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Facebook Releases Rewritten and Much Faster iPhone App

Thursday August 23, 2012 10:16 am PDT by Jordan Golson
Facebook has released a completely rewritten iOS app that is significantly faster than the prior version. With more and more Facebook users accessing the social network via mobile, the company views having a fast mobile app as increasingly essential. News that the update was forthcoming was first reported back in June.

With the updated version, Facebook's engineers have dumped the HTML5-based app and rebuilt it using Objective-C programming to make it perform more like a native iOS app. From All Things D:
“People have different expectations when it comes to using Facebook for iOS,” Mick Johnson, Facebook iOS mobile product manager, told me in an interview this morning. “They expect a level of performance and speed that just wasn’t there.”

Johnson says that the largest pain points — scrolling through the feed, photos and loading the app — will all be much faster, by a factor of three. Also, Facebook mobile developers working on the three separate iOS apps — Facebook, Camera and Messenger — all all now sharing a code base with each other, so Messenger and Camera are actually running inside of the proper Facebook app, bringing many of those features to Facebook for iOS. (As a bonus, a shared code base means faster development cycles, so we’ll probably see improvements sooner.)
Facebook for iPhone is available free via the App Store. [Direct Link]

[ 329 comments ]


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patrickowtf
88 months ago
omg finally
Rating: 83 Votes
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joelisfar
88 months ago
they should've done this back when it was Harvard-only.
Rating: 47 Votes
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keysofanxiety
88 months ago
I can confirm this, guys! Just trying it out now.

Now I can see photos of all my friends' food 3 times quicker! I'm so happy. :rolleyes:
Rating: 39 Votes
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Caliber26
88 months ago

first? It seems snappier :-)


Oh, please make sure to do a screen cap and email it to your mother. She will be SOOOO effin proud that you FINALLY posted first on an online forum.
Rating: 30 Votes
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ajcadoo
88 months ago
This is a year overdue.
Rating: 22 Votes
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fel10
88 months ago
About time. The old FB app was horrendous.
Rating: 21 Votes
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anshuvorty
88 months ago
slowly looking like its becoming obsolete

looks like devices that are stuck on ios 4.2.1 and below are losing their usefulness...first google chrome and now facebook....my ipod touch 2g is slowly becoming obsolete noooooooo.....
Rating: 17 Votes
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Gemütlichkeit
88 months ago

but steve jobs said that HTML5 is da awesome and the future of everything


whole different ball game. API utilization > HTML5 > stone age engineering > Flash
Rating: 15 Votes
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alent1234
88 months ago
but steve jobs said that HTML5 is da awesome and the future of everything
Rating: 14 Votes
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mnsportsgeek
88 months ago

but steve jobs said that HTML5 is da awesome and the future of everything


In comparison to flash...it's light years better.
Rating: 14 Votes

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