
Apple Acquires Rapid-Fire Camera App Developer SnappyLabs - nirvanatikku
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/04/snappylabs/
======
sabalaba
For those interested in the technical details, the original blog post is
archived here:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20131010012005/http://www.snappy...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131010012005/http://www.snappylabs.com/blog/snappycam/2013/07/31/iphone-
king-of-speed/)

I wonder why they took it down.

~~~
wmf
Apple takes down everything in an acquisition. In general Apple rarely admits
that the past or future exists at all.

~~~
proksoup
Apple is a strange mix of buddhism and 1984.

Middle path, present focused, to an extreme, enforced on you whether you want
it or not :)

~~~
panacea
I know you're not supposed to bore anyone by recounting dreams, but the other
night I dreamt my MacBook had a virus which booted into Win975.

------
sergiotapia
_Major_ congratulations to him! What an achievement!

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?

~~~
miles
_would Apple just steal his idea (NOT implementation) and bake it into the
iPhone regardless? I think Microsoft did something like this_

Apple has certainly done this before:

Apple Literally Stole My Thunder [https://medium.com/wwdc-round-
up/253aed27a455](https://medium.com/wwdc-round-up/253aed27a455)

Apple rips off student's rejected iPhone app - iOS 5 lifts idea, name, even
logo
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/apple_copies_rejecte...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/apple_copies_rejected_app/)

Konfabulator, Dashboard controversy flows out of WWDC
[http://www.macworld.com/article/1035200/konfabulator.html](http://www.macworld.com/article/1035200/konfabulator.html)

Apple stole Karelia Watson
[http://forums.macworld.com/index.php?/topic/2477-apples-
stol...](http://forums.macworld.com/index.php?/topic/2477-apples-stole-
karelia-watson/page__st__-13)

~~~
threeseed
Three of those four are pretty poor examples.

It was a different time when the images/weather app was rejected by Apple.
They were deliberately trying to prevent people creating thin wrappers around
websites and calling it an app. And at the start it made a lot of sense.

Syncing over WiFi was a feature that users had demanded long before that app
had been around and the name/logo are not distinctive. They are the most
common sense choices you would use.

And widgets existed decades before Konfabulator thought to bring them to OSX.
They were available as Desk Accessories in the previous versions of Mac OS as
well as on Windows/Linux.

~~~
gfodor
Also, re: the shock of someone lifting the icon of the wifi sync thing. If I
am an Apple designer, the first idea for a wifi sync icon will be combining
the wifi icon with the sync icon. The most obvious way to do that is to put
the sync icon (two circular arrows) around the wifi icon.

It's pretty clear this was just two people coming up with the same logical
icon concept simultaneously.

------
chenster
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'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's just a matter of time to get
Apple's attention and very likely Apple would want to acquire the technology.
Kudo to Papandriopoulos (How do you exactly pronounce that??)

What I'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.

~~~
hobs
I think you may want to do a wee bit of editing, because I assume you meant:
"Not only it doesn't everything it claims" -> "Not only does it do everything
it claims"

"but also the UI is well thought" -> "but also the UI is well thought out"

pap andria polous

~~~
chenster
Wish I could, but I don't see the edit button. :(

------
xenonite
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.

~~~
fiatmoney
It sounds like he didn't optimize the algorithm per se; he optimized the
implementation of the algorithm for the particular processor. Still very
impressive.

~~~
vonseel
"Having developed a blazing fast DCT implementation, Huffman then became a
bottleneck. We innovated on that portion with tight hand-tuned assembly code
that leverages special features of the ARM processor instruction set to make
it as fast as possible.”

