6 ms·

Here’s why the Facebook iOS app is so bad (UIWebViews and no Nitro)

91 points by dirkdk 14y ago

mvkel 14y ago
"why it's bad," followed by great reasons FOR it.
- Fizzer 14y ago
  Most of the reasons they presented for it were reasons that benefited the developer, not the user. I assume the headline is referring to why it's bad for the user.
  - dirkdk 14y ago
    yep, that's the issue. with all technology you have to balance the pros and cons for the user and developer. Path took 100 % the user as focus point, Facebook a bit more the developer
    - gurkendoktor 14y ago
      iOS developers are certainly expensive. But if you have to balance 500 million users and a single development team, I don't think anything less than 100% on the user makes sense.
  - msgilligan 14y ago
    The reasons for it are valid and it is possible to get that benefit to the developer with a better user experience -- See the comment (above) about the LinkedIn app for an example of an app that makes both users and developers happy.
- msrpotus 14y ago
  They don't talk about it in the article but the app is also just generally buggy.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  That is why the future belongs to native applications, the consumers are finally realized how this web everywhere sucks and is only able to deliver half-baked experiences.
outworlder 14y ago
The question is: why even bother, when they have the mobile HTML version? Probably just to cross a bullet point somewhere. Still, with their warchest, they could easily dump money on a small company and get it over with. At least something basic, but usable. Say, timeline plus chat.
- m0nastic 14y ago
  As far as I know, you still can't upload pictures from the web browser, so you need a native app to interact with photos.
  - sebbi 14y ago
    That depends on the browser/os ... Android and Windows Phone are able to upload pictures. Don't know how it is on iOS now, but a year ago it was not possible.
  - stuartjmoore 14y ago
    They have a very well hidden email upload feature.
- aaronbrethorst 14y ago
  Photo uploading, push notifications...
  - sebbi 14y ago
    Uploading works in the browser (Android, WP) and you get emails notifications which are pushed to the phone. One could live without the app outside the iOS universe ;-)
- cft 14y ago
  People prefer one-click launch versus typing URLs on mobile. And no, most do not know that you can add a bookmark to the home screen.
- ahmelsayed 14y ago
gte910h 14y ago
Nitro is available in UIWebViews now. http://www.theprintlabs.com/with-ios5-the-faster-nitro-javascript-engine-comes-to-the-uiwebview-used-in-html5-magazines/ http://www.theprintlabs.com/with-ios5-the-faster-nitro-javas...
- Xuzz 14y ago
  That post is incorrect, from what I can tell. Home screen shortcuts to "web apps" that hide the Safari UI (which are actually run in the hidden "Web.app" application) now have Nitro with iOS 5, but App Store apps do not. This is because a JIT requires memory to be both writable and executable, which is not generally allowed on iOS (without specific permissions that only Apple can use).
  - bryne 14y ago
    Yes (the article is incorrect). Native apps (that aren't Safari) don't have JIT.
- dirkdk 14y ago
  I think the SunSpider benchmark I ran clearly showed it, no Nitro in UIWebView
luke_s 14y ago
As an Android user, I can assure you the android facebook app is just as bad, if not worse. It seems the cross platfom support allows the same horrible issues to exist on all devices. For example I see the same buggy timeline [1] that he shows, on an almost daily basis. I'm sure FB could increase their engagement by having a better mobile app. Often I want to see what my friends are up to, but just give up in frustration after waiting literally minutes for the timeline to display. I guess with such a large market share, they see no need to improve. [1] - http://blog.mobtest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/facebook-buggy-timeline-200x300.png http://blog.mobtest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/facebook-...
- SCdF 14y ago
  The performance is beyond terrible. I have a Galaxy S, which is not the fastest phone in the world, but if I get a notification that someone has commented on my post or something, it can literally take minutes for the FB app to: - Start when I click the notification - Replace the pointless blank screen with my timeline (not that I wanted that, I wanted the notification) and the now-red notification bar - After tapping the notification icon in the FB app (the second time I've now indicated I want to read the notification) watching the little bubble appear and wait for it to be populated with notifications - Once it's populated, tap the notification I want (3rd indication now), and wait for that page to load. Each of these on a 3G NZ mobile network can take 10s of seconds to complete. All the while I can't use my phone for anything else, or indeed let the screen go black and lock, because that will often drop me out of the particular step I'm up to (this may be more my phone than fb, I'm not sure of the internals). Thinking purely as a user and ignoring the technical issues, there is something very wrong somewhere when it takes a few seconds to start a youtube video streaming but it takes a minute to view my friends 6 word sardonic reply to my kitten picture.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    The FB app experience is pretty awful on Windows Phone as well. Made tolerable only because there's a better app built into the contacts list (as part of the Me panel). One thing I really miss is being able to Like comments on a post (can only like the post) and being able to see who liked a comment (can only see that someone did). The FB app on WebOS was bloody perfect. So many things WebOS did right... I miss that platform.
marknutter 14y ago
Wait, the Facebook app is bad? I honestly hadn't noticed these nitpicks until I read the article, and even now they don't really bother me. I'm convinced that the only people who can tell and even care about the performance difference between Path and Facebook's native apps are software developers. My wife was using the web version of Facebook's mobile app for months before she discovered she could download the app, and she's never complained about either. If I'm right and most people don't care, then it's a huge win to mix in HTML when convenient for the same reasons mentioned in the very article this thread is linked to that's lambasting Facebook's app.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Actually, I've noticed all of these issues. Especially the notification sync problem. Lots of my friends have too. The Facebook iOS app sucks, big time.
