Facebook on iPhone.
(Credit: CNET)
The next major version of iOS will be getting a lot more social, according to a new report.
TechCrunch says it’s heard Apple’s iOS 6 — which is expected to be unveiled at Apple’s annual developers conference in a little less than a week and a half — will have built-in connections to Facebook.
According to the report, the integration will give app makers an easier way to let users log in with their Facebook account, presumably without kicking them out to Facebook’s app, which is how the behavior is presently treated.
What’s not mentioned is whether Facebook will get included in the sharing options alongside Twitter, which was added as part of iOS 5 last year, and set to be a built into OS X Mountain Lion when it’s released this summer.
This is not the first such time Facebook has been rumored to be headed to iOS. Earlier this year, tech site iMore claimed iOS 5.1 — a supplemental update to last October’s iOS 5 — would add connections to the social network. That evidence came from a beta version of the software delivered to developers. Pre-dating that, a report from Business Insider in early 2010 claimed Facebook contact syncing would make it into iOS 4.0.
Of note, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said to “stay tuned” on the company’s relationship with Facebook. During an interview at the D10 conference on Tuesday, Cook said he has “great respect” for the social networking giant, and that “I think we can do more with them.”
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Apple famously yanked planned support for Facebook in Ping, the company’s lackluster social music sharing network built into iTunes, at the very last minute. According to an interview with then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Facebook had demanded “onerous terms.”
Facebook itself has since said one of its biggest weaknesses is mobile advertising, something it could hope to bolster by getting more users signed up, and making it easier to integrate on other platforms, including Apple’s.
Apple is expected to fully detail iOS 6 at WWDC, which kicks off on June 11 at 10 a.m. Pacific. CNET will be there to bring you all the news, as it happens. Stay tuned for more details on that.
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