Microsoft releases first iPhone application, Seadragon

After some rumblings this past March, Microsoft has now officially joined the iPhone development community with Seadragon Mobile, a free app that lets you "infinite zoom" gigapixel-sized images. Although Seadragon is available as a Silverlight application on the desktop, Microsoft isn't bringing Silverlight to the iPhone, so don't get your hopes up -- this is probably just a custom implementation. We're itching to see if the company has any more apps in the pipeline -- we'll wish for an Office editor, but expect a Minesweeper variant.

[Thanks, Mikkel]

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2008 6:00PM]

Hey, Microsoft...Mozilla called: they want their naming scheme back.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2008 6:05PM]

So why isn't this available on MICROSOFT windows mobile? not that i really care cause it doesn't seem worth a damn, but after watching iphoners get app after app from different companies it would be nice to at least receive a first party app for my touch pro before the damn iphoners.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2008 10:12PM]

Were just better. That's why.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 15th 2008 12:33AM]

Or maybe Microsoft is testing the development process of an iPhone application and researching why this process is successful.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 15th 2008 5:46AM]

Probably because it needs a good FPU/GPU and WM is so fragmented and screwed up right now they can't even prevent vendor companies like HTC from shipping devices without video drivers (ref Kaiser).

None of the latest HTC WM devices have a decent GPU/FPU/driver because they're using Qualcomm, Microsoft doesn't ship WinCE OS with native hardware acceleration for GPU/FPU, WinCE OS doesn't ship with hardware acceleration for the latest ARM cpus available, and MS doesn't have any compilers that support the latest cpus.

iPhone with gcc, vertically integrated OS, designed all the hardware themselves, no vendor contract issues, obviously wins here.

[Jamus Posted Dec 15th 2008 12:02AM]

I think it is on iPhone first due to video hardware that can support it and make it look good, instead of slower (or no) graphic chips.