Former Facebook for iPhone Developer Joe Hewitt Says iPad “Everything He’s Been Wishing For”

Joe Hewitt, who developed the awesome Facebook 3.0, but controversially (and some would say detrimentally) left the iPhone platform before Facebook 3.1 over the App Store review process, has come out extremely positively about the iPad:

iPad is exactly the product I’ve been wishing for ever since I wrapped my mind around the iPhone and its constraints. While the rumor mill was churning with all kinds of crazy possibilities for the Apple tablet, I mostly rolled my eyes, because I felt ..read more

Dear Facebook — Please Fix Facebook 3.1.1 for iPhone and Soon

Facebook 3.1 brought the much-in-demand push notification service to the iPhone’s most popular social networking app, but no good deed goes unpunished, and along with broken push, it also brought a host of problems. Now, not everyone is having the same problem, but a lot of you have told us about one or more of the following:

No push notifications: Seriously. Facebook updates their application to included push notifications and it doesn’t work most of the time. No alert sound to push ..read more

Are WebApps a “Gatekeeper”-Free Alternative to the iPhone App Store?

TiPb’s joked before that Apple may well consider “sweet” WebApps the alternative for developers who want to release iPhone apps outside the App Store and its “gatekeeper” model, but others are starting to take that line of thinking seriously.

Peter-Paul Koch of QuirksBlog thinks so. In a post provocatively titled Apple is not evil. iPhone developers are stupid., Koch states:

In order to release an iPhone application without having to submit it to Apple’s insane App Store process, developers could just use ..read more

UPDATED: Phil Schiller Addresses App Store — Not to Developers but to BusinessWeek

UPDATE: As expected, Rogue Ameoba’s Airfoil Touch has been approved, with the original graphics displayed from Mac OS X. Meanwhile, Gx5 tells us it took over a year to get their one-touch search portal app, iClueless approved following a string of time-consuming (given Apple’s process) rejections. Again we wonder if having a “big voice” makes a big difference?

ORIGINAL: Apple Senior VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, has once again stepped forward to address growing concerns about the iTunes App Store approval ..read more

Three20 Framework and More on App Store Screening for Private APIs

A little while ago we posted about Apple’s new use of a static analysis tool to find private API calls and reject the apps that make them. Rather than Storm8 or Unity this time, however, it’s former Facebook developer Joe Hewitt’s pioneering Three20 framework that’s getting caught.

Daring Fireball has some details:

One popular open source framework, Joe Hewitt’s Three20 (linked here on DF back in March), played a bit fast and loose with private APIs, and so now there are numerous ..read more

Best of Smartphone Experts, 15 Nov 2009

Qik Video Streaming on Android ..read more

iPhone Facebook App Developer Says Goodnight and Good Luck

Joe Hewitt, the developer who saw the Facebook App for iPhone and iPod touch to version 3.0, and the cusp of 3.1 (which promised/threatened push notifications), has thrown us the Twitter-equivalent of a curve-ball:

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.

Just to be clear, he’s staying with Facebook, just no longer working on their iPhone app. Does it have anything to do with his dissatisfaction ..read more

Facebook 3.1 With Push Notifications Coming Soon

Early this morning developer of the iPhone Facebook application, Joe Hewitt, posted that Facebook 3.03 is on it’s way to squash a few bugs. Even bigger news is that update will then be followed by Facebook 3.1 which will include push notifications.

Facebook happens to be one of the most used iPhone applications today while push notifications is the most sought after missing feature from the application. Techcrunch brings up a few valid points regarding how these notifications are currently ..read more