Facebook mobile app guru Hewitt trashes Android OS

Outspoken mobile software engineer Joe Hewitt, the developer responsible for social networking giant Facebook's wildly popular application for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone, is crushing Google's Android mobile operating system via Twitter, tweeting "Android tools are horrendous, OS is hideous, but the absence of big brother telling me what to do gives it a slight edge." It's not Hewitt's first shot at Android--previous tweets include comments like "The more I work with Android the more it reminds me of Windows... as in, it's really flexible, agnostic, and developer-friendly, but also really sloppily designed," "Android fragmentation will hopefully stabilize within 2 years, and if not, at least people upgrade phones much more often than computers" and "Once a day or so it hits me that I am writing Java, and I cry a little."

Late last year, Hewitt made headlines when he publicly vowed to quit building iPhone apps, blaming Apple's approval policies. "Time for me to try something new," Hewitt wrote on Twitter. "I've handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I'm onto a new project." TechCrunch later reached out to Hewitt to clarify his comments, and he said "My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple's policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer."

Facebook users worldwide now top 500 million, up from 200 million users less than 18 months ago. About 30 percent of all users access the service via mobile device each month, a percentage that grows substantially within the smartphone segment: In June 2010, research firm The Nielsen Company said 39 percent of all smartphone owners use the Facebook social networking application every month, adding it is the most popular app on iPhone (used by 58 percent of consumers) and BlackBerry (39 percent), as well as the second most popular on Android (51 percent).

For more on Hewitt's anti-Android comments:
- read this Business Insider article

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