Instagram lends a helping hand to Apple Watch developers

The Facebook owned company posted its set of Objective C code to help app developers

With April 24th set as the launch date for the Apple Watch, all developers are busy working for towards the completion of their apps. There isn’t enough time for them left to write extensions that can run on the device and at the last hour Instagram has lent its helping hand. The Facebook-owned company has shared some code which it wrote for its own app and posted a set of Objective C code.

This code paves the way for an app to make use of the complex data structures which will support apps rich with features for the tiny form factor of the watch.

Instagram engineer Ryan Nystrom wrote in an emailed statement, “We’re really excited to be one of the first apps on the platform, and were able to build some solutions that we think will help other people build their apps more quickly and easily. We’ve been able to build on open-source technology at Instagram, so it’s exciting for us to contribute, too.”

Instagram on your Apple Watch is going to display various items from a user’s feed and provides the ability to perform the most basic functions of liking and commenting on pictures using emojis. Apple has also been helping developers along the way and has recently published a preliminary framework which will help manipulate the programming structure of the watch. However, Apple has clearly warned that this structure might change prior to the final release of the watch.

Apple’s standard software slightly varies from the code published by Instagram. They both have different ways of dealing with multi-dimensional data, or a single piece of data with multiple items within it. Instagram claims that its code is the easier way to getting things done around the inside of the watch. Others busy preparing apps for the upcoming Apple Watch include Evernote, City Mapper, real estate listing service Redfin, Salesforce, and the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper and the list continues.