Seadragon free on iPhone – Microsoft releases first application for an Apple
Microsoft has launched its first application for the iPhone and just in case that isn’t enough of a shocker for you – it’s free.
Seadragon technology is something we’ve seen before when it was announced along with Photosynth a few years back and its smooth scanning around libraries of thousands of documents and images seems pretty damn perfect for the iPhone 3G and all its multi-touch glory.
The danger, of course, is that Microsoft might just have annoyed all of its loyal fans by helping out the competition at the expense of developing any one of the pieces of software that so far are a little on the buggy/not very good side to say the least. You know the ones I mean.
According to Trusted Reviews, TechFlash Microsoft Live Labs group product manager Alex Daley explained it by saying:
“The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit). Most phones out today don’t have accelerated graphics in them. The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do. I couldn’t just pick up a BlackBerry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support.”
And actually that sounds fair enough to me. Just because one department of Microsoft can’t get its act together, why should that mean that the whole company has to move at a snail’s pace? What’s more, it’s quite refreshing to see one of Microsoft and Apple extend an arm.
Personally, I don’t see that Gates, Ballmer & Sons. has done anything wrong here and I’m not sure that loyal Mircrosofties will really have too much of a problem with this. It’s good to be the bigger company.
(via Trusted Reviews)
Related posts: Microsoft Photosynth
