Apple buys 3D Flash app

I just found this article about Apple acquiring 3D mapping company Poly9, whose site has been taken down since the acquisition.

As far as I can tell, the French-Candian Poly9 is most well known for their in-browser 3D globe, that on the surface looks like a JavaScript library but is actually Flash (albeit with HTML overlays). The right-click menu has been sneakily hi-jacked so it’s quite well disguised, although I’d recognise those scroll bars anywhere! (and of course check the generated source to see the Flash object embed tag).

I’d be very interested to see what Apple are hoping to do with this technology, I’m guessing they’ll be de-Flashifying it pretty soon, certainly a simple 3D globe like this should be possible in HTML5 Canvas with something like Mr Doob’s three.js.

I’m wondering if Poly9 own any other technology or patents that could be useful to them..?

[UPDATE see Mr Doob’s JavaScript globe here.]