While Instagram came to Windows 10 Mobile back in May—it was previously available on older Windows phones, too–this week marks its first-ever availability on Windows 10 for PCs and tablets. It’s exactly what it sounds like.
According to Microsoft, Instagram for Windows 10 provides the following features:
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Post and edit photos. “Instagram makes sharing moments with everyone in your world easy, speedy, and fun,” Microsoft says. Assuming you have a tablet or PC with both a backward-facing camera and a touch screen, that is. And that is a crazy limitation.
Stories. Stories from people you follow will appear in a row at the top of the Feed (home) view.
Live tile support. This is perhaps the only feature that’s unique to Windows: You can see what your friends and family are up to at a glance using the app’s live tile support.
Notifications. – As with other platforms, Instagram can send you notifications.
Instagram Direct. This feature lets you exchange threaded messages with one or more people, and share posts you see in Feed as a message.
Full featured functionality. The Instagram app supports Search, Explore, Profile, and Feed views.
Based on a quick look at the app, it’s not particularly sophisticated. Consider how the sign-in screen doesn’t take into account the size or orientation of the app window in any way.
And it’s not just the sign-in screen. The app’s other views don’t do anything to use the on-screen real estate effectively either.
This is sadly typical of Instagram, which I find to be a curiously terrible way to share and enjoy photos. There’s no way to navigate from photo to photo, and no way to zoom unless you use multitouch. Pretty terrible, but in this case at least it’s not Windows, it’s the app and the underlying service.
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<p>In my opinion, this is pointless. Instagram can be accessed through the web, where nothing needs to be installed. Like many apps, I think there will come point when this app will fade away.</p>