Meta's reasoning why Instagram took so long to come to the iPad remains nonsensical, but at least it's arrived on the world's best-selling tablet, 396 updates later.
Instagram is the visual social media platform, that's always been it's schtick, the way it differentiates itself from all of the rest. So naturally, being about large, high-quality images, its owner Meta has ignored the iPad with its large, high-quality display, for 15 years.
To anyone else, the iPad would not just be an obvious candidate for a native Instagram app, it could seem to be the best. And you wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be the 2010 launch of the iPad that sparked the 2010 launch of Instagram.
What you would be surprised about is that Instagram always claimed there weren't enough users with iPads to bother about. You'd grudgingly have presumed that Meta must have the data to back that up, but then in 2023, it launched Instagram for Android tablets.
Unless it was solely because Meta chief Adam Mosseri simply prefers Android — and he does — there is something very odd there. The world's infinitely better-selling tablet seems unlikely to have fewer users than Android tablets.
Then if that's debatable because there are so many Android tablets, that number of them is actually another problem.
It is not true that taking an iPhone app and turning it into an iPad one just a case of ticking a box in the Xcode development software. But it's close, and in comparison, developing for thousands of different sizes and types of Android tablet is a Sisyphean task.
Yet, at least it's here now. Version 396 of Instagram for iPhone is now also a native iPad app. Even if it's not fully clear what hundreds of those updates did that was so important the iPad had to wait.
Give Meta some credit for cheek, though.
"People have asked for this for a while," says the company in its launch statement, "and we've taken the time to design an experience that optimizes your favorite parts of Instagram for a bigger screen."
Yes, that's what 15 years is, it's a while. And it does take a full decade and a half to come up with a way to "take advantage of the bigger screen to give people more features with fewer taps, while keeping it simple."
"It's the Instagram you love, now with more space to play," concludes the company. Instagram on the iPad: what will they think of next?
Instagram version 396 — seriously — is now available for the iPad worldwide. It requires iPadOS 15.1 or later.