- GBKS 14y ago
  I just talked to a friend about this. We both stopped using the app because it takes 10 seconds from tapping the app icon to seeing content on our HTC Incredibles. During that time I see 3 differently designed loader circles. The app UI is great, but I just don't use it because it the payoff is not worth the wait.
- iamgilesbowkett 14y ago
  "I'm convinced that the only people who can tell and even care about the performance difference between Path and Facebook's native apps are software developers...most people don't care" the story you're commenting on presents evidence which contradicts what you're saying. unless you count a brief introductory paragraph, it is literally the first point they make. the article says that the app has nearly 12K one-star reviews and an average of 2 stars, indicating that people don't like the app. the writing is not 100% clear, but it appears to be saying that the app only has a little over 21K reviews total, which means more than half of all reviews for the app are one-star reviews. how could you possibly square this information with your belief that most people don't care? they counted the number of people who care and not only are there thousands of them, but more than 50% of the reviews are as negative as it is possible for a review to be. seriously, dude, "people hate it" is the first point this article makes, and it does so with plenty of compelling evidence.
kristofferR 14y ago
"there are no other iOS FB apps out there" is completely wrong actually, there are tons of alternative Facebook apps. Most were created mainly because of Facebooks' long delay in creating the iPad app. However, they're all worse than the official app though.
- dirkdk 14y ago
  well any that would be good enough to rival FB's own app :)
progolferyo 14y ago
Although I agree with the Facebook App sucking (and seeming to get worse and worse), I do feel like the article is a bit misguided. I don't give 100% blame to UIWebView and no-Nitro simply because the entire way Facebook has developed the mobile app has been hacky and misguided. The code itself is poorly designed, the API's are all over the place, there are inconsistencies everywhere and the performance is clearly lacking. On the flip side, take a loop at the LinkedIn app for iPhone. It's super slick, easy to use but still has a ton of features and the performance is far better. Yes, it's not as slick as Path but its miles ahead of the Facebook app. So if I were Facebook, I'd rely a bit less on the 100% platform agnostic approach, take it back a bit and build the things that make sense cross-platform with HTML and build the parts separately that make sense to build using native code. This approach to me accomplishes much of the same cross platform success without creating such a crappy and laggy app.
- dirkdk 14y ago
  yes, the new LinkedIn app on the iPad is gorgeous, performs really well and apparently is mostly made out of HTML5. They use local storage to cache data, FB app does not do that. http://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-ipad-using-local-storage-snappy-mobile-apps http://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-ipad-using-l...
filmgirlcw 14y ago
I was always under the impression that the delay in push notifications (which you also see with Twitter for iOS, even in the Tweetie era) was a result of NoSQL databases used for notification points. I know Facebook is MySQL, but it would make sense that they might use a non-traditional database for push points.
ZenPsycho 14y ago
I use flipboard to read and post on facebook. It's divine.
saket123 14y ago
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobile_was_designed_to_write_once_run.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobi... This was how app was designed. With so many technologies involved things are bound to go wrong
- dirkdk 14y ago
  never seen that piece, thanks!
  - saket123 14y ago
    After reading that, I felt they are over engineering a app which would run on small screens and slow networks. They could have easily waited a couple of years more to slowly build this in and in meanwhile do a native app like G+ is doing
bherms 14y ago
I have always assumed they don't put the time/engineering into the mobile apps because it is much harder to monetize. Where do you stick the ads so that they don't completely ruin the experience? Nowhere, that's where. Why provide an app that draws people away from your web app (the one covered in ads) when you can frustrate them and keep them where you can monetize?
- diminish 14y ago
  Using mobile app just once, they are able to access your phone contacts. I guess that is enough reason for them.
skeletonjelly 14y ago
Some relevant interesting threads on reddit by the devs for Facebook for Android http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/h7nx1/we_are_the_dev_team_for_facebook_for_android_help/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/h7nx1/we_are_the_de... http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n5my6/we_are_the_dev_team_for_facebook_for_android_help/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n5my6/we_are_the_de...
nicholassmith 14y ago
Lets cast our minds back to when Heelys were popular and iOS had opened the app store, everyone collectively held their breath for the Facebook app. And it was good. In fact it was a shining light of why native apps were so good, it was smooth and fluid. There was bugs, it was a new thing without a lot of time in the field but they improved with every version. Skip forward 3 years and remove Joe Hewitt, in an attempt to simply their development portfolio the Facebook app is everything it shouldn't be. It's slow, it's glitchy, occasionally when you tap something it'll decide that you've requested something completely different. At the end of the day a company needs to simplify development eventually, but not at the expense of crippling their application.

