How Apple and Facebook Nearly Fell Out — Over the HP TouchPad [EXCLUSIVE]
Over the HP TouchPad [EXCLUSIVE] — Tech titans Facebook and Apple have a contentious relationship that is frequently put to the test. But a Facebook for TouchPad application was very nearly the last straw, Mashable has learned from multiple sources.
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc here runs through HP's abandoned tablet. In June, leaked shots showed the TouchPad shipping with its own dedicated Facebook tablet app — Facebook building natively for the one credible non-iPad slate. By late August, HP had killed webOS hardware and dumped remaining inventory in a fire sale whose fallout was still being tallied.
What Mashable adds from multiple sources is the friction underneath: Apple, which a year earlier had granted one company rare visibility into its inner workings (pulling back the curtain for a single partner), reportedly bristled at Facebook hedging across rival platforms. The falling-out itself stays unconfirmed — sourced, not admitted — but the contentious Apple–Facebook relationship it sits inside is not in dispute.
First-order effects
- Facebook's TouchPad app is stranded: HP's August discontinuation removed the device it was built for, so months of tablet engineering now target dead inventory.
- The leak puts Apple's platform discipline on public display — even a partner as large as Facebook apparently faced pressure over where it chose to ship first-class apps.
Second-order effects
- Other major developers watching this take note that building for a challenger tablet carries a relationship cost with Apple, tilting launch-order decisions toward iOS-first releases.
- For HP, the episode compounds the TouchPad's collapse: the platform lost not just customers but the marquee social app that distinguished it from the iPad.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, access to Apple's platforms functions as leverage over even the biggest internet companies, making multi-platform neutrality expensive for partners — a structural tension between distribution gatekeepers and services that need every screen they can reach.
The trend: As tablets emerged as the next computing battleground, platform owners began testing their largest partners' loyalties across competing ecosystems, turning app placement into a diplomatic act.