Live Photos will be viewable on existing iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watch devices with the latest operating systems. Apple is also opening up the API for developers to support the new format in their own apps. Facebook has already committed to supporting Live Photos in their iOS app later this year.
Meanwhile, @DanMatte reveals that the new Live Photos format is a bundle of images based on the JPEG file format, allowing them to be easily sent as a still image to devices that don’t support Live Photo. Apple’s developer documents indicate that you can share the image as a regular JPEG if desired.
Arnold Kim
I’ve been wondering about this since a couple of days ago, and there’s my answer. Disappointing, but hardly surprising: Apple’s approach to software has always been to support its hardware ecosystem, another incentive to keep users locked in. Who cares that the majority of iPhone users run Windows on their PCs and will not be able to benefit from Apple’s so-called innovation? I can’t imagine it’s a good user experience to share emotional Live Photos, only to find out that other people can only see a still image. It’s an awkward solution for the desire to capture the best shot: a regular video would work better for capturing action – especially since you can control the length of the clip and edit it later – and for still shots Apple already offered burst mode, where you take several photos in quick succession and pick the best afterwards.
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