91 points by dirkdk 14y ago

mvkel 14y ago

"why it's bad," followed by great reasons FOR it.

Fizzer 14y ago
Most of the reasons they presented for it were reasons that benefited the developer, not the user. I assume the headline is referring to why it's bad for the user.
- dirkdk 14y ago
  yep, that's the issue. with all technology you have to balance the pros and cons for the user and developer. Path took 100 % the user as focus point, Facebook a bit more the developer
  - gurkendoktor 14y ago
    iOS developers are certainly expensive. But if you have to balance 500 million users and a single development team, I don't think anything less than 100% on the user makes sense.
- msgilligan 14y ago
  The reasons for it are valid and it is possible to get that benefit to the developer with a better user experience -- See the comment (above) about the LinkedIn app for an example of an app that makes both users and developers happy.
msrpotus 14y ago
They don't talk about it in the article but the app is also just generally buggy.
pjmlp 14y ago
That is why the future belongs to native applications, the consumers are finally realized how this web everywhere sucks and is only able to deliver half-baked experiences.

outworlder 14y ago

The question is: why even bother, when they have the mobile HTML version? Probably just to cross a bullet point somewhere. Still, with their warchest, they could easily dump money on a small company and get it over with. At least something basic, but usable. Say, timeline plus chat.

m0nastic 14y ago
As far as I know, you still can't upload pictures from the web browser, so you need a native app to interact with photos.
- sebbi 14y ago
  That depends on the browser/os ... Android and Windows Phone are able to upload pictures. Don't know how it is on iOS now, but a year ago it was not possible.
- stuartjmoore 14y ago
  They have a very well hidden email upload feature.
aaronbrethorst 14y ago
Photo uploading, push notifications...
- sebbi 14y ago
  Uploading works in the browser (Android, WP) and you get emails notifications which are pushed to the phone. One could live without the app outside the iOS universe ;-)
cft 14y ago
People prefer one-click launch versus typing URLs on mobile. And no, most do not know that you can add a bookmark to the home screen.
ahmelsayed 14y ago

gte910h 14y ago

Nitro is available in UIWebViews now. http://www.theprintlabs.com/with-ios5-the-faster-nitro-javascript-engine-comes-to-the-uiwebview-used-in-html5-magazines/ http://www.theprintlabs.com/with-ios5-the-faster-nitro-javas...

