[arrrg]

Exactly. As I said, “… it’s maybe somewhat useful in some cases …”

If you need to mount your device and buy a mount to actually mount your smartphone then that is and always will be a niche feature. (Also, practically all mounts don’t help a lot when moving the phone around.) It’s not completely useless, but it is useless to most people. Hyperlapse is a much more useful and device-appropriate implementation of the same idea, more or less, that works without the user really having to be very careful or creative or having to buy anything. Plus, the UI is super-simple and not at all confusing.

I first read about this app today, downtown, while drinking a coffee. To get decent video out of it I had to hold the camera in front of me and walk around a bit, not really trying to hold it super-steady, and I got cool results. Also, I didn’t have to buy a mount. Do the same with the time lapse feature and it’s a disaster.

Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it’s a great experience – or a great addition to the OS. My point is this: Hyperlapse is much more useful than the time lapse feature for most users, all the while not being more difficult to use.

[coldtea]

>* Hyperlapse is a much more useful and device-appropriate implementation of the same idea*

What same idea? These do entirely different things. Hyperlapse is a time-sped-up video with intelligent image stabilization, and timelapse is, well, a timelapse.

Not the same idea or feature at all. In fact even Apple themselves describe timelapse for what it is: a timelapse feature for static scenes: "Capture the experience of the sun setting, a city street bustling, or a flower blooming with the new Time-lapse mode in Camera".

[arrrg]

No, it’s the same, with one actually useful on smartphones and one not. The thing is, keeping a smartphone static is really fucking hard, so the correct thing to do (for a default feature – if you have to buy some crazy attachment it’s no longer a basic feature that deserves any space in the camera app) is to not force you to keep the camera static. Which hyperlapse does. it so, so, so much more elegantly and perfectly fits the device, time lapse is an embarrassment in comparison.