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Instagram Eliminates Apple Watch App

hayesie said:
How about they focus on making an iPad app. It's 2018 . . . almost exactly 8 years after the iPad launched. I can't fathom a legitimate reason why one of the world's top-10 most valuable companies (Facebook) hasn't made an iPad app for, arguably, the most loved Social Media platform.
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I was going to pick on Apple, but after seeing your awesome post, I’m switching all snarks to Instagram
 
magicschoolbus said:
Right when I was thinking of buying one, a lot of companies are ditching it. Either people are not holding onto their Apple watches or they just really are not using the apps built for them. What gives?
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As with phones, people wind up focusing on the 10-12 apps that do most for them. In my case, it's primary the health and fitness related apps (workouts, nutrition tracking, heart rate monitoring, and even music controls for my workouts), although I do have my bank's app for quick balance checks without having to grab and unlock my phone, and iTranslate Converse for quick and dirty language translation.

Most of of social media type apps (instagram, twitter, and the like) and the games I play... well, there really isn't any utility to those apps on the watch. The watch will mirror notifications from my phone, so I get most of the benefit there without having to have a native app in the first place. Chat-based apps even allow you to replay to notifications with canned-responses, speech-to-text, or "scribble"... again, with no native app.
 
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It never worked for me anyway—so frustrating that I deleted it long ago.
 
jclardy said:
It is really Apple's fault - they released a half-baked SDK with the first WatchOS, so people jumped on it, and put in resources to build apps. But they were terrible because they required a round trip connection to the phone for literally everything you see or touch. So the apps were bad, meaning nobody used them.

Then WatchOS 2 came out, and released with a new SDK that allowed for more processing to happen on the watch itself. Unfortunately this change meant apps had to be rewritten. At this point nobody was seeing any benefit from having a watch app, so they didn't want to waste developer resources on a platform that isn't going to bring any competitive advantage.

Basically a chicken and egg problem. The first WatchOS should have just had no apps until they could do it right.
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Yep, basically this. Although I hate the term "unApple"... the way third party apps were handled on the AW's release was extremely unApple. Every single third party app was abysmal. I can't think of a single good experience I've had with a third party app back then... and I hardly can now.

I've said it a dozen times before but at this point, I'd much rather have a watch face store over a watch app store.
 
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This thread is full of lols. Almost zero criticism for the watch itself, which feels and looks like a physically bloated wearable these days. That said, even if it was a sleeker wearable with a larger screen, I still wouldn't want to browse ig on it.
 
I’ve been a smart watch user since the Kickstarter pebble edition, and I’m finally about to move on. I previously wore stylish watches, but moved over to smart watches. I like getting notifications, but that’s about all they are good for (unless you are a fitness person). It really does make it hard to disconnect.

Edit: oh and it does unlock my Mac :)
 
magicschoolbus said:
Right when I was thinking of buying one, a lot of companies are ditching it. Either people are not holding onto their Apple watches or they just really are not using the apps built for them. What gives?
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Apple watches are selling well and people are using them. It's that app developers aren't finding the right way to make use of them.

The truth is, why would you sit on your watch and try to navigate Instagram on a tiny screen, when you can take your phone out of your pocket and have the full experience with far more ease and options? The developers just didn't think it through and that's why they're not seeing their apps used on the watch and moving away from it.

Most have a workflow much more like this: Get notification of event on the Apple Watch. If it's something we want to engage with, then we can grab out phone and do so. The Apple Watch prevents us from having to pull our phones out of our pocket to see less important notifications countless times every day (or notifications we want to know about but need no interaction, such as finding out there's an event starting soon).
 
hayesie said:
How about they focus on making an iPad app. It's 2018 . . . almost exactly 8 years after the iPad launched. I can't fathom a legitimate reason why one of the world's top-10 most valuable companies (Facebook) hasn't made an iPad app for, arguably, the most loved Social Media platform.
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Agreed! Not to mention the Facebook iPad app is STILL not optimised for the 12.9” iPad Pro :/
 
69Mustang said:
Companies are starting to realize that every app doesn't fit the AW proposition. That's not saying anything negative about the AW. It's just a realization that AW works better as a notification device, a quick hit-n-run device... ya know, just like Apple said it was designed to be.

Most of the companies removing their AW apps probably shouldn't have had AW apps to begin with, imo. I mean seriously, who's going through pics on a ~1.5" screen?
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Yes, the screen size is a really limiting factor.
 
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Oh, so now everyone realizes apps aren't meant to run on a watch. I still don't get the point of this watch unless I have a blood sugar problem, or whatever it monitors, I forget. Plus it's laggy and ugly.
 
hayesie said:
How about they focus on making an iPad app. It's 2018 . . . almost exactly 8 years after the iPad launched. I can't fathom a legitimate reason why one of the world's top-10 most valuable companies (Facebook) hasn't made an iPad app for, arguably, the most loved Social Media platform.
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Maybe because you are not getting the idea of the usage of Instagram and Facebook. People don't carry around their ipad everywhere, pop it out to take a picture and post it on Facebook or Instagram. I don't see any reason why should Facebook invest on iPad app!
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LoveToMacRumors said:
War starting between Facebook and Apple
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if Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram cease tonexist on iPhone, will the teenagers ask for iPhone?
 
magicschoolbus said:
Right when I was thinking of buying one, a lot of companies are ditching it. Either people are not holding onto their Apple watches or they just really are not using the apps built for them. What gives?
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I don’t think most people bought an Apple Watch to read Instagram on or bid on eBay with. Most people use it for notifications such as myself.
 
magicschoolbus said:
Right when I was thinking of buying one, a lot of companies are ditching it. Either people are not holding onto their Apple watches or they just really are not using the apps built for them. What gives?
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the way i look at it is apple and everyone keep pushing the apple watch as a fitness device and so no one is making any app besides health / fitness for the AW. devs are also not interested in making apps for the AW due to the way they have to code it / port it so its understandable. sucks that we have a bunch of lazy devs or they found out that they cant get any info from AW users that they cant sell / show ads on the AW so they just forego it.

at this point im convinced that if they cant make money off of you on a certain platform they arent gonna do it. there are just not enough info they can obtain from the AW and no ads can be displayed there.
 
hayesie said:
How about they focus on making an iPad app. It's 2018 . . . almost exactly 8 years after the iPad launched. I can't fathom a legitimate reason why one of the world's top-10 most valuable companies (Facebook) hasn't made an iPad app for, arguably, the most loved Social Media platform.
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It’s no secret that Instagram has been a low priority for FB and most of their attention is on their core service. They just purchased it to remove their biggest threat/competitor. No universal Instagram app years after they acquired the company is great proof of that.
 
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Dang shame that. I don't use instagram much at all but having friends and family that live around the world it was a nice quick way to see the latest photo updates when on the train. Much more useful than the twitter app was because the photo nature of Instagram just worked well on a device that you don't really type on.
 
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