As you have undoubtedly heard by now, Apple has finally made the 3.0 version of Facebook’s iPhone app available in the App Store. We got a build shortly after developer Joe Hewitt submitted it a couple weeks ago, and reviewed it, something which led to a lot of emails asking what was taking Apple so long to approve it. But there’s good news for those of you who were patient: Your version is better than ours.
Hewitt hinted at some changes in a tweet today, and after talking to him, we got the details. “Apple asked me to fix a really minor issue last night, so I sent them a binary with features I’d done in the last two weeks,” Hewitt tells us. So what’s new? The two big features are landscape mode and home screen organizing, we’re told. Sure enough, neither of those are available in the (test) version I currently have.
Hewitt also notes that the app looks slightly different as he decided to remove the grid lines on the home screen while making the last minute changes. (See the top screenshot.)
So there you go, thanks partially to the long wait, you got some new features that weren’t meant to come until the next iteration. It’s nice that Apple let Hewitt know about the small issue rather than rejecting the app and making him fix and resubmit. Of course, they probably read his rant against the App Store approval process and knew that would have been a very bad move.
You can find the new Facebook app here.
Update: As some commenters are noting, there is a bug right now that allows status updates to be seen by friends of your regardless of privacy filters. Hewitt says the Platform team is looking into it, and that it’s a backend issue that should be resolved quickly. A new version of the app will not be necessary.
