Facebook iOS App Gets Major Upgrade, Finally Doesn’t Suck Our Will To Live


Facebook’s iOS App was upgraded on Thursday, and the new Objective-C programmed app puts the company’s past HTML5 platform to shame. According to Facebook iOS mobile product manager Mick Johnson, in some cases such as scrolling through a feed, photo viewing, and loading the app, the platform’s speeds have increased by two-fold.

The major update is now available on the iOS platform and is available to all Apple mobile and tablet users via the App Store or through their device’s updates screen.

Once updated, users will notice that the Facebook interface has remained as it was before the update since this particular build was only meant increase speed and performance and not as a means to re-invent the application’s user interface.

In an interview with All Things D, Johnson admitted that Facebook had built its system for scale and not performance:

“Up until now, we’ve focused on getting to scale. We have 500 million users accessing it monthly across 7,000 different types of mobile devices.”

That scale was achieved by implementing the HTML5 protocol which allowed programmers to create a system that worked with thousands of different devices with little need for a major overhaul of the platform among various devices and Mobile operating systems.

Aside from speed related fixes the Facebook, Camera and Messenger are now all sharing a code base with each other; this means Messenger and Camera are actually running inside of the proper Facebook app which will call those features more quickly and allow for faster updates since three different systems do not need to be fully re-coded to work together.

By rendering data directly inside of the Facebook app instead of relying on web data, the app is faster, more intuitive with iOS devices, and all around a better option for frustrated Facebook mobile users.

Are you pleased with the Facebook iOS apps new and improved speeds and overall mobile performance?

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