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This is a rumour that has been circulating for a while now, something that dedicated Facebook users and iPhone owners have wanted for a while – Facebook integration.
According to the latest reports, the folk over at TechCruch have it on good authority that Facebook will indeed be integrated into the next version of Apple’s operating system, iOS6.
Now, some of you may be aware of the fact that an older unreleased version of iOS did actually feature Facebook integration, however for whatever reason, Apple decided to use Twitter as the main third-party authentication and sharing service when iOS5 was released.
However, the relationship between Apple and Facebook has been growing strong over the recent months. Apple’s CEO told a group of investors that Facebook was “the one company that is closest to being like Apple”, while last week Apple had a big App Store promotion on Facebook’s new Camera app. And finally when Tim Cook was recently interviewed at the DC10 conference, again he had good things to say about Facebook, such as “Facebook is a great company” and that “the relationship is solid” between them.
Twitter will still be a part of the new iOS release, which is thought to be called iOS6 although is currently codenamed “Sundance”. Apple will be holding sessions at this year’s WWDC which will cover the continued partnership with Twitter and also discuss the forthcoming integration into OS X Mountain Lion. But although Twitter has proved to be popular within iOS5, it’s hard for Apple to ignore the fact that more and more apps available on the App Store feature Facebook sign-ups and authentication and other Facebook sharing functions, which users want to be able to utilise.
Although its early days at the moment, we do strongly suspect that Facebook integration will make an appearance within the next version of iOS, but probably at a basic level. But saying that, it’s still possible that Apple may change their mind, like they did before. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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