Despite being one of the fastest growing social sites in the world, Instagram still hasn’t come out with an iPad app. This has allowed several developers to step into the breech and offer their own tablet viewers for the popular photo-sharing app. Some of the most popular ones include Padgram, Pictacular, and Iris App. In order to step up to the competition, a bootstrapped Singaporean startup called Tiny Whale has retooled its Instagram iPad viewer Retro.
The new version of the app, which is now available in the App Store, is now one of the best viewers for casual browsers and Instagram power users (including people who use it for marketing) alike.
Retro, which was featured in App Stores in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, stands out by offering several viewing modes as well as notifications whenever you get a new like or comment, something that most other Instagram iPad viewers lack. Jason Dinh Ba Thanh, the co-founder of Tiny Whale, tells TechCrunch they hope to add push notifications soon, too. The app is free to download, but an upgrade allows viewers to add multiple accounts and download videos and photos to their devices.
The app offers three viewing modes, including a single column mode that is similar to Instagram’s own news feed, a grid mode, and a mosaic mode similar to Pinterest that allows you to focus on individual pictures while allowing you to view thumbnails in the background, which is the most popular viewing style, says Retro designer Louis Nguyen. The app’s statistic feature lets you keep track of how many comments and likes photos have received, which is handy for managing accounts if you use Instagram for marketing.
“We feel that other Instagram apps on the App Store don’t take into account different use cases that users might have and fail to utilise all the real estate the iPad screen has to offer,” says Nguyen, who adds that the Retro was designed to make it as easy as possible to switch between different viewing modes as well as multiple accounts with intuitive gestures. For example, you can pull down a pop-up window or photo viewer to close it or swipe left and right to go back and forth between pics.
To try Retro, download it here from the App Store.
