Facebook Still Waiting on Apple to Approve Facebook for iPhone 3.0
It’s been 10 days since Facebook submitted the new Facebook for iPhone 3.0 application to Apple for review, but contrary to what one might expect, Apple doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to fast-track one of the most widely used apps on the iPhone/iPod Touch platform.
Frustrated with what he calls the “guilty until proven innocent” model of iPhone application approval, Facebook for iPhone developer Joe Hewitt wrote a blog post last night explaining why Apple should trust developers more.
“There are plenty of successful platforms out there which free developers to publish anything, but punish them if they do something harmful,” Hewitt writes. “This allows developers to move fast, fix bugs immediately, get feedback from users at a very low cost.”
The Facebook Platform has always operated this way, and it’s led to an incredibly rapid pace of innovation over the last couple of years. While some Facebook application developers have griped as Facebook has made changes to keep application behavior in check overall, developers have always been able to freely create and update apps on Facebook without going through any pre-screening process. However, it doesn’t appear that Apple will be changing its ways any time soon.
Last week, we gave a detailed tour of the updated app, which brings Facebook Pages, video uploading, events, photo management, and more. Overall, the upgrades should lead to even more engagement while users are on the go. Today, Facebook for iPhone has nearly 12.5 million active users.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:34 am
(Conspiracy) Apple doing the same as Google Voice!
August 25th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I’m really sorry to hear this. I’ve been looking forward to the new app for weeks!
August 25th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple ends up rejecting this for not following design standards. Not only does it not follow Apple’s standards, it doesn’t follow the standards of good taste! Facebook has never been a bastion of design, but this is one of the ugliest apps I’ve ever seen. The current version, while less robust, certainly looks a feels quite a bit better.
August 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
[...] http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/08/25/facebook-still-waiting-on-apple-to-approve-facebook-for-ip… [...]
August 25th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Joe Hewitt is right, up to a point. It must be tiresome to wait for your app to be approved. But Hewitt is being a bit hypocritical, though, when it comes to Facebook there is not much suspense about the outcome. Small indie developers will have their app rejected by Apple for seemingly no reason, Facebook is less likely to suffer from the same problems. Of course this is so much nicer to trust developers, and as he said “there is this thing called the World Wide Web which already works that way.” But the web has its flaws too: spam, phishing scams and rogue applications. The same thing happens on Facebook but somehow Hewitt failed to mention this aspect.
Rogue Facebook apps steal log-in data, send spam
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10313618-245.html
Facebook users targeted by rogue application
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10170555-83.html
August 26th, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] been 10 days since Facebook submitted the 3.0 version of its wildly popular iPhone app, Inside Facebook’s Justin Smith reminds us. Apple has not yet approved the app. (But it has not rejected it either, Facebook developer Joe [...]