Why Facebook Is Missing From Apple's New Desktop OS

When iOS 5 launched final year, Apple sent the world a really burly statement: It wants to welcome amicable media, but in its own way.

We can right away ponder Thursday's developer preview of Mountain Lion, the ultimate chronicle of Apple's desktop OS, an annexation to the company's social-media philosophy. Both iOS and Mountain Lion enclose built-in Twitter functionality, giving users the choice to twitter from probably every indentation of the Apple hardware ecosystem. And both working systems right away have iMessage, Apple's exclusive information network that allows iOS 5 users (and soon, Mountain Lion users) to send messages without relying on normal SMS.

But a bigger, bluer participation is conspicuously absent from Apple's OS integration. Facebook is the widespread player in amicable media, but its send formation is nowhere to be found in Apple's desktop and mobile working systems. It's a flagrant repudiation deliberation Facebook updates are a elementary drop-down menu choice in Android and Windows Phone.

The reason is to diss is simple: Apple doesn't wish to palm over the keys to its amicable media automobile to such a considerable competitor. Apple is cheerful to confederate Twitter opposite iOS and Mountain Lion, sure. But as Ross Rubin of NPD Research told me, "Unlike Google, Twitter isn't creation a aggressive phone platform."

Twitter integration, of course, is a no-brainer for Apple. With reduction than half the user bottom of Mark Zuckerberg's 845-million-strong amicable behemoth, Twitter's attain pales in more aged to Facebook's. Furthermore, Twitter has started changeable its product positioning - it's right away reduction a amicable network than a self-described "real-time communications network."

In short, out of the world's 3 leading amicable platforms - Facebook, Twitter and Google+ - Twitter is both the least melancholy and many independent. Think of it as the Switzerland of information sharing.

Let's look at this broadly in conditions of contest and hazard to Apple's own stage aspirations, focusing on Google+ first.

Google is Apple's principal nemesis in the mobile OS space, and has doubled down on its own amicable network by firmly integrating Google+ with Android. Yes, there's a local Facebook focus for Android, but users wouldn't mount for an Android phone without Facebook functionality, and Google knew it. Therefore Facebook formation appears in Android - but it's not as firmly integrated as Google's own Google+ service.

Google's local Google+ app for Android, for example, can default to uploading all of the photos taken on your Android phone to your Google+ account in the cloud. It's an incredibly easy routine that promotes Google+ updates over Facebook updates.

But different Google, that had to welcome Facebook, and has its own amicable media platform, Apple doesn't have such luxuries. It's amicable media associate needs to be benign.

And different Facebook, Rubin reminds us, Twitter isn't an app stage either, that would instead present other outrageous indicate of disagreement and contest for Apple. Facebook debuted its open chart stage progressing in the year. It's a undoubted call to arms for developers to wobble their apps in to Facebook's really fabric. With Facebook's singular API, developers are able to confederate their apps in to Ticker, Timeline, Newsfeed and other high-visibility areas of Facebook's interface.

And there's nonetheless other suffering indicate for Apple: Facebook is threaded deeply in to Microsoft's Windows Phone OS, other competitor, despite a not as big one. There's moreover the small matter of Microsoft's leading investment in to Facebook around Bing finding formation , a partnership that could have Apple heedful of Facebook's bedfellows.

But over ties to other competitors, the greatest bell pointer for Apple could distortion in the really things that creates Facebook what it is: data.

"User data tends to upsurge in to Facebook easily," Gartner Research researcher Michael Gartenberg told me. "But it doesn't lend towards to advance back out as easily." Imagine the abounding value trove of data subsequent from millions of new Macs if Facebook were integrated with Mountain Lion. While the increased capability to share could upgrade the Mac experience for users, it would moreover accelerate Facebook's immeasurable hoard of data. With richer data comes improved chance for targeted advertising.

And with more ad dollars, Facebook grows in to and even stronger force to be reckoned with.

Add to that rumors of a Facebook phone in the functions , and Apple doesn't need any more reason to intensify its competitor.

So in the end, Apple is left with usually Twitter, or what Gartenberg calls "more of a headlines service for information dissemination." Now, of course, all of this could change when Mountain Lion creates its open entrance advance summer time. Apple and Facebook could attain an consent to bring full Facebook formation to OS X, just as they roughly did with iTunes Ping . It's explanation that the companies are talking, and have reached at least a few conditions of consent in the past. Perhaps other detente is on the horizon.

Or maybe Apple, as typical, will keep carrying out its own thing.

Facebook and Apple declined to criticism for this article.