Facebook Speeds Up iPhone and iPad Apps

Facebook on Thursday released major upgrades to its iPhone and iPad apps. Those who have suffered from the sluggishness of the current apps can breathe a collective sigh of relief: these new versions are much faster.

The apps look nearly identical to their predecessors. The main difference is that most of their old Web-based code has been replaced with the native programming code used for iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, as my colleague Nick Bilton forecast in June.

The other changes are subtle but significant. The code from Facebook’s stand-alone Camera and Messenger apps has been tucked into the Facebook app, replacing the older photo and messaging tools. That makes these tools look and act a bit different, but most importantly, messaging and posting photos are much zippier.

Another difference is in the news feed. When people “Like” or add comments to status updates, they will show up in real time, eliminating the need to refresh the post to view new comments and Likes. Over all, the news feed has been optimized to load quickly and “feel alive,” said Mick Johnson, product manager of the Facebook apps for iOS.

The new apps are the result of a major restructuring happening inside Facebook. In recent interviews, Facebook executives said they have retooled the organization so that every product team is working on mobile, and the company holds weekly training courses on programming for Apple and Android devices.

Facebook engineers say the changes to the apps were necessary to deliver the instant gratification that people want when they are on mobile devices.

“You’re sort of data snacking throughout the day,” said Cory Ondrejka, Facebook’s head of mobile engineering. “When you’re just standing in line getting coffee and you pull out your Facebook app, you just want it to load.”

The focus on native code in apps raises questions about whether Facebook is getting ready to abandon its roots as an open Web platform. Mr. Ondrejka says that’s not the case. He explained that Facebook’s mobile Web site is still where it gets the most activity. But for apps, the company found that wrapping native code around Web technology was not ideal. Many users have complained about the performance of the apps.

“Unfortunately native is a different animal, and it turns out you can’t build a good enough experience on iOS using Web tech,” Mr. Ondrejka said.

He added that as Web technology continued to get better, Facebook would take advantage of it. Web-based development is easier in general because engineers across the company can work with the same type of code on various products, as opposed to having to write a new app with a different language for each platform, he said.

“We have Web in our bones,” Mr. Ondrejka said. “We would love the Web to be as capable as native to simplify development. But it’s just not there today.”

Source: bits.blogs.nytimes.com