It seems that we are only days away from an official Facebook app for iPad. Mashable reports that the long-awaited app will be unveiled alongside the iPhone 5 on October 5th at the official launch for Apple’s latest mobile device. There is also talk of releasing an overhauled version of the Facebook iPhone app, and possibly even an HTML-5 based mobile app marketplace.
According to former Facebook employee Jeff Verkoeyen (now working for Google), the app had been ready for some time, so why has it taken so long to see the light of day? Two other sources state that the delay was due to a combination of timing and also some problems in the relationship between Facebook and Apple. The bad blood came about due to a series issues where there were conflicts of interest between the two digital giants, but now it looks like it’s a case of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, as the shared goal of beating Google is of more importance.
But surely f8 would have been to opportune moment to launch iPad for Facebook? Well, given the amount of updates and improvements announced last week, Facebook didn’t want to dilute the new Facebook Open Graph and Timeline features. There is also a chance that the iPad was being held back until the HTML5 suite of apps (known externally as Project Spartan) was ready for release.
For a look at the aesthetics of the Facebook iPad app see the screen-grabs and accompanying captions in Ben Parr‘s article.