A little less than a month ago, The New York Times reported that Facebook was working on a brand new version of its sluggish iOS client, re-writing it completely with speed in mind from the ground up in Objective-C, the preferred programming language for modern iOS applications.
The current version owes much of its sluggishness to the fact that it provides a web view through an embedded web browser. A new report out today asserted that the social networking giant tapped some former Apple engineering talent not only to help build a smartphone of its own, but also to re-write the official iOS app…
Tucked away inside a Bloomberg report Cody just told you about – that Apple tapped HTC to build an iPhone competitor – is this line (emphasis mine):
Facebook is also developing a modified operating system for the device and has assembled a team of former Apple Inc. programmers to improve its iPhone application, people said.
Apparently, the updated application is still a “couple of months” away.
This team from Apple has been primarily focused on rebuilding Facebook’s iPhone application, which has been criticized by users for being slow. An initial release could be announced within a couple of months, with another broader overhaul of the iPhone app coming next near, one person said.
Complete overhaul in 2013?
Man, Mark Zuckerberg just doesn’t get mobile, he never did.
The primary benefit of taking the Objective-C route is in taking full advantage of the hardware in the iPhone in order to build most of the functionality directly into the application as opposed to just pulling data from Facebook’s servers and rendering it inside a wrapper of sorts through an embedded web browser, which always produces sluggish performance and unresponsiveness.
Here’s to the hoping that Facebook manages to at least e-write the app in time for the next iPhone’s arrival in early-fall.
Don’t you just hate that hideous Facebook for iOS thing?
I’ve long stopped using it and resorted back to the mobile Facebook page which runs faster and is more responsive in mobile Safari than the native iOS app.
Yeah, sad but true.