Facebook’s millions of mobile users, and more specifically those with iOS devices, have been somewhat placated by the company over the last six months thanks to dramatic improvements to the stability of the native iOS app. After enjoying a period of calm it seems Facebook’s mobile team has been placed back in the firing line and now have to deal with an app which users either can’t update or find themselves getting stuck in a crash loop.
Version 6.7 of the native Facebook app for iOS was released on Thursday evening. The change log makes reference to the app being offered in a number of additional languages as well as a number of new icons to allow users to share their current feels and activities. iPad users of the app also received some love with the ability to edit posts and view a versioned history of those amendments. Facebook may find itself in a great deal of regret after allowing users the ability to share their feelings, as the 6.7 update seemed to immediately invoke a terrible crash loop for a very large set of users.
There seems to be a trend starting to form with Facebook app updates. The last few notable releases to the App Store have quickly been followed up by a secondary update that resolves an issue introduced by the initial release. For a company the size of Facebook – and the resources that they have – it raises serious questions about the testing mechanisms and the quality-assurance processes that exist before the update is actually signed off for release. Version 6.7 of the app has quickly been followed up by 6.7.1, which unfortunately introduces even further issues for those trying to use the app.
The App Store currently shows version 6.7.1 showing as an available update with the change log containing nothing more than “bug fixes”. We assume these bugs are the ones introduced in the aforementioned 6.7 update from November 7th. Users have taken their dismay to Twitter to vent their frustration at this latest update, purely down to the fact that they cannot actually get it into their devices, at all. The App Store throws up a ‘Unable to Download App’ warning, putting the app into a state of uselessness unless the download process is stopped or the app is deleted and reinstalled; but even then it only actually reinstalls version 6.7, and in many cases doesn’t install at all.
We’re pretty sure that we will see yet another update landing on the App Store in the coming hours to resolve this issue, but we can’t help feel that these problems just shouldn’t be occurring this often for a company like Facebook.
But, we are hearing from different social media sources that hitting the ‘Update All’ button in the App Store app’s Updates section forces the app to download normally, but we gave it a try and it’s a hit or miss solution. Which leaves us with another notion; this might be a problem on Apple’s end and not Facebook.
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