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Microsoft Releases Photosynth

Spy Hunter writes "Photosynth has graduated from a 'tech preview' to a complete service. Now you can upload your own photos and have them automatically transformed into a 'synth': a 3D fly-through reconstruction of your home, your vacation, or anything else you can take pictures of. Learn more about Photosynth at the official blog, see what Walt Mossberg has to say about it, or just go try it out right now." According to Mossberg, Photosynth works on PCs using IE or Firefox, but not yet on Macs. We've been discussing Photosynth since its introduction.

9 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Works on PCs. Or not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Doesn't work on my PC. Not even in FireFox.

    Oh, wait, you misspelt 'Windows' as 'PC', an easy mistake to make.

  2. Windows Only, and some mutterings about Mac. by Tiger+Smile · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just in case you hadn't guess it was Windows only. It's from Microsoft and they care about making money, which they do a great job at. Linux and bug fixes do not make allot of cash for them, so don't expect to much support for either and don't whine about it. Thanks, so much. :)

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    1. Re:Windows Only, and some mutterings about Mac. by the_humeister · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Truly. But this applies to practically any company. You could say the same about most of Apple's iprograms.

  3. Re:Ego by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For me, using Mac just since 2003 thought me something...

    "Trust us, as soon as we have a Mac version ready, it will be up and available on our site."

    That thing is a lie. They are the same company who abandoned working Silverlight for PPC just about a month ago. So, if you think they will ship Mac version soon and ignoring Linux, think again. They are at least openly telling you in a way that "don't even hope", they are plain lying to Mac users.

    A true multiplatform thing like that product they offer can be coded in Trolltech Qt or Java (both with OpenGL) . Can you picture MS using Trolltech Qt or offering a "Java Webstart" tool? Use OpenGL?

  4. Re:Ego by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They are the same company who abandoned working Silverlight for PPC just about a month ago.

    So because they're not developing for obselete hardware that even _Apple_ probably won't release their next OS for, they'll never release a Mac version *at all* ?

    Your logic is broken.

  5. Re:Ego by Firehed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's a fair point, but half the purpose of having something that can load up in a browser window is for cross-platform compatibility since the server (in this case, IIS) is doing the heavy lifting. Considering that the number photographers using Macs is incredibly disproportionate to normal Mac/PC ratios (probably 50%+ among serious photographers, vs under 10% for normal users), they almost certainly doomed the project to failure before it started by not having a standard, cross-platform implementation.

    If you need platform-specific stuff, make it a standalone desktop app that talks to the site's webservices layer. At least with that, there's a reasonable enough explanation of why it's not (yet) cross-platform. I'd understand if it's not too useful in Curl, but any other browser should be able to handle it fine.

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  6. Re:By pc... by afabbro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds ... cheesy...

    And if it was a new offering from Google or Apple, people would be posting how cool it is.

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  7. Re:By pc... by pembo13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You assume too much.

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  8. Re:Ego by I'm+Don+Giovanni · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, a binary plugin should never be able to use unique features of the underlying OS? Please...

    Anyway, Mac zealots would still be whining even if Microsoft had made Photosynth a standalone app, just as they did with World Wide Telescope.

    According to these Mac zealots, it's wrong for Microsoft to make *any* Windows-specific software (standalone or browser plugins), but it's just fine and dandy for Apple to make Mac-only software, and such Mac-only software (like iLife) is even used as ammo for "Mac Rules, Windows Sucks!" declarations. (Well, turnabout is fair play, maybe Windows zealots can use Photosynth and World Wide Telescope as ammo for "Windows rules, Mac sucks!" nonsense.)

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