Apple reportedly acquires developer behind burst photo app SnappyCam

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  • Reply 21 of 91
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    muppetry wrote: »
    So can you comment on how <app name> achieves the necessary throughput and compression rates?

    His forum name is the same as the makers of the aforementioned app he claims is better than the SanppyCam app he pooh-poohed. Sounds like it's just a plug for his app so I wouldn't expect any objective test results.
  • Reply 22 of 91
    muppetrymuppetry Posts: 3,331member
    solipsismx wrote: »
    muppetry wrote: »
    So can you comment on how <app name> achieves the necessary throughput and compression rates?

    His forum name is the same as the makers of the aforementioned app he claims is better than the SanppyCam app he pooh-poohed. Sounds like it's just a plug for his app so I wouldn't expect any objective test results.

    I agree. I assumed that the poster was connected to the company, and I was curious to hear how they tackled the problem compared to SnappyCam, not how they did comparison tests.
  • Reply 23 of 91
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    They should have done this with Instagram before Crapbook got their hands on them. An iOS-exclusive social photo network built into the camera app, like the way Instagram was, with the ability to share photos externally to Crapbook would be infinitely more fun/useful than 8 basic filters and Photo Stream. But alas, that's not a possibly now.

    Apple should have bought out Twitter and Instagram and be now in a position of ownership over the defacto photo and messaging services out there. Although, obviously, keep the various Twitter apps around on the other platforms; also no longer possible. They'd be 2 solid social networks to be in the driver's seat of for a company who cares about privacy and user experience the way Apple does.

    Though, I would especially have loved them to have acquired Instagram. Could you imagine the Photos app having an tab that was an iOS-exclusive version of Instagram rather than Photo Stream? That would have been awesome!
  • Reply 24 of 91
    Am I the only one here ... that every time I used my iPhone's camera ... I always thought ....

    "Gotta study those fast discrete cosine transform algorithms! There's got to be a better way!" :D


    Bingo! You hit on it…

    The value of this individual is in the way he thinks – he looks at a problem and sees it as an opportunity.


    Here's a feature request I made on the iPhone a while back:
    7/26/07 3:09 PM Dick Applebaum:
    The following enhancement would significantly improve the utility of the iPhone camera.

    Allow taking a rapid sequence of pictures such as a player kicking a soccer ball... maybe press-hold the camera button with minimal delay between take/save--take/save--take/save, etc.


    Sigh… I didn't have the expertise to do anything about it.
  • Reply 25 of 91
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    Oh snap. I wonder what new cam improvements are on the horizon.
  • Reply 26 of 91

    Think practically Team. Apple's thinking is always one step ahead of the others. If I am not wrong then in this take over Apple will use the technology behind SnappyCam, they will modified it as per their (Apple) need. Once, the new modified tech is ready to use they will sure use that in the new generation of Apple's iPhone and other iOS devices.

  • Reply 27 of 91
    rbourke wrote: »
    Then why didn't Apple buy Fast Camera instead?  Obviously Apple knows the truth.

    Good question. They do know the truth that Fast Camera is faster when it comes to how many 8MP photos you can snap AND save per second over a sustained period. Email is for a Free promo code and compare yourself. I would not have sold Fast Camera to Apple if their plans were to remove it from the store and absorb the tech into one if their apps.
    rbourke wrote: »
    Did you try adjusting the setting in SnappyCam - it never ran out of memory for me after I configured it correctly.

    Yes. Again, you have to make sure you are capturing 8MP photos and you cannot watch the speed counter in SnappyCam, it does not count the number actually saved. Go to next screen and divide the number saved by the number of seconds you were shooting. Capture images of a stop watch for example.

    rbourke wrote: »
    Does Fast Camera really achieve higher than 20-30 high quality 8MP photos per second?

    Yes, Fast Camera is the only app that does. SnappyCam did not actually save that many per second. This is not about advertising but about clarifying the facts. Our app has 7 million users. Fast Camera can both capture AND actually save 24 (8MP) images per second at higher quality than SnappyCam (which uses faster but inferior compression) for up to 1,000 images (about 42 seconds).
  • Reply 28 of 91
    muppetry wrote: »
    So can you comment on how Fast Camera achieves the necessary throughput and compression rates?

