I actually think MG went really out of his way to look for a controversial reason for Facebook's choice of platform for Project Spartan. And I think he is wrong, this time.
Facebook could have gone with a native iOS app, granted that's what most companies do who are specifically trying to target iOS.
But is it really necessary to reach for far fetched reasons why they'd want to go with the web app approach instead? I mean, Facebook is a web app. Their developers are web developers, the vast majority of their developers are hired for their skills and penchant for web development.
As is evident from the regular Facebook.com, they have some pretty great web developers on board as well, knee deep in javascript, css and stuff like that every day, I'm sure. Wouldn't it be really practical to just leverage that expertise for Project Spartan as well, rather than have some other team work with some other code base for some other platform?
Then of course we have the slew of other good attributes of web development, to which Facebook are already accustomed. Like being able to update the app several times a day if they so choose, without Apple's adult supervision and delay.
Do we really need to look any further than that for reasons why Facebook went with the web as their chosen platform? I don't think so, I think it makes a lot of sense for Facebook to go with the web app approach. That Project Spartan uses mobile Safari, not webkit in general, as their target platform kind of shows that there isn't a hell of a lot of anger towards Apple anyways.
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I actually think MG went really out of his way to look for a controversial reason for Facebook's choice of platform for Project Spartan. And I think he is wrong, this time.
Facebook could have gone with a native iOS app, granted that's what most companies do who are specifically trying to target iOS.
But is it really necessary to reach for far fetched reasons why they'd want to go with the web app approach instead? I mean, Facebook is a web app. Their developers are web developers, the vast majority of their developers are hired for their skills and penchant for web development.
As is evident from the regular Facebook.com, they have some pretty great web developers on board as well, knee deep in javascript, css and stuff like that every day, I'm sure. Wouldn't it be really practical to just leverage that expertise for Project Spartan as well, rather than have some other team work with some other code base for some other platform?
Then of course we have the slew of other good attributes of web development, to which Facebook are already accustomed. Like being able to update the app several times a day if they so choose, without Apple's adult supervision and delay.
Do we really need to look any further than that for reasons why Facebook went with the web as their chosen platform? I don't think so, I think it makes a lot of sense for Facebook to go with the web app approach. That Project Spartan uses mobile Safari, not webkit in general, as their target platform kind of shows that there isn't a hell of a lot of anger towards Apple anyways.
You can only have in-app payment inside a native iOS app if the payment goes through the appstore, or Apple rejects the app.