back to article GAH: Now it's INSTAGRAM and Windows Phone 8

Image-flinging billion-dollar upstart Instagram has agreed to port its photo-bothering app to Microsoft's Windows Phone 8. Yesterday, Redmond chairman Bill Gates choked back tears at a shareholder meeting. We assumed he was weeping over the retirement of shy CEO Steve Ballmer. Perhaps instead it was tears of joy that his …

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  1. David Webb

    Shame

    I almost enjoyed my Lumia, and would have been happy to stick with a Windows phone if Nokia hadn't made the phone so poorly.

    Super expensive headphones? Sounds like crap on my Lumia, cheap ones you get for free sound the best

    Plugging in the power cord? Damages the phone over time leading to eventual break down (mine broke down 2 weeks ago)

    Update to Windows Phone 8? Not a chance, top of the line Nokia phone (at the time) totally passed by

    So yeah, phone broke and I bought a Galaxy Note 2, getting app's is all well and good, but when Nokia has pissed off their user base, who is going to continue with WP?

    1. JC_

      Re: Shame

      Damn straight - I'm never buying HTC again thanks to my Desire being stuck on Gingerbread...

      Face it, only Apple can claim to be doing OS updates properly for all users; Nexus users have it good, too, but they're a small minority.

      1. Nick

        Re: Shame

        > Face it, only Apple can claim to be doing OS updates properly for all users; Nexus users have it good, too,

        > but they're a small minority.

        And of course Blackberry. We seem to be getting updates the moment that they're released, along with high-quality betas that are simple to apply/roll back. These seem to be coming thick and fast, and bringing real improvements (in my opinion).

        Of course I'd love to have things like inssider available, but it's quite depressing that the lack of games and timewasters might seal the fate of the second/third ranking phones.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Shame

      "Update to Windows Phone 8? Not a chance"

      So you have a first generation Lumia from 18 months ago? Things have move on since then. Get over it, and get a new one. The Lumia 1020 is awesome...

      " but when Nokia has pissed off their user base, who is going to continue with WP?"

      Hardly anyone bought Windows Phone 7 handsets, so they havn't pissed off many people. Windows Phone is now at about 12% market share in the EU top 5 including the UK to prove it.....

      1. David Webb

        Re: Shame

        So you have a first generation Lumia from 18 months ago? Things have move on since then. Get over it, and get a new one. The Lumia 1020 is awesome...

        I bought a top of the line Lumia which was only a couple of months old at the time (in other words, just released by Nokia). You don't really buy a mobile phone then 1-2 months later find out it's EOL.

        I actually quite liked Windows Phone, in fact I could probably sell on my Note 2 (at a profit..) and get a Windows Phone, but that would mean pretty much buying Nokia, and, yeah....

        Go ahead, get a pair of £200 headsets, the nice expensive ones (that sound fantastic) and stick em in an older Lumia, they won't sound any good. Not so good when you consider they are headphones made my Nokia for Nokia phones.......

  2. norbert h styles

    Windows Phone Instagram app probably paid for by MS

    I'm an app developer working on iOS and the two times that i have worked projects where there was Windows Phone port, Microsoft paid for the development. This included a player for UK broadcaster and a health app.

    Of course the Android and iOS were paid for from the organisations' own funds and were much more fully featured and updated.

  3. Big-nosed Pengie

    I don't blame him.

    I used to cry every time I used WinPhone.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "great time to own a Windows Phone"

    Bet they said the same thing about the Dodo in the early 17th century.

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: "great time to own a Windows Phone"

      Nah, it was mostly turtles back then because they tasted nice and made very good soup (apparently?!) which is why they are quite rare now!

  5. gnufrontier

    Enough with the number of apps

    Counting apps in these online marketplaces is like counting the number of available web pages from a Google search. Who cares is if there are 14 million pages found with your search terms. You are not going much past the first page if that. It's the same with apps (after all - we are talking about interacting with a web site - which is all these apps do and the most popular sites will have the most popular apps). What is of interest is the download numbers of the top apps which is probably 90% of what is used or apps that are trending higher in download activity. It doesn't matter if one phone has a 100,000 apps and another has a million apps.

    Most apps are not necessary at best and will just mess up your settings somehow at worst.

    Just look at software for the PC - how much software is there anymore and that is not because of declining PC sales. Fact is, most software was never useful or any good anyway or was a poor imitation of what was already out there. Code writing exercises. People settled on a few packages and that was that.

    We should be getting there real soon now with all these mobile apps. Everything happens faster including the maturing of markets.

    1. Muckminded

      Fewer choices = worse

      Pretending that having fewer apps available is an OK thing reminds me of using a Mac in the 1990's, when nearly everything appeared on Windows first, and on Macs a few years later, or never. It was not enjoyable.

      If WP market share remains in the single digits, the bulk of the apps, whether treasures or turds, will never get ported. For business users, the good news is MS will undoubtedly make the WP Office apps more polished than the versions for the other two platforms. Plus, there will likely be some form of emulator (maybe there is already), like BlueStacks for WP that will allow Android apps to run directly (as BlackBerry now does). Also, MS isn't going to just walk away from WP. Maybe. Then again, with all the weeping and wailing, maybe their fragile emotional states aren't to be trusted.

