iPhone and iPad owners rejoice! Facebook has released its long-awaited update for their iOS app. The update includes completely new code behind-the-scenes which helps the application run over twice as fast as previous versions.
The update was released today, and should be rolling out to users over the next few hours if it's not available already. The old version of the application was built largely on HTML5, rather than Apple's native Objective-C, which caused numerous speed and technical issues. These constant glitches earned the application a 2.5 star rating in the Apple App Store, despite the app's vast usage.
The code base for the app was completely rewritten, a process which took 9 months. There is still HTML5, but the majority of code is now Objective-C rather than the other way around. Apple encourages all app developers to write their code in Objective-C, but still allows HTML5 apps into the App Store.
Android users are still stuck with the old HTML5 version, for now. There will be an upcoming update that brings Facebook for Android up to speed, though there are no official dates for this release yet.
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