Xuzz 14y ago
That post is incorrect, from what I can tell. Home screen shortcuts to "web apps" that hide the Safari UI (which are actually run in the hidden "Web.app" application) now have Nitro with iOS 5, but App Store apps do not. This is because a JIT requires memory to be both writable and executable, which is not generally allowed on iOS (without specific permissions that only Apple can use).
- bryne 14y ago
  Yes (the article is incorrect). Native apps (that aren't Safari) don't have JIT.
dirkdk 14y ago
I think the SunSpider benchmark I ran clearly showed it, no Nitro in UIWebView

luke_s 14y ago

As an Android user, I can assure you the android facebook app is just as bad, if not worse. It seems the cross platfom support allows the same horrible issues to exist on all devices. For example I see the same buggy timeline [1] that he shows, on an almost daily basis. I'm sure FB could increase their engagement by having a better mobile app. Often I want to see what my friends are up to, but just give up in frustration after waiting literally minutes for the timeline to display. I guess with such a large market share, they see no need to improve. [1] - http://blog.mobtest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/facebook-buggy-timeline-200x300.png http://blog.mobtest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/facebook-...

SCdF 14y ago
The performance is beyond terrible. I have a Galaxy S, which is not the fastest phone in the world, but if I get a notification that someone has commented on my post or something, it can literally take minutes for the FB app to: - Start when I click the notification - Replace the pointless blank screen with my timeline (not that I wanted that, I wanted the notification) and the now-red notification bar - After tapping the notification icon in the FB app (the second time I've now indicated I want to read the notification) watching the little bubble appear and wait for it to be populated with notifications - Once it's populated, tap the notification I want (3rd indication now), and wait for that page to load. Each of these on a 3G NZ mobile network can take 10s of seconds to complete. All the while I can't use my phone for anything else, or indeed let the screen go black and lock, because that will often drop me out of the particular step I'm up to (this may be more my phone than fb, I'm not sure of the internals). Thinking purely as a user and ignoring the technical issues, there is something very wrong somewhere when it takes a few seconds to start a youtube video streaming but it takes a minute to view my friends 6 word sardonic reply to my kitten picture.
- freehunter 14y ago
  The FB app experience is pretty awful on Windows Phone as well. Made tolerable only because there's a better app built into the contacts list (as part of the Me panel). One thing I really miss is being able to Like comments on a post (can only like the post) and being able to see who liked a comment (can only see that someone did). The FB app on WebOS was bloody perfect. So many things WebOS did right... I miss that platform.

marknutter 14y ago

Wait, the Facebook app is bad? I honestly hadn't noticed these nitpicks until I read the article, and even now they don't really bother me. I'm convinced that the only people who can tell and even care about the performance difference between Path and Facebook's native apps are software developers. My wife was using the web version of Facebook's mobile app for months before she discovered she could download the app, and she's never complained about either. If I'm right and most people don't care, then it's a huge win to mix in HTML when convenient for the same reasons mentioned in the very article this thread is linked to that's lambasting Facebook's app.

chris_wot 14y ago
Actually, I've noticed all of these issues. Especially the notification sync problem. Lots of my friends have too. The Facebook iOS app sucks, big time.
GBKS 14y ago
I just talked to a friend about this. We both stopped using the app because it takes 10 seconds from tapping the app icon to seeing content on our HTC Incredibles. During that time I see 3 differently designed loader circles. The app UI is great, but I just don't use it because it the payoff is not worth the wait.
iamgilesbowkett 14y ago
"I'm convinced that the only people who can tell and even care about the performance difference between Path and Facebook's native apps are software developers...most people don't care" the story you're commenting on presents evidence which contradicts what you're saying. unless you count a brief introductory paragraph, it is literally the first point they make. the article says that the app has nearly 12K one-star reviews and an average of 2 stars, indicating that people don't like the app. the writing is not 100% clear, but it appears to be saying that the app only has a little over 21K reviews total, which means more than half of all reviews for the app are one-star reviews. how could you possibly square this information with your belief that most people don't care? they counted the number of people who care and not only are there thousands of them, but more than 50% of the reviews are as negative as it is possible for a review to be. seriously, dude, "people hate it" is the first point this article makes, and it does so with plenty of compelling evidence.

