We should all know by now how popular Instagram is, after all, it blew all off the competition away and made enough of an impact in the app world to prompt Facebook to shell out the better part of a billion dollars to help them improve their mobile presence. It’s all well and good uploading images to your network through the official Instagram app, but if you really need quick access to the service while sitting at your desk and you want to discreetly check out what’s popular in with the Instagram loving world then Instabar for OS X could be the answer.
The Mac App Store has a number of popular and fairly feature packed Instagram apps that make great and extensive use of the Instagram API, but sometimes a creation that offers too much can detract from what users actually want. Instabar is a fresh approach to the service on OS X and basically gives almost instant access to the popular feed or a timeline directly from the Menu Bar on a Mac running OS X Lion or above.
Some of you Mac app lovers may already be familiar with the professional version of Instabar that was introduced to the Mac App Store about a week ago for $0.99. The developers have quickly followed that release up with a free version of the software that comes bundled with the same aesthetics and usability but has a limited feature set in comparison to the paid version. The free of charge installation only allows users to view the current popular page of Instagram that has a selection of images from random users that have received a large number of likes from other members.
Shelling out a dollar will net you the pro version. Same style, same Menu Bar access but with the addition of being able to log into your own Instagram account and see your own feed as well as helping other users get onto the popular page by liking their uploads. Comments have been disabled in both versions so that feature is totally non-existent, but does it really matter on a simple app that is designed to remove the clutter and allow Instagram lovers to connect visually with images alone?
If Instagram is your social network of choice and you prefer some minimalism then check out Instabar on the Mac App Store.
(Source: Instabar for OS X on the Mac App Store) (via TechCrunch)
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