Project Spartan: Facebook vs. Apple
Here’s an interesting bit of reporting - Facebook is allegedly working on a secret plan to unseat Apple’s stranglehold over iOS app distribution:
Facebook will never admit this, but those familiar with the project believe the intention is very clear: to use Apple’s own devices against them to break the stranglehold they have on mobile app distribution. With nearly 700 million users, Facebook is certainly in the position to challenge the almighty App Store distribution mechanism. But they need to be able to do so on Apple’s devices which make up a key chunk of the market.
An interesting thought, but it seems like this is less about challenging Apple and more about challenging Flash, which is something I’m personally pretty excited to hear:
Speaking of Zynga, it has been known for some time that Facebook was placing a huge emphasis on making it easier for game developers to build with HTML5 as opposed to Flash (like Zynga and others currently do). The culmination of this will be Project Spartan.
It makes sense that Facebook would have a project in the works to better optimize the full functionality of the site for HTML5 so that it’s naturally more compatible across platforms. It means developers can spend less time building native apps for specific device platforms and more time building new functionality for users.
That said, I’m a big believer that web-connected native apps will continue to be a superior alternative to web apps in the cloud, especially when it comes to mobile platforms like phones and tablets. Facebook’s native iPhone app is currently one of the best ways you can experience Facebook on any platform. Hopefully Project Spartan is intended to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, Facebook’s mobile app offerings.
New Facebook photo-sharing app for iPhone. Now this is what I’m talking about.
My Top 5 Favorite iPhone 3.0 Features
Among Apple’s many announcements today was the release of the iPhone 3.0 software update (available June 17). It took me a while to cut through all of the news surrounding the mediocre hardware update to find the feature list for the software update, but lo and behold: here it is.
Below are the top 5 features I’ve most been looking forward to:
- Sync Notes. This is by far my number 1 most requested feature of the iPhone. The fact that it hasn’t been able to do this very basic function for so long is absurd. It’s actually forced me to completely change the way I manage my to do’s, and as a result, it’s hindered my productivity significantly. Definitely looking forward to this.
- Cut & Paste. Another super-basic feature that’s been talked about around the blogosphere since the iPhone’s introduction back in 2007.
- Spotlight Search. I’m mostly looking forward to this because you can use it to search your email, something I’ve been wishing the iPhone could do forever. Great work at finally adding this!
- Safari Improvements. Looking forward to auto-fill for usernames and passwords. This will be especially helpful with Gmail, which I use to star emails sometimes when I’m not near a computer. Again, basic improvement, but a really nice touch. :)
Internet Tethering. Oh wait, we don’t get that in the U.S. Thanks, AT&T.
So those are my Top 5 favorite iPhone 3.0 features. They’re all pretty standard on most of the other phones on the market. I would have loved to have seen the ability to run background applications, not to mention the inclusion of camera flash on the 3GS… Maybe next year.