kristofferR 14y ago

"there are no other iOS FB apps out there" is completely wrong actually, there are tons of alternative Facebook apps. Most were created mainly because of Facebooks' long delay in creating the iPad app. However, they're all worse than the official app though.

dirkdk 14y ago
well any that would be good enough to rival FB's own app :)

progolferyo 14y ago

Although I agree with the Facebook App sucking (and seeming to get worse and worse), I do feel like the article is a bit misguided. I don't give 100% blame to UIWebView and no-Nitro simply because the entire way Facebook has developed the mobile app has been hacky and misguided. The code itself is poorly designed, the API's are all over the place, there are inconsistencies everywhere and the performance is clearly lacking. On the flip side, take a loop at the LinkedIn app for iPhone. It's super slick, easy to use but still has a ton of features and the performance is far better. Yes, it's not as slick as Path but its miles ahead of the Facebook app. So if I were Facebook, I'd rely a bit less on the 100% platform agnostic approach, take it back a bit and build the things that make sense cross-platform with HTML and build the parts separately that make sense to build using native code. This approach to me accomplishes much of the same cross platform success without creating such a crappy and laggy app.

dirkdk 14y ago
yes, the new LinkedIn app on the iPad is gorgeous, performs really well and apparently is mostly made out of HTML5. They use local storage to cache data, FB app does not do that. http://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-ipad-using-local-storage-snappy-mobile-apps http://engineering.linkedin.com/mobile/linkedin-ipad-using-l...

filmgirlcw 14y ago

I was always under the impression that the delay in push notifications (which you also see with Twitter for iOS, even in the Tweetie era) was a result of NoSQL databases used for notification points. I know Facebook is MySQL, but it would make sense that they might use a non-traditional database for push points.

ZenPsycho 14y ago

I use flipboard to read and post on facebook. It's divine.

saket123 14y ago

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobile_was_designed_to_write_once_run.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/redux_how_facebook_mobi... This was how app was designed. With so many technologies involved things are bound to go wrong

dirkdk 14y ago
never seen that piece, thanks!
- saket123 14y ago
  After reading that, I felt they are over engineering a app which would run on small screens and slow networks. They could have easily waited a couple of years more to slowly build this in and in meanwhile do a native app like G+ is doing

bherms 14y ago

I have always assumed they don't put the time/engineering into the mobile apps because it is much harder to monetize. Where do you stick the ads so that they don't completely ruin the experience? Nowhere, that's where. Why provide an app that draws people away from your web app (the one covered in ads) when you can frustrate them and keep them where you can monetize?

diminish 14y ago
Using mobile app just once, they are able to access your phone contacts. I guess that is enough reason for them.

skeletonjelly 14y ago

Some relevant interesting threads on reddit by the devs for Facebook for Android http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/h7nx1/we_are_the_dev_team_for_facebook_for_android_help/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/h7nx1/we_are_the_de... http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n5my6/we_are_the_dev_team_for_facebook_for_android_help/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n5my6/we_are_the_de...

nicholassmith 14y ago

Lets cast our minds back to when Heelys were popular and iOS had opened the app store, everyone collectively held their breath for the Facebook app. And it was good. In fact it was a shining light of why native apps were so good, it was smooth and fluid. There was bugs, it was a new thing without a lot of time in the field but they improved with every version. Skip forward 3 years and remove Joe Hewitt, in an attempt to simply their development portfolio the Facebook app is everything it shouldn't be. It's slow, it's glitchy, occasionally when you tap something it'll decide that you've requested something completely different. At the end of the day a company needs to simplify development eventually, but not at the expense of crippling their application.