Apple made a big deal of the new HDR photo feature in iOS 4.1 when Steve Jobs unveiled the update last week. Now details are slipping out that suggest the tech behind the new iPhone/new iPod touch feature didn’t come from Cupertino but was in fact dreamed up in…East Anglia. Read on to find out how British tech found its way into iOS 4.1…
Those Apple-obsessed sleuths at Mac Rumors discovered that Apple has snapped up imsense, a Cambridge-based startup spun off from the University of East Anglia. The firm developed a technology called “eye-fidelity” which allows for almost instantaneous dynamic range correction in standard and HDR photos using some smart software algorithms.
It looks like Apple has folded that technology into iOS 4.1. Braveheart Ventures, an investment company that backed imsense, revealed in a note on its website that the firm had been acquired by a buyer in July 2010 but didn’t name names. imsense’s website, Facebook and Twitter accounts have all been closed since it was acquired and its iPhone app disappeared from the iTunes App Store.
The evidence that Apple has snapped up the tiny British tech startup is pretty incontrovertible though: imsense’s Director of Engineering left in July 2010 to become senior engineer at Apple and the current directors of imsense are all Apple employees.
Have you be trying out the new photo smarts in iOS 4.1? Is Apple right to be so proud of its newly nabbed HDR tech? Hit the comments and let us know.
Out now | £free | Apple (via Mac Rumors)
