Facebook To Launch iPad App At Apple Event

Facebook is planning to launch its iPad app and a new iPhone app at an October 4th Apple event and Facebook engineer Jeff Verkoeyen has left the company for Google after working 80 hour weeks on the Facebook iPad app which has been feature complete. The relationship between the two tech giants is warming up, thanks to the common goal of beating Google. Facebook and Apple seems to have realized that they both need to work together to beat Google and he former doesn’t have a mobile platform while the latter doesn’t have a social platform. Facebook has also been working on a project called Project Spartan for a long time and Facebook tried to get around Apple’s in-app purchase policy by developing a HTML5 based app store that can be accessed via iOS Safari browser……………

A native Facebook app for iPad was rumored to be in the works for months and numerous blogs have reported it would launch soon and Facebook will launch its long-awaited iPad app at Apple’s iPhone 5 launch event on Oct. 4, Mashable has learned. In addition to the iPad app, Facebook is also expected to release a revamped version of its iPhone app and may unveil an HTML5-based mobile app marketplace. The Facebook iPad app has been in limbo at Facebook for the past few months, which much was made clear in a blog post Monday by former Facebook engineer Jeff Verkoeyen. In that post, he revealed that he left the company (for Google) partially because Facebook has been sitting on the completed app since May. He was the lead engineer on the project and had been working on it for 8 solid months, sometimes as much as 80 hours a week, he says to get it done in time. This was to ensure that the app is ready on time for release, but as we all know the app hasn’t hit the App Store yet, a good five months after it was feature complete and this naturally frustrated Verkoeyen and led to his decision to quit Facebook. Here’s one key blurb:

“It is now nearly 5 months since the app was feature complete and I haven’t seen it released except for when the project was leaked on Techcrunch. Needless to say this was a frustrating experience for me. The experience of working on this app was a large contribution to the reasons why I left Facebook, though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a difficult decision.

You probably saw the app when it was infamously leaked via Techcrunch. It was feature-complete by then and for reasons I won’t go into details on the app was repeatedly delayed throughout the summer.”

Facebook was originally supposed to be a key part of that launch, then full integration was pulled at the last minute and the same is true with iOS. Apple and Facebook had been working together to bring a deep integration of the social network into iOS 5. Apple has always wanted Facebook to release an iPad app and the Facebook iPhone app is the most downloaded app of all time. There are countless third-party Facebook iPad apps that are amongst the top downloads all time, even though most aren’t very good. At first, Facebook wasn’t going to focus on the iPad. Then they decided to, but they also realized the app could be used as leverage in their dealings with Apple. That’s what we believe has been going on over the past several months. The story goes even deeper when you consider Project Spartan and the the project was meant to target iOS specifically to make sure that Facebook apps re-written in HTML5 could work on the mobile Safari browser. The relationship between the two technology giants is warming up, however, thanks to the shared goal of beating Google and the simple fact that Facebook and Apple may need each other. The former doesn’t have a mobile platform while Apple doesn’t have a social platform. The culmination of this renewed friendship: the launch of Facebook for iPad at Apple’s iPhone 5 media event. Facebook also expect to unveil a new version of Facebook for the iPhone with design and speed improvements that mimic the iPad app. There isn’t much to go on here just yet, but we’ve been hearing that Facebook and Apple may now be working together on the HTML5 project and maybe it’s because Apple hates Google that much, or maybe it’s because they realize that HTML5 apps are still no real threat to the native app movement. In below you will find some screenshots via Mashable :