Redmond, Washington — Microsoft’s Live Labs relentless efforts have finally bore some fruits, and the engineers have released the company’s first application for Apple’s popular smartphone–even before making it available on Microsoft’s own mobile platform this week-end. The move, as it would seem to suggest that Redmond has finally acknowledged the iPhone’s market dominance.
The free application, first mobile application written by Microsoft called Seadragon Mobile, which has just popped up on Apple’s App Store last week end, which allows users to quickly “deep zoom” on high-resolution images while online and is intended to demonstrate what is possible with a mobile platform.
SeaDragon Mobile, the application which comes free of charge and measure about 1.1 MB is intended to let the iPhone users to view, browse and share giga-pixel images. The app enables users to effortlessly navigate through large images, or image collections, using the Apple iPhone’s touch-screen interface.
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.
“Explore massive galaxies, pore over maps, or flip through collections of photographs, all over the air. You can also add your own photos or browse those already available on Photosynth.com,” it says the description of SeaDragon Mobile.
Most impressive though, was a set called “Asia Vacation”. Zooming in on a photo of a sculpture, you can get incredibly close in. For instance, from afar on one photo you would never guess there were tiny carvings of flowers on a skirt.
Unfortunately, Photosynth functionality is presently not operational and Microsoft’s engineers are working to fix the problems. Microsoft’s Photosynth service was launched earlier this year.
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.
So far, Microsoft has held off introducing apps for the iPhone — preferring rather to focus on its own Windows Mobile platform. But now it appears, however, that Microsoft can no longer simply ignore the iPhone’s market dominance.
But even some Microsoft employees are wondering why the company did not first release Seadragon Mobile for Windows Mobile. “It is terrific to see this innovation coming out but I have to ask myself where the Windows Mobile version is?” wrote Steve Clayton, a Microsoft technology manager who works on software and services projects, in his own Saturday blog post. “Surely phones like the touch HD from HTC would benefit from this too?” wrote Clayton.
Microsoft’s Silverlight media player already uses the Seadragon deep zoom technology. For instance, visitors to the Hard Rock Café’s memorabilia site, which uses Silverlight, can zoom in on any piece of memorabilia in the collection.
Still, Clayton seemed impressed with his colleagues’ work. “The app is astonishing, the aerial maps with Seadragon and GPS enabled are a joy to behold,” he wrote.