Now your iPhone apps can be FAT losers: Apple gobbles data diet upstart Apple has picked up AlgoTrim, a Swedish upstart that knocks together tools for quickly decompressing apps, photos, videos and other stuff on mobile phones. As well as image squeezing, AlgoTrim touts a code compression library that crams software into the flash memory of ARM-powered devices, possibly reducing the size of …
Which is better, add more memory or compress what code you need in to a small space?
It's like going back to the old days, we all remember how slow too little memory was, but it's not £125 for a 1MB SIMM.
I suppose Apple are not selling a premium product, the margins on such a cheap phone don't allow for a bit more silicon.
Perhaps they want to transfer considerable amounts of data to/from something smaller, such as between an iPhone and an iWatch or other iDevice.
Then the point isn't to save RAM, but bandwidth or more likely the amount of time the transmitter is active, thus saving battery.
Apple bought PA, a minor ARM licensee with some interesting ideas, and produced the A4 series of chips. That's some magic. All big companies have a history of acquiring smaller companies with interesting tech, the magic comes from integrating their tech with your own and producing something better.
Looking at the website of this company, they appear to be firmly in the Android camp, and have their software in many areas, including updates and the gallery app.
That leads me to think that there are several possible reasons Apple have bought them..
To integrate into iOS more features from Android
To reap licence fees from Android manufacturers
To cut off this technology from Android manufacturers, forcing them to look elsewhere and then suing them the world over for patent infringement.
I know which one looks most likely, given Apple's recent track history.
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