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Last updated: Monday, December 15, 2008

Microsoft on Saturday officially launched its first application for Apple’s iPhone. The app, called Seadragon Mobile, is free for users who want to browse ultra-large pages on the iPhone’s 3.5-inch touchscreen. The goal of Seadragon is to change the way consumers use screens — from wall-sized displays all the way down to cell phones — so that graphics and photos are smoothly browsed, regardless of the amount of data or bandwidth on the network. Seadragon promises that speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects and that transitions are smooth. It also promises that performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen and that scaling is nearly perfect — and rapid — for screens of any resolution. “Seadragon Mobile brings the same smooth image browsing you get on the PC to the mobile platform,” the Microsoft Live Labs blog said. “Get super-close-in on a map or photo, with just a few pinches or taps of your finger. Browse an entire collection of photos from a single screen.” Putting iPhone Ahead of Windows Mobile Apple’s App Store has had more than 300 million applications downloaded since July — but this is the first from Microsoft. Microsoft has its own mobile operating system to bolster, so why develop for the iPhone? “It’s not shocking that Microsoft is developing for the iPhone. Microsoft is a software company and it will develop applications for whatever platform makes sense. If there is a popular platform and they can exploit it to their own end, they’ll certainly do so,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia. “People forget sometimes that Excel first came to Macintosh, not to Windows, and was a breakthrough product there.” Microsoft has optimized Seadragon for the iPhone. It comes preloaded with bookmarks to deliver content from the…

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Microsoft Launches Mobile App — for Apple’s iPhone

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