Apple Acquires Rapid-Fire Camera App Developer SnappyLabs

For those interested in the technical details, the original blog post is archived here:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131010012005/http://www.snappylabs.com/blog/snappycam/2013/07/31/iphone-king-of-speed/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20131010012005&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snappy...</a><p>I wonder why they took it down.

<i>Major</i> congratulations to him! What an achievement!<p>I wonder though: in these situations if he were to refuse the acquisition would Apple just steal his idea (NOT implementation) and bake it into the iPhone regardless? I think Microsoft did something like this, no? Any thoughts?

When I first heard about the SnappyCam that is capable of taking blazing fast photos using a regular photo cam, I immediately purchased a copy and experimented with it. Not only it doesn&#x27;t everything it claims (essentially a breakthrough in super optimized image compression) but also the UI is well thought. At the time, I was certain that it&#x27;s just a matter of time to get Apple&#x27;s attention and very likely Apple would want to acquire the technology. Kudo to Papandriopoulos (How do you exactly pronounce that??)<p>What I&#x27;d like to add that, it apparently SnappyCam would only make sense on iPhone 5 or lower. That is because iPhone 5S already can do what SnappyCam does in its native Cam app by holding down the shoot button. Perhaps Apple got other ideas for its use in the future.

It is amazing that it is still possible to optimize the compression algorithm for JPEG, a file format that is already over 20 years old.

Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi!!! Congrats to John Papandriopoulos! Very impressive work.. also the amount of work that went into it is wow!! .. &quot;The final implementation comprises nearly 10,000 lines of hand-tuned assembly code, and over 20,000 lines of low-level C code. (In comparison, the SnappyCam app comprises almost 50,000 lines of Objective C code.)&quot;

This is one of those stories that makes me so happy. It&#x27;s nice to see someone&#x27;s hard work pay off.

Can somebody remind me if this was originally a Show HN post? I think I vaguely remember the app creator talking about it.

Shameless spam: my app push the limit in the opposite direction, I hope Apple acquires it too. <a href="http://www.alfonsobozzelli.com/thomas/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alfonsobozzelli.com&#x2F;thomas&#x2F;</a>

Good for him! The app is a bit of technical marvel. I love playing with it, and now that Apple has it, hopefully the UX will improve a bit in whatever way they decide to implement the core tech. Wins all around!

I am confused. Is it that the transfer speed was limited by the compression algorithm rather than the speed at which the images can be retrieved from the photo sensor array? I had assumed it is the latter.

Since Apple already has this as an advertised feature in the 5S, I see this as one part acquihire, one part locking up tech so it can&#x27;t be used on other platforms.

Inspiring story on a bunch of levels, but in particular it&#x27;s great to see the payoff of focus directed at a hard problem.

I wonder how this ties into Apple&#x27;s other recent acquisitions - if I remember correctly, they recently purchased a company that was mounting depth sensors on iPads. Fast image processing is central to usable 3d augmented reality interfaces, and Apple might be planning ahead for 2015&#x27;s iOS innovations.

That guys work is amazing. I saw snappycam before and didn&#x27;t bother downloading it or looking into it. Now I&#x27;m reading up about it and it seems absolutely amazing. I can&#x27;t wait to see how this technology is implemented in future iPhones.

Cool, hopefully they open source this code sooner rather than later. Obviously they are probably going to keep it as a competitive advantage for the next batch of iOS devices but I hope they open it up shortly after that.

This is great for all iPhone users, and a much better outcome than had a company like Facebook or Snapchat acquired them.

Will this tech improve live video streams?

I wonder if any of the money geniuses on here would care to speculate on what a deal like this would be worth.

Great for the guy, but this screws customers of his app. SnappyCam made animated GIFs of your snaps. I highly doubt Apple&#x27;s native camera app will ever do that. Now that the app is gone, this royally sucks and is a fat middle finger to IMGUR and Reddit&#x27;s communities that produced animated GIFs using SnappyCam.

Huge congratulations in order. This sounds like a real success story!

what took so long?