Not Every App Needs a Version for Apple Watch

Instagram recently announced that you can now download a new version of its app for Apple Watch:

“In the past few months,” someone at Instagram enthused on the company blog, “we worked closely with Apple to reimagine the Instagram experience for your wrist. The result is Instagram for Apple Watch, which was designed to make Instagram even more intimate and in the moment. Whether you are out on a morning walk or enjoying a cup of coffee with friends, with a quick glance you can see the world as it happens and interact with the photos that matter to you.”

First: If you are enjoying a cup of coffee with friends, I hope you are actually talking to them, and not looking at photos on your gadget.

Second: Instagram seems like an almost perfect example of an app that did not need a version that was “reimagined” for a wristwatch. The screen of the Apple Watch is small by design, and good photography deserves to be viewed on a large, beautiful screen. You do not need to see landscape photography or food photography or photos of your friends reduced to the size of a postage stamp. If you have to hunch over and squint your eyes to look at a picture, you’re probably better off just taking out the larger screen that is literally ten inches away in your pocket.

A screenshot from the Instagram blog. What is this even a picture of?

What is the limit to this madness? Will there be a Photoshop for Apple Watch? Final Cut Pro for Apple Watch? Will you be able to binge the next season of “House of Cards” on Netflix for Apple Watch, huddled in the fetal position on your couch, your wrist two inches from your face?

Some apps seem designed to run on Apple Watch. An exercise timer; notifications that your flight has been delayed; a remote control for your television. A canvas that reduces high-resolution photographs to tiny little cornflakes of color does not improve anything.

We don’t need YouTube or Hulu or Vine or Instapaper or Harper’s or500px for Apple Watch –– unless Apple Watch 2 ships with a microscope.

Source: yahoo.com