MyPad+ Review

If you believe the rumours, Mark Zuckerberg is about to unleash an all-singing, all-dancing Facebook iPad app on an eager world. But for now we’ll happily stick with the luscious MyPad+ for tablet-based friendifying.

MyPad+ organises Facebook into three columns. The left-hand side lists your options, the middle column displays streams, and the right expands comments and profiles. All navigation is swipe simple, and everything works as you would expect it to – often just like the website but with more pop-ups.

Click on a comment and the middle column bumps across to make room, although you can still scroll smoothly up and down. Photos load swiftly in multiple columns – and you can download them to the iPad in a flash.

Of course, porting any site as busy and fluid as Facebook is tricky. It can be tedious to navigate messages and chats on MyPad+, and there are still some annoying errors, like not being able to tell whether there are any comments on a photo or jump straight to a profile from a chat. Talking of which, there’s no sign of video chat on board the current version, nor videos, questions and many of the other little tidbits that millions of Facebook users latch on to.

Although a few games are available, the app kicks you out into the App Store to go any further.

Not perfect, then, but a vast improvement on squeezing your digits into the tiny official iPhone app or squinting at the web page in Safari.