Joe Hewitt, the developer of the iPhone facebook application, has tweeted for the first time in about a month and the tweet is shocking… he has decided to quit developing the app due to Apple’s approval process.

“Time for me to try something new. I’ve handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I’m onto a new project.”

TechCrunch was able to get a little more info from Hewitt and this is what he had to say…

My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.

The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.”

Check out TechCrunch’s full article HERE.

Joe Hewitt, the developer of the facebook App Store application, recently tweeted that the app will soon be receiving two updates. The update to version 3.03 will be bug fixes and it will be followed by version 3.1 which is said to include push notification (along with a few other nice new features).

The thing I find strange is the lack of info about version 3.1. In the past we have seen pictures, video, tweets… etc about updates. Not this time. I guess we will just have until it;s released to see all the cool new features.

Original Tweet:

Facebook was updated to version 3.02. The update has bug fixes and adds VoiceOver accessibility support.

After you update to 3.02, you may see a black bar on the home screen of the app. This is a slight bug. The black bar will go away if you do not use the application for one hour… yep, just let the app sit there unopened for an hour and it will go away. Or, you can uninstall and reinstall facebook and that will also fix the problem.

Original Tweets:
“Oh no. If you get a black bar on your home screen, it will go away if you don’t use the app for one hour (old settings cached).”

“I’m gonna be hearing about this black bar thing a lot Luckily it will fix itself, or you can re-install to fix it.”

ScreenShots

Facebook has been update to version 3.01… not to be confused with the upcoming 3.1 update. Version 3.01 is just some bug fixes, no new features this time around. The bug fixes include bugs with birthdays, timestamps, friend list crashing… etc. If you are having problem with your notifications, you will have to hold out a little longer, that is a server issues not a bug in the application itself. Hewitt says it will be fixed in the next few days.

Tweets:
“I have fixes ready for the bugs with birthdays, timestamps, crashing in the friends list, and many others. 3.01 will go to Apple shortly.”

“3.01 won’t fix the notifications error. That error is on our servers and will be fixed in a day or two.”

ScreenShots

Facebook 3.0 has been out for three days and we are already hearing about the features that the 3.1 update will include (actually, we have been hearing about 3.1 since before the 3.0 version was released!). According to an interview with Joe Hewitt, the developer of the iPhone Facebook app, he is working on a few cool new features. Below is an outline of a few of those new features.

Contact list synchronization between your Facebook friends list and your phone’s contact list. “It’s a Terms of Service thing more than a technical limitation,” Hewitt said.

Push notifications. “We are working on push,” Hewitt said last night. “I plan to have it in the next major update, the 3.1. It will be the same kind of notifications you get on the website. I probably won’t right off the bat give you chat notifications. If you’ve ever used Facebook’s SMS notifications, you can have pretty granular control and it will be the same level of notification in terms of whose notifications you see and what categories you see.”

Saved, site-wide search. On the Facebook website you can now search across public updates and other items beyond just friends and pages. You can’t do that on the mobile app yet. “I hope but I can’t promise to get that into the 3.1 update,” Hewitt said. “We’re still working on getting that into the API. I’m also hoping to let you save a search to your home screen.”

You can read the full article HERE.

Doug and I were actually just talking about the ability to sync your Facebook contacts to your iPhone so, we were excited to see that feature. Hewitt has also said that he is planning on allowing the ability to hide both people and apps in the News Feed with version 3.1.

Original Tweet “I’m planning to allow hiding of people and apps from news feed in the 3.1 update.”

Finally!!! The update has been released to the Facebook app for the iPhone. If you can’t get it to show up in the updates, just uninstall it by holding your finger on the icon until it wiggles and then tap x. Just reinstall now via iTunes on your iPhone. Here are some great new features:

- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabetically

ScreenShots

While we wait for version 3.0 of the Facebook application to be approved by Apple, the developer has been kind enough to give us a few preview/demo videos. Below are three videos from the developer that show specific features of the app and a nice overview video of the app (not from the developer).

Go home quickly

How to delete a photo tag

Photo tagging in version 2.0

Go HERE to see video.

Overview Video

The developer of the App Store Facebook application has released some more info on what the 3.0 update will look like and include. Below is a list of the new features that are in the update that has been submitted to Apple as well as a some screenshots. It looks like it is going to be pretty cool… might be a little tricky getting used to the new set-up but, I’m ready for an updated interface with more features.

New Features:
- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabetically

ScreenShots