Microsoft releases an iPhone App

15 Dec

Posted by fx in technology (Apple, IPhone, microsoft, Seadragon Mobile, Smartphone)

: Image by marcopako  via Flickr

Microsoft has succumb to its enemy: Apple. They have just released Seadragon Mobile, an application for the iPhone which allows users to browse images and quickly “deep-zoom”.

Seadragon is the backbone for Microsoft’s Photosynth, which allows users to take a grouping of photographs and stitch them together into a faux 3D environment.

Other iPhone apps are reportedly in development in Redmond; Microsoft’s Tellme unit was expected to release the company’s first iPhone app in the form of a voice-activated search for a variety of phones, including iPhone and BlackBerry. A Microsoft representative told my colleague Ina Fried in September that a public version of that program would likely be released in a few months.

In Microsoft’s defence they seem to have opted for the iPhone purely based on the fact that it has a guaranteed graphics processor on-phone. Microsoft’s own phone OS runs across too wide a variety of phones to guarantee that.

CNET News has more details.