This HN meme that all companies should be like Apple is getting a bit ridiculous. FB has always been an efficient engineering organizing that pushes out features constantly. They don't derive their value from their UI nor have they ever. There is no reason for them to start copying Apple now.
FB users don't use it because of the slick interfaces, they use it because of network effects. For that type of business, adding features fast (to create more lock-in) > focusing on great UI.
Who says Facebook needs to be like Apple? No one is arguing that Facebook needs to change or make their UI better than it was or that it was even a feature they cared about. The issue was the experience delivered by the client they had out, which sucked. They picked a technology which everyone knew would be slower in order to make it easier on their mobile team. Instead of investing in an Android team and an iOS team, they wanted to make the code portable. Sadly using a UIWebView comes with zero benefits on iOS and Facebook suffered for that. They should have kept their native client in the first place. The point of using a web view is so that you can rapidly prototype features and UI, and as far as I can remember, Facebook did very little of that on mobile anyways.
The trendy idea that startups should stay in stealth mode until their UX is completely perfect is a very Apple-y idea which throws away many years of hard-earned knowledge about iterative development processes. Apple can do it since they make hardware and that people will buy whatever they put out, highly competitive web companies, not so much.
They originally invested in the webview interface. In light of that investment, doesnt that mean its a good idea?
No, of course not. What they invest in is irrelevant. Only results matter.
Just look at Mootothemax's comment further down the thread. Poor UI wasn't causing people to not use FB.
Valley execs are probably the most susceptible group to falling in line with the echo chamber. Currently the chamber is reverberating with 'APPLE GOOD!'.
FB users don't use it because of the slick interfaces, they use it because of network effects. For that type of business, adding features fast (to create more lock-in) > focusing on great UI.