After Years of Courtship, Apple and Facebook Finally Hook Up

Apple announced Facebook-sharing integration with its iOS mobile software at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on , thus making formal a long-anticipated pairing between two of the most-watched technology companies of Silicon Valley.

“We’ve been working very closely with Facebook to make sure we’ve got the best mobile integration of Facebook around,” Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS Software, said. And it is a broad integration that includes a “Like” function for the App and iTunes Stores, as well as integration with Siri, and a public API so developers can more easily integrate the feature into their apps. But it’s not just restricted to mobile. Apple also baked Facebook integration deep into Mountain Lion for Macs, allowing users to share photos, links and comments from Mac desktop apps. New Facebook notifications populate Mountain Lion’s Notification Center, as well as the iOS notification bar.