It’s quite a long time since I started using instagram on the iPhone. I really love this app and the concept behind it, but I still don’t understand, why it lacks of some very simple improvements that would make it better. No big stuff, just small tiny changes that would change the experience of using this nice social app.
- If I write a comment on a picture, I don’t get a notification about new comments, only if the new comment mentions me. This is stupid. Specially on mobile devices, the philosophy is to get done as much as possible with the minimum effort. So why not just notify me that a new comment has been added to the picture that I previously commented?
- When I go to a friend’s profile to see his/her pictures, I cannot use a swipe gesture to slide them. I can only tap one, and then come back to the thumbnail view again and tap on the next picture. Wouldn’t it be easier to just swipe your finger and go to the next picture? I know there is a thumbnail and a list mode view button, but the natural way iPhone users are used to, is to swipe your finger and go to the next picture.
- Why I cannot select the text on other people comments? It doesn’t prevent me to copy that text, because if I want, I can just read and type the text again. So, eliminating the selection of text is just pointless. People select text for many reasons. To translate a word, to mention parts of a comment on your own comment and so forth. It just makes no sense to avoid text selection.
- Cropping vertical pictures… Is it too hard to just let the user resize the picture within the square? I understand that the square size is fixed, ok it’s the app design and I won’t say anything about it. But if I take a vertical picture and I want to put that inside the square, why not just let me do it and fill the remaining space with a black background? To avoid a painful cropping now I always take every picture in horizontal.