebook/id284882215
[+] [-] senthilnayagam|14 years ago|reply
After getting the iPad camera kit, it was feeling even more horrible, thank god the new iPad app is getting launched, will have one less reason to c
[+] [-] ceejayoz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] high5ths|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennesvig|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raminf|14 years ago|reply
Deleting and reinstalling it from scratch seems to solve the problem. Nice looking app.
[+] [-] mrbill|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdilla|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pieter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] featherless|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wavephorm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceejayoz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjd|14 years ago|reply
EDIT: I downloaded via iTunes and it worked, downloading via my iPad seemed to download the wrong version. So I guess its proportion, some servers probably haven't been updated yet.
[+] [-] barrym|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] efnx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dotBen|14 years ago|reply
There's nothing here that's orientated around doing what's best for the user (C'mon Zuck, I thought that was your mantra) -
* we know from Jeff Verkoeyen that this app has been V1 ready for some time
* the delay was so Apple and Facebook could do some biz-dev shenanigans - that ultimately broke down
* now this has been 'launched' in some slap-dash, careless manner.
Facebook for iPad may be the most anticipated/demanded app for iPad but if that means Facebook feels it can get complacent and use it as some (failed) bargaining chip with Apple then I refuse to want to be the pawns in the middle of all this.
Not downloading, not using, chalking this up as another reason to be done with Facebook and it's Empire.
[+] [-] coderdude|14 years ago|reply