It’s been known that Apple and Facebook have had a strenuous relationship over the past year and a half or so - with the debacle of iTunes Ping being the key event known to the public over which the companies clashed. Mashable has a nice scoop today that delves deeper into the rift between the two companies and how things seemed to have taken a positive turn in recent months.
According to Mashable’s sources, Apple approached Facebook over fully integrating Facebook into iOS 4 as well as making their own Facebook app — apparently “lacking confidence in Facebook’s ability to build a great application”. Disagreements arose and negotiations broke down, Apple canned most of the Facebook integration, except Ping which they didn’t fully inform Facebook of — this then led to Facebook banning Apple from the APIs soon after it launched.
Three months ago Steve Jobs supposedly visited Facebook to talk with Mark Zuckerberg about a Facebook iPad app. Jobs learnt that Facebook was working with HP to release a native webOS app and according to Mashable’s sources, Jobs was furious about it. Zuckerberg tried to appease Jobs by pulling the app, but Jon Rubenstien of HP’s webOS division refused. Nonetheless the app wasn’t perfect when released and was restricted because Facebook pulled certain APIs, just as it had done with Ping in the previous year.
Was Facebook playing both sides? Absolutely, says a source close to HP. Facebook was made aware of the application and device integrations. The company knew what was coming, changed its tune right before release — and only did so to appease Apple. For its part, HP was furious. It had hoped the Facebook application would help differentiate the TouchPad from other tablets on the market.
Since then it appears Facebook and Apple have mended their relationship. As reported earlier this week from MG Siegler of TechCrunch, Apple and Facebook have been working together on a Facebook iPad app and on an HTML5 web app platform (Project Spartan) and could well be sharing the stage at Tuesday’s iPhone event to launch the products. Just as Siegler mentioned, Mashable notes that this collaboration seems to stem from the fact that they both share a common enemy: Google.
Be sure to jump over to Mashable and read their full article, they mention other interesting snippets of information and do a great job of putting together the juicy jigsaw puzzle that is the Facebook and Apple relationship.
[Via Mashable]