    We achieved this through optimization and tons of testing, trial and error. I'll gladly send you a free promo so you can compare for yourself. I assure you that Fast Camera is faster at 8MP on iPhone 5S and saves higher quality 8MP images than SnappyCam.
    evilution wrote: »
    Oh what a surprise. A new poster recommends an app over some other app and said poster turns out to be the company that made the app they recommend.
    Sour grapes!
    Look, I see your concern but I didn't try to hide our company name in any way and I was not trying to advertise Fast Camera, only to set the record straight. We already have 7 million users. Check AppAnnie for our rank history. We were consistently ahead of SnappyCam in the paid and top grossing charts. The facts are clear.
    frxntier wrote: »
    This is blatant advertising from a first poster (who actually makes the Fast Camera app) and should be taken with a grain of salt. It shouldn't even be here. It's irrelevant.

    Also, if i4software was any good, they would've been on Apple's radar, but they're not, so they weren't.

    How do you know we weren't? They have the stats. They know our sales and rank history. They know we have far more daily active users and more 5 star ratings.

    solipsismx wrote: »
    His forum name is the same as the makers of the aforementioned app he claims is better than the SanppyCam app he pooh-poohed. Sounds like it's just a plug for his app so I wouldn't expect any objective test results.

    Wasn't meant to be a plug for our app at all guys. Why then would I be offering so many free promo codes so people with both apps can compare and test? I only want to set the record straight. We have 7 million users and that didn't happen because I posted on a few forums.
  • Reply 29 of 91
    muppetrymuppetry Posts: 3,331member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by i4software View Post

     
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by muppetry View Post



    So can you comment on how Fast Camera achieves the necessary throughput and compression rates?




    We achieved this through optimization and tons of testing, trial and error. I'll gladly send you a free promo so you can compare for yourself. I assure you that Fast Camera is faster at 8MP on iPhone 5S and saves higher quality 8MP images than SnappyCam.

     

    Thanks for the response, and I'd certainly be happy to check it out. Optimization, testing, trial and error was not really the level of detail that I was hoping for though, in comparison to the observation that SnappyCam was using new DCTs specifically tailored to the co-processor instruction set.  It's not that hard to speed up processing simply by discarding data.

  • Reply 30 of 91
    i4software wrote: »

    Wasn't meant to be a plug for our app at all guys. Why then would I be offering so many free promo codes so people with both apps can compare and test? I only want to set the record straight. We have 7 million users and that didn't happen because I posted on a few forums.

    If you're offering promo codes, I'll certainly take one. We have at least 1 of every iPhone and iPad (except iPad Air).

    We just spent about $1,800 for a starter setup for my granddaughter... Canon 60D Body, Lenses... The Canon is 18 MP and shoots continuously at 5 FPS.

    The camera on the 5C is pretty good -- the 5S is great!


    I am hoping that Apple will incorporate some kind of folded optics camera/zoom in future iPhones and iPads.
  • Reply 31 of 91
    Bemused at i4software's responses.
  • Reply 32 of 91
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member
    Strange my iPhone 5s already records 8MP photos at 30 frames per second, so what's the point.
  • Reply 33 of 91
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    philboogie wrote: »
    This is surprising. I would expect Apple to be knowledgable enough to create the same tech on their own. Something doesn't click. Great news for Mr. Papandriopoulos though. (yes, that was a copy/paste action)

    This is a common misconception when it comes to big businesses. They are just made up of many talented individuals. It seems that they have about 20,000 non-retail staff:

    http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/09/apple-1000-engineers-chips/

    This will be split between software engineers, hardware engineers, designers, marketing and so on. While someone within the portion of software engineers might well be capable of developing code to do this specific task, they clearly tried already and didn't manage to get it fast enough and this person has developed exactly the code they need.

    It's much the same with Yahoo's purchase of Summly. Their developers probably could have come up with similar natural language processing algorithms but it's quicker to just buy something that exists and works already, especially when you are so flush with cash. A few million dollar buyout to a little guy is big money but to companies like Apple and Yahoo, it's a rounding error. Existing Apple staff might well have been able to develop FCP, Logic, Shake, iTunes, OS X but they didn't, they bought all of them.

