To be fair, there were many constraints in MacPaint - color being the most obvious example. It was a limited drawing program. Put into context, I do believe the analogy works - you start simple (box, few components, limited layout) and evolve to include malleable 3D printed materials and generated electronics.
You're forgetting the first wave of PC's - Apple II, TRS-80, TI-99, C64, etc. These machines had very little modularity compared to the wave of beige boxes that followed the IBM PC standard. I think Christensen even uses that as an example.
You could play around with the Three.js camera object. We made a separate viewer for the video team that had more complicated camera controls (and higher max frame + zoom level).
I should add, that's a maximum of 75 frames. We check if there are duplicate pano's on the same route and stagger them depending on distance, so you could get fewer frames. It's set to 50ms a frame atm.
We had to lock down the settings on the site to make it as light as possible. Consequently, you're limited to 75 frames. It's basically built for very short routes spinning around objects. If you want to do long routes or crazy camera movements, grab the source (https://github.com/TeehanLax/Hyperlapse.js) and roll your own solution. The API is really simple and versatile.
All of this is pulled from Sol's TextFX library. The character bitmap actually doesn't line up to Sol's table, so that's why you see weird characters popping up in places. The main goal was just to get image to text working on the GPU. I've typically done it on the CPU. Over time I hope the mess gets cleaned up.
Am I wrong in thinking that a company making a closed ("walled garden") system from an open system is fairly derivative and an expected result? Seems like a massive oversight in the articles reasoning.
Disclosure - I wrote the post.