I understood he first optimized the algorithm, then tuned it to be even faster
on ARM?

~~~
huxley
I read it as saying that, after optimizing the DCT (lossy) compression as much
as he could, he focused on the Huffman (lossless) encoding phase which gave
him further optimization opportunities.

------
semerda
Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi!!! Congrats to John Papandriopoulos! Very
impressive work.. also the amount of work that went into it is wow!! .. "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.)"

------
vonseel
This is one of those stories that makes me so happy. It's nice to see
someone's hard work pay off.

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

~~~
citruspi
There was this[0]. The author of SnappyCam made some comments under the
username jpap.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6137979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6137979)

~~~
scanr
Excellent prediction by Oculus:

> I have a feeling that soon SnappyLabs is going to have Apple knocking on
> their door with a very nice offer.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6138278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6138278)

------
abozzelli
Shameless spam: my app push the limit in the opposite direction, I hope Apple
acquires it too.
[http://www.alfonsobozzelli.com/thomas/](http://www.alfonsobozzelli.com/thomas/)

------
themartorana
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!

------
alok-g
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.

~~~
ghshephard
If we can believe that jpap told us the entire story, It's the former. He
never mentioned modifying, in any way, the mechanism by which images were
retrieved from the photo sensor array, just how he compressed and saved them.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7010474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7010474)

------
smackfu
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't be used on other
platforms.

------
gdubs
Inspiring story on a bunch of levels, but in particular it's great to see the
payoff of focus directed at a hard problem.

~~~
interpol_p
Why is a buyout like this reason for celebration and congratulations? I
understand that the developers received money; but now they no longer own
their IP, and can no longer decide the future path for their software.

I say this as someone who was contacted by a VC firm recently. They were
interested in investing, but their assumption was that we wanted to grow and
"exit". When I asked for clarification on what "exit" meant, I was told that
it means to sell the company. I was confused as to why someone would want to
sell something they spent so many years creating.

(That said, I think in this case their tech will genuinely improve Apple's
software. And maybe they get to continue doing passionate work at Apple. It
just feels like they are no longer in control.)

~~~
dippyskoodlez
He may be more interested in furthering his career not by making large piles
of money, but by being an engineer working on fantastic new products.

I would certainly call that congratulatory worthy.

~~~
interpol_p
I guess so, it's just that his direction under Apple will not be his own.
Perhaps he will be allowed to work on whatever he wants, even if it's risky or
experimental?

If that was part of the nature of the deal, then I could see it being quite
attractive.

~~~
dippyskoodlez
That's a bold assumption about a company that has traditionally held
creativity to a higher standard than most.

Innovation shapes Apple, Apple does not shape innovation.

~~~
interpol_p
It might be a bad assumption on my part. I have no idea what it's like to work
at Apple. Perhaps all employees are allowed to work on whatever they want, and
pursue their personal passions.

------
muglug
I wonder how this ties into Apple'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's iOS innovations.

------
ececconi
That guys work is amazing. I saw snappycam before and didn't bother
downloading it or looking into it. Now I'm reading up about it and it seems
absolutely amazing. I can't wait to see how this technology is implemented in
future iPhones.

------
runewell
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.

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

~~~
buro9
Why?

If Facebook acquired this then the technology would be accessible to a far
greater audience than just the users of Apple products.

Seems to me that we should want advances in technology (software or hardware)
to benefit the greatest number of users possible, and with Apple owning this
it now restricts this method to only those who use Apple products.

Oh, just noticed your username.

Edit: Being downvoted? Do I have to do the defensive thing of pointing out I
own Apple products too?

~~~
manmal
You seem to imply that this kind of performance tuning would carry over to
Android, via a Java/NDK bridge? I sincerely doubt that this would yield
results as good as SnappyCam.

~~~
eurleif
Why wouldn't a JPEG compression algorithm work just as well on a different OS?

~~~
netrus
It's crafted for specific CPUs - that's much harder to do for Android'S great
hardware diversity.

------
runewell
Will this tech improve live video streams?

~~~
wmf
Not directly, but this guy could probably do some good work if you let him
loose on a video codec.

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

------
ZeroGd
Great for the guy, but this screws customers of his app. SnappyCam made
animated GIFs of your snaps. I highly doubt Apple'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's communities that produced animated GIFs using
SnappyCam.

~~~
oh_sigh
Then write your own version of it. You have no right to demand an app stay for
sale when the developer doesn't want to sell it.

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

------
qntmfred
what took so long?

