IPhone Facebook App Developer Quits Over Apple Policies

iPhone Facebook App developer Joe Hewitt says his decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies.

In the early days of social networking, the dominant player was MySpace. As time went by, MySpace was joined by other players like Facebook and Twitter. MySpace has since lost the top position in the social networking world to Facebook.

In October, traffic numbers for September 2009 for social networking sites came in and Facebook had over 300 million users, pushing MySpace to second place in user numbers. One of the things that Facebook users on the iPhone enjoy and that contributed to the user numbers is the Facebook iPhone app, which is the most popular app on the App Store.

The developer that built the Facebook app for the iPhone has quit development for the iPhone and passed the app off to another engineer at Facebook. TechCrunch reports that Facebook App developer Joe Hewitt is still at Facebook and is simply working on new projects.

Exactly what projects the Hewitt is working on are unknown. As for the reason why the developer stopped developing for the iPhone, the reason is clear. Hewitt said, “My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies.” Hewitt says that he is “philosophically opposed” to the existence of a review process and that he is worried Apple’s policy might be implemented by other companies seeking to mimic Apple’s App store success.

Apple has been under increasing scrutiny for its practices of approving and disapproving apps that are seemingly haphazardly enforced. Apple has found itself in hot water with the FCC after the FCC asked AT&T and Apple to explain why they rejected Google Voice from the App Store.

One particularly tough question the FCC posed to the AT&T and Apple was, “Do any devices that operate on AT&T’s network allow use of the Google Voice application? Do any devices that operate on AT&T’s network allow use of other applications that have been rejected for the iPhone.”

Despite Hewitt’s stepping away form iPhone development for Facebook, the social networking giant still has people working on its iPhone application. Perhaps the action by a high profile developer will spur others to speak out about the Apple app approval process.

Showing 5 comments

Creator of Facebook iPhone app leaves the company to go solo – Facebook at 11:40am 7th May 2011 [...] Facebook, Hewitt helped to rise a company’s iPhone app, yet he left a project in 2009 after hostile Apple’s app store process that states that all apps contingency be reviewed [...]
Creator of Facebook iPhone app leaves the company to go solo – JailBake at 8:27am 7th May 2011 [...] tool FireBug.At Facebook, Hewitt helped to develop the company’s iPhone app, though he left the project in 2009 after opposing Apple’s app store policy which states that all apps must be reviewed and [...]
Creator of Facebook iPhone app leaves the company to go solo – Behemoth at 10:11pm 6th May 2011 [...] Facebook Hewitt grown a company’s hugely renouned iPhone app, yet he left a project in 2009 after hostile Apple’s app store process that states that all apps contingency be reviewed [...]
Creator of Facebook iPhone app leaves the company to go solo (Digital Trends) | News From Around the Internet at 9:41pm 6th May 2011 [...] Facebook Hewitt developed the company’s hugely popular iPhone app, though he left the project in 2009 after opposing Apple’s app store policy which states that all apps must be reviewed and [...]
bobby at 3:46pm 12th November 2009 What apple needs is a series of Antitrust lawsuits filed against it. The argument that if you buy something from apple, all your other accessories have to be bought from apple as well in order to provide a positive user experience, is just a bs way of enforcing an illegal monopoly.