Apple acquires SnappyCam iOS camera app, developer<article>
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<p>I hope you like your Apple devices with even better camera functions, because the company’s clearly not slowing down on that front. Over the weekend,
TechCrunch first reported that Cupertino had acquired SnappyLabs, the one-man company behind the popular SnappyCam app for iPhone; Cupertino later
confirmed the acquisition to Re/code. </p>
<p>Australian developer John Papandriopoulos was the man behind SnappyCam, a $1 app that, among other features, allowed users to take bursts of high-quality shots using their iPhone’s camera—a capability that later appeared in Apple’s own Camera app with the release of the iPhone 5s. The engineering behind that achievement was no small deal, either: TechCrunch says Papandriopoulos “essentially reinvented the JPG image format.”</p>
<p>Apple, for its part, has acquired plenty of technology companies over the last few years. In 2013 alone, it likely picked up around a dozen companies, several of which specialized in transit and mapping data. </p>
<p>Typically, these acquisitions serve a twofold purpose. For one, it gives Apple access to the technologies that these companies have developed, which often find their way into future Apple products. For example, the fingerprint scanner in the iPhone 5s was at least in part the result of
Apple’s 2012 acquisition of AuthenTec. Likewise, many are expecting beefed-up public transportation mapping features in Apple’s next releases of iOS and OS X, due to the company’s recent purchase of companies like
HopStop and
Embark. In the case of SnappyCam, camera functions have clearly been an area of—if you’ll pardon the expression—focus for Apple and its smartphone competitors in the last few years. Every iteration of the iPhone has improved camera features in one way or another, so finding more improvements to bring to that area—which is an important one for consumers—is definitely a priority. </p><p class="jumpTag"><a href="/article/2083997/apple-acquires-snappycam-ios-camera-app-developer.html#jump">To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here[/url]</p></section></article>
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Apple acquires SnappyCam iOS camera app, developer
