Skatter Tech

Facebook has finally updated its iPhone and iPod touch app to stay in sync with the new features on the desktop website. The app finally supports tagging friends in status updates.

The social network redesigned the “Update Status” UI to incorporate friend tagging, location tagging, adding photos, and more in-depth privacy controls. While this is a welcome addition to the app, it removes the reason for having separate Photo and Check In buttons in the News Feed. The duplicated functionality might come off as confusing for some users.

As for the new privacy controls, Facebook added the ability to fine tune the specific groups of people you share content with to better reflect your standard choices on the main site. The three main options are available — public, friends, and custom — along with each of your friend lists if you have any. If you recently used a custom setting on facebook.com, that setting is automatically imported in the app so you can use it there as well.

Facebook also redesigned the walls on Profile and Group pages. They look a tad more similar to their online counterparts, with basic information about each user or group placed at the top of the wall. Facebook fixed some minor bugs in this release too.

But with everything new in version 3.5 of the app, they also took something very precious away: iPad support. The official Facebook iPad app was never released, though the app existed under layers of code. They apparently removed that code in this update. Twitter user @chpwn explains:

Facebook removed iPad support in their latest app update. It’s not possible for FaceForward to enable something that’s no longer in the app.

Hopefully we will see the iPad support make a surprise reappearance in the future. For those of you using an iPhone or iPod touch, the Facebook app update is available in the App Store now.

Link: Facebook app