      1. Bod

        Re: Fewer choices = worse

        Fewer quality choices = worse

        FTFY

        Not that I'd say Win Phone has quality choices, but I wouldn't want it to be filled with a million apps if they are the quality you get on Android, just so there's a chance one of them might actually be decent. Though a half a million are ad spamming crap games.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @gnufrontier - Re: Enough with the number of apps

      Yep, I agree with that. I also believe one model of Ford car should be fine for most of the American population, they rarely need that diversity. And they should also all dress in the same blue buttoned up Maoist clothing since having shirts of different colors and styles is not that useful.

      1. Squander Two

        Re: @gnufrontier - Enough with the number of apps

        > I also believe one model of Ford car should be fine for most of the American population, they rarely need that diversity.

        Very funny, yes, but there is actually some middle ground between one and one million. Most car manufacturers make about six or seven basic models, and that does appear to be plenty of variety. So it's not really clear what point you were trying to make with that analogy.

        Whenever I look in an app store, I spend most of the time ploughing through piles of useless dross. In the app stores with more apps, there's even more dross. There are a handful of great things -- especially for music-creation -- on iOS that aren't available elsewhere. Lemur alone is a reason for a serious musician to buy an iPad, and it appears that Instagram is a must-have for some people (people who insist on the right brand name so won't use 6tag). But we're talking about a few dozen apps at most. For the usual stuff you might want on your phone, I don't think the extra hundreds of thousands of apps make a jot of difference, to be honest.

    3. xenny

      Re: Enough with the number of apps

      My other half has a Lumia (which she loves, and I quite like).

      I've spent some time poking around the app store. It is disappointing.

      The first result for a timer app search was an app originally written for Win Phone 7.x, which cheerfully said in the write up that due to API limitations in 7.x, it wasn't able to offer sub minute timer accuracy.

      There's no equivalent to Android's wifi analyzer app to give another example.

      It's a better place to be than the Playbook's app store, but it isn't as good as iOS or Android, which is a pity, as the phone as a phone is pretty good for speed and battery life.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Enough with the number of apps

        When did she check a timer app last time? January 2012? I'd suggest her to look again :)

        A WiFi analyzer can't be written because of lack of APIs, AFAIK. That's the comsumer-oriented approach, for the matter it can't also setup VPNs and lacks other professional features, unluckily the success of consumer-oriented smartphones put in second place those features aimed at professionals.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Enough with the number of apps

      What counts is the number of really useful apps. If you look at any store, you see a lot of apps doing more or less the same thing, and too many games. Apple Macs could survive in their niche because they had a few really useful apps in some domains. When enough good, useful applications are available, the sheer number of total applications is pretty a nonsense. You can't peruse all 190.000 applications, nor a million one.

  6. Oh Homer
    Windows

    All this and Reversi too!

    Can you believe it?

    Sad.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Have you noticed

    If someone pontificates

    It's a great time to own ......

    it never is

    it's odd really, it's not "A great time to buy" but it is "A great time to own".

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OT? Is Instagram this year's

    Is Instagram this year's equivalent of the crazy frog ringtone?

    I do apologise for reminding you of it, if you'd forgotten.

    And in ten years time, people will apologise for reminding you of Instagram (etc). Because you'll have forgotten, and won't be happy to be reminded.

    Obviously when I say Crazy Frog I really mean Jamba/Jamster, the peripatetic subsidiary of first Verisign, later Fox/Murdoch, and now who knows (or cares) who, because on the whole, they're irrelevant other than for a brief and very irritating moment in the history of mobile telephony economics.

    "a brief and very irritating moment in the history of mobile telephony economics." Same goes for New Nokia, too.

  9. druck Silver badge
    Windows

    Follow the money

    Come on Reg, find out how much Microsoft had to pay them to port it.

    1. Squander Two

      Re: Follow the money

      You say that as if it's a criticism. I don't get it. "Those cheats at Microsoft spent money to give their users something they wanted! Bastards!"

  10. TechGeezer

    Use 6Tag!!

    Honestly, I can't understand all the fuss...

    6Tag has been out for quite a while now, and has all the functionality of the iOS app but with better aesthetic touches. Its the full fat, full access experience only better.

    6Tag!

    1. PaulR79

      Re: Use 6Tag!!

      Gonna throw my support behind 6Tag as well. It's a very good example of what happens when a talented person gets tired of waiting and makes an app that is better than the official app available on any platform.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Right microsoft, App developers are delivering the goods. Now how about you do the same?

    Why is WP8 the only platform without an official RDP client from yourselves? There should not be a single app from yourselves out on iOS/Android that is not available for WinPho. If there is then its inexcusable.

    And why do I still keep reading that "microsoft dont allow that in the sdk" limiting things like quality media players etc to be developed?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just installed Lightroom 5 on my Surface 2 Pro...

    ... thanks to the Black Friday discount. And it works very well.

    Who cares about Instagram?

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