    They also get a lot of flack when they don't buy companies out like what happened with Dashboard and Sherlock.
  • Reply 34 of 91
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    I suspect that it's more than fine-tuning with existing ideas, that there's a conceptual breakthrough in there. Otherwise, yes, Apple would and could simply do the same.

    For comparison, the maths underlying WiFi was developed by scientists for radioastronomy. "The Australian radio-astronomer John O'Sullivan developed a key patent used in Wi-Fi as a by-product in a CSIRO research project, "a failed experiment to detect exploding mini black holes the size of an atomic particle"." (WP) The rest is lateral thinking.

    My understanding is that Mr. Papandriopoulos researched the underlying technologies (discrete cosine transforms and lossless Huffman compression) and optimized the code for the ARM architecture.
  • Reply 35 of 91
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    muppetry wrote: »
    Thanks for the response, and I'd certainly be happy to check it out. Optimization, testing, trial and error was not really the level of detail that I was hoping for though, in comparison to the observation that SnappyCam was using new DCTs specifically tailored to the co-processor instruction set.  It's not that hard to speed up processing simply by discarding data.

    While I find the posts from a developer promoting their product troublesome, they may have developed a novel approach they don't desire to divulge. Personally, I can think of multiple methods to investigate improving the compression and encoding of photographic data although I loath programming. Certainly, one should question compression ratios, encoding methods (discrete cosine transforms, fourier transforms, fractal compression, etc.) as well as code optimization.
  • Reply 36 of 91
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    shard wrote: »
    Most are assuming Apple bought SnappyCam for SnappyCam, what if it is the next thing that John Papandriopoulos was working on? Some one as brilliant as he is, will most likely have started work on something else right after he finished SnappyCam.

    A similar approach could optimize several different functions of Apple devices whether or not Mr. Papandriopoulos was developing more ideas or not; this may be the reason Apple acquired the company. Writing elegant code that is twice as fast as the code Apple is currently using is impressive and certainly worth investigating a rounding error on pocket change (Apple earned approximately 4,250,000 net profit per hour in the recently ended fiscal year).
  • Reply 37 of 91
    Burst Mode exists in the 4S also. It may not be as fast as the 5S, but when i hold down the volume/shutter button it continues to take a ton of photos in fairly quick succession.
  • Reply 38 of 91
    i4software wrote: »
    We achieved this through optimization and tons of testing, trial and error. I'll gladly send you a free promo so you can compare for yourself. I assure you that Fast Camera is faster at 8MP on iPhone 5S and saves higher quality 8MP images than SnappyCam.
    Look, I see your concern but I didn't try to hide our company name in any way and I was not trying to advertise Fast Camera, only to set the record straight. We already have 7 million users. Check AppAnnie for our rank history. We were consistently ahead of SnappyCam in the paid and top grossing charts. The facts are clear.
    How do you know we weren't? They have the stats. They know our sales and rank history. They know we have far more daily active users and more 5 star ratings.
    Wasn't meant to be a plug for our app at all guys. Why then would I be offering so many free promo codes so people with both apps can compare and test? I only want to set the record straight. We have 7 million users and that didn't happen because I posted on a few forums.
    Do you think I could get a promo so I could test out your app because I have SnappyCam and I'd like to compare :)
  • Reply 39 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by knowitall View Post



    Strange my iPhone 5s already records 8MP photos at 30 frames per second, so what's the point.

     

    I think you are referring to video capture not 8MP full resolution photo capture. How many 8MP images (3,264 x 2,448) are you able to capture in 20 seconds on your 5S? Use a stopwatch timer and open one of the images to make sure it is that large. Fast Camera can do 480 in 20 seconds. SnappyCam's counter shows more but over half of the images are missing when you go to the review screen.
  • Reply 40 of 91
    Do you think I could get a promo so I could test out your app because I have SnappyCam and I'd like to compare :)

    Yes. Absolutely. PM Sent.

    To the others... If I was on here trying to sell more copies of Fast Camera, why would I be giving away free promo codes to all that have asked so far? Check our position on the top grossing charts. We are doing just fine. I only want to have a discussion on the facts. SnappyCam's camera view "counter" is misleading because it doesn't indicate how many images are actually being stored. Go to the review screen and divide the number actually saved by the time to get a true frames/sec measurement.
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