Tuesday, May 4, 2021 10:43 am30 Comments

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Internal Apple emails between Steve Jobs and executives Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller show the company was battling with Facebook over App Store rules for at least a decade. In the emails, Jobs calls Facebook, “Fecebook.”

Kif Leswing for CNBC:

Facebook CEO Mark ZuckerbergIn July 2011, Apple’s then-software head Scott Forstall sent an email to former Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller and Jobs. In the message, he said that he had spoken with Mark — presumably Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — about the Facebook iPad app.

At the time, Facebook was turning its social network into a platform for games and apps. The most famous of these was Farmville, a game where users tended gardens inside their Facebook accounts.

Facebook wanted Apple to compromise. Mark suggested, according to Forstall:

• Facebook could omit a directory of Apps in the Facebook app — not even links.
• Facebook could prevent third-party apps from running in an “embedded web view,” or basically a browser inside the Facebook app.
• Facebook wanted Apple to allow user posts in the news feed related to apps. Forstall wrote that those were filtered at the time, because tapping those posts would do nothing.
• Facebook proposed having tapping one of those app links in the feed switch the user to a native app or take them to the App Store if one exists, or otherwise link out to Safari, the iPhone web browser.

Jobs, then CEO of Apple, replied from his iPad: “I agree — if we eliminate Fecebooks third proposal it sounds reasonable.”

MacDailyNews Take: Not a typo. “Fecebook” is perfectly apt. Steve always did have a way with words.

We haven’t had personal Facebook accounts for many years now. And happily so. — MacDailyNews, May 11, 2017

Beyond the privacy aspect, Facebook is Creepster Central. It’s a Narcissists’ Paradise. In general, yuck. — MacDailyNews, March 27, 2015