Facebook blocks access to hidden iPad app
Full-blown iPad app could be activated on ‘jailbroken’ tablets, said researchers — Computerworld - Researchers over the weekend uncovered a Facebook app for Apple's iPad, and showed how “jailbroken” tablets could run the still-unreleased software.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook has shipped an iPhone app for years but never an iPad one — a gap TechCrunch flagged again in May 2011, when the company was still hiring desktop engineers instead of releasing tablet software. The embarrassment sharpened in June, when leaked images showed HP's TouchPad shipping with its own Facebook tablet app before Apple's did.
This weekend researchers found the missing app hiding inside Facebook's existing iOS code, activated enough of it on jailbroken iPads to post screenshots, and forced the company's hand: Facebook cut off server-side access rather than let an unreleased build run publicly. It is also a familiar pattern — in April 2010 Facebook had an impostor 'Facebook Ultimate' iPad app pulled from the App Store while its real one sat unreleased.
First-order effects
- Jailbroken iPad owners briefly get a working full-featured Facebook tablet app that official App Store customers cannot install, until Facebook switches off the backend it depends on.
- Facebook is pushed to accelerate an official iPad release it has delayed since the iPad launched in April 2010, now with its own unfinished UI circulating in screenshots.
Second-order effects
- The leak hands Apple and Facebook a fresh point of friction at exactly the moment their App Store relationship is under strain over Apple's newly enforced in-app purchase rules, which bear directly on how a Facebook tablet app could monetize.
- Competing tablet platforms gain talking points: HP's TouchPad ships with native Facebook integration while the largest installed base of tablets waits on an app whose code already exists.
Third-order effects
- Shipping unreleased feature flags inside production binaries proves to be a recurring leak channel — once code reaches millions of devices, activation by outsiders becomes a matter of when, not whether, pushing vendors toward tighter server-side gating.
- Platform gatekeepers on both sides — Apple's store rules and Facebook's server switches — end up controlling the same user experience from opposite ends, making app availability a negotiating asset between large platforms.
The trend: As major web services delay tablet-native clients, their own shipped code and rival platforms' deals become the levers that force release timing — app availability turning into a visible fault line between Facebook, Apple, and every other tablet maker.