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Yea! Facebook's iPhone/iPad App Finally Stops Sucking!

Hooray! With an update today Facebook's iOS app for the iPhone and iPad finally stops being so terrible! Lately using the application on my iPad was an exercise in futility outside of just simple likes or comments. If I ever tried to follow a link, this was what usually greeted me:

Facebook ipad before

It would sit there and sit there and sit there... and often what I would do was hit the arrow in the upper right to open the link up in Safari on the iPad. The link would typically load almost immediately in Safari and I'd be reading the page. Then when I flipped back to the Facebook app I would just hit the back arrow to go back to reading the stream.

The ONLY reason I really continued to use the Facebook app at all was because it was easier to use than the straight Facebook website when it came to liking posts. In using the website on the iPad I often found I had to tap the "Like" link twice to make it work - or not. It was inconsistent, where the app generally always worked.

I just dreaded having to open a link in the app.

And then today with little fanfare outside of an update from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook released version "5.0" of the iOS app through the AppStore:

Facebook update

Upon learning about the new release from my own Facebook stream of updates (thanks, Dameon!), I updated the app on both my iPhone and iPad and was immediately pleased by the performance improvement.

MUCH faster! Kudos to the Facebook team for making the application actually pleasant to use!

In a quick bit of usage there seem to be many other tweaks to the UI. One I found particularly pleasing was a numerical notification of new updates since the last time you refreshed the feed:

Facebook ipad new stories

I haven't yet used it enough to find new changes I dislike... I'm sure there may be a few... but at least the application now is much faster and more responsive.

Thanks, Facebook team, for getting this new release out!

And if you have the FB app installed on your iOS device, head on over to the AppStore to get the update!

What do you think? Are there still parts of the mobile experience that are broken? Will this new release make you want to use the app again? Or will you stick to the website?


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