Skip to main content

Apple Maps

225 'Apple Maps' stories July 2013 - November 2013
See All Stories

When the iPhone first launched, it was preloaded with Google Maps. In 2012, Apple replaced it with its own mapping application known as Apple Maps. It launched in beta in the iOS 6 beta, and was released to the public that fall.

After its launched, it was clear that it was no on the same level of quality as Google Maps. The poor launch led to a public apology from Tim Cook and ultimately led to the firing of Scott Forstall.

Apple Maps Features

Over the years, Apple has continued to adds features to Apple Maps. iOS 11 brought lane guidance and a speed limit widget on the navigation, and indoor location mapping.

Apple has also added proactive location suggestions (time to get home when you are leaving work, etc), integration with public transit, Yelp integration, and integration with ride sharing services like Lyft and Uber.

With iOS 12, Apple has proclaimed they are rebuilding Maps from the ground up.

Maps is being rebuilt from the ground up to better reflect the world around you. The new underlying map uses Apple data and features enhanced geographic context like pedestrian paths and parks, more detailed building outlines and parking lots, better road network coverage, and more. You’ll also be able to get where you’re going with improved routes, whether you’re on the road or on foot. The new Maps is now available in Northern California and is coming soon to the rest of the United States.

While the general consensus is that Google Maps offers more accurate data and navigation, Apple Maps is widely considered to be the most used mapping application in the world since it’s built into every iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

How-To: Start using Maps in OS X Mavericks

Avatar for Nov 24 2013 - 12:00 pm PT
16 Comments
Site default logo image

Apple has finally implemented a maps app in the OS X platform, and it seems to have been worth the wait. After being noticeably missing from the system, Maps (and iBooks) are helping achieve a greater consistency between the iOS and OS X platforms. After running the free Mavericks update, the Maps app icon will automatically be added to your dock.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use the new app for everything from searching for locations to getting turn-by-turn directions set directly to your iPhone.


Expand
Expanding
Close

Google Maps left out in the cold as most iPhone users stick with Apple Maps

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Nov 11 2013 - 6:19 am PT
84 Comments
Site default logo image

Photo: bgr.com

Apple Maps may not have had the best of starts, but data from ComScore shows that most iPhone users have stuck with the app rather than reinstalling Google Maps. Google Maps lost 23M iPhone users in the US alone in the last year, with similar numbers expected elsewhere.

The figures show that in September this year, 35M iPhone owners used Apple Maps, against just 6M for Google Maps – the latter including around 2M who were using older versions of iOS unable to run Apple Maps.

The story is essentially a simple one: while techier iOS users may choose their own apps, the majority of iPhone owners use the apps that Apple provides. And if you apply that to other services, that may not bode well for technologies like Pandora … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Maps roundup: Early Placebase founder leaves for startup, Alaska airport directions disabled, & secret project job listing

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Sep 27 2013 - 1:38 pm PT
3 Comments
Site default logo image

A few Apple map related stories have popped up today starting with the departure of early Placebase founder– the mapping company Apple bought back in 2009–  Jaron Waldman. After Apple bought Placebase, Waldman started and lead the Apple Geo team behind the Apple Maps infrastructure and location services on iOS and Mac like MapKit and CoreLocation. He was at Apple up until last month and even filed for numerous Apple mapping patents, but recently left to work at a “new startup” according sources and verified by his LinkedIn page.

As Waldman is on his way out, the Apple Maps team today posted a job listing (via Macrumors) seeking a web UI designer to “design, develop, and maintain complex front-end code for a new secret project.” Unfortunately we don’t get many hints at what the project would consist of, but the job listing adds that the successful applicant would join “a small team working on an advanced web platform upon which many of Apple’s future services will be based.” It is almost like Apple knows the listing will get lots of publicity if it adds ‘secret project’ therefore attracting a wider audience of potential candidates.

Finally, over a year into Apple’s Maps launch, Apple is still getting press for some hiccups it is yet to work out. A couple days ago news broke that Apple’s Maps app was directing drivers in Alaska down a dangerous route across a Fairbanks International Airport runway and taxiway. It’s certainly not the first time that Apple’s Maps app has given dangerous directions to drivers (those lacking common sense anyway) since its controversial launch, and today airport officials confirmed that Apple has disabled directions to the airport until it fixes the directions:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Site default logo image

Tim Cook probably won’t be retweeting Conan O’Brien’s Siri fail

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Sep 25 2013 - 4:47 am PT
6 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW1UDKyxJJ4]

Tim Cook’s may be on Twitter now, but he’s probably not going to be retweeting a poor showing from Siri on the late night program last night.

.

Actress Jane Lynch’s tweeted a recent experience with Siri in which it apparently responded to her request for directions to Le Pain Quotidien with “I have no listing for Let Pam Cookie Ian.” She recounted the story in an interview on Conan, in which two further live Siri attempts also failed.

The first, Lynch’s voice on O’Brien’s phone, wasn’t really a fair test: Siri keeps personalised voice files for each user on its servers. But the second, in which O’Brien used his own phone, resulted in the infamous “I’m really sorry about this, but I can’t take any requests right now” message.

With some iPhone fails, though, you have to look more to the human factor than the phone. Sure, it’s a bit of an oops moment when Apple Maps directs local drivers onto an airport taxiway, but as with many other GPS fails, you’d kind of think drivers might notice that they were crossing a runway – or that an international airport might, you know, make sure the gate was closed or something …

iPhone’s M7 motion processor to integrate with Maps as Apple develops indoor mapping, public transit

Avatar for Mark Gurman Sep 12 2013 - 7:17 am PT
17 Comments
Site default logo image

Besides the main 64-bit A7 processor in the new iPhone 5s, Apple has included a dedicated motion co-processor called the M7. The chip powers many of the sensor technologies in the iPhone, such as the accelerometer, compass, and gyroscope in order to move the weight off of those technologies from the phone’s main chip. This, in turn, will make the new iPhone more efficient for both performance and battery life for the user.

Apple briefly explained some of the consumer-facing abilities of the M7 motion chip, highlighting that the chip could greatly enhance fitness apps such as those from Nike. But, just like with the new iPhone’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner, Apple’s ambitions for the M7 are greater than those discussed earlier this week. According to a source with knowledge of the chip’s development, Apple plans to tightly integrate the chip with its own Maps service in the coming years.

On its official website, Apple presents a brief teaser of what the M7 can do, highlighting a feature in the iPhone 5s (which was not discussed during the keynote presentation):


Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple acquires yet another transit app company: ‘Embark’

Avatar for Scott Buscemi Aug 22 2013 - 1:08 pm PT
1 Comment
Site default logo image

Apple continues its maps buying spree with the acquisition of Embark, the development firm with 10 transit-related apps in the App Store, according to Jessica Lessin. Back in November, the company received an investment boost from BMW, but now it looks like Apple will be integrating the information directly into the Apple Maps application:

We don’t know how much Apple paid for the several-person team it acquired very recently. But we heard from people knowledgeable about the deal that the company plans to directly integrate Embark’s technology into Apple Maps.

Apple has confirmed the deal to Jessica Lessin.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Reuters Tim Cook Profile: How the Maps fiasco led Apple to rethink the future of iOS, and being tough and decisive when it counts

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Aug 22 2013 - 6:31 am PT
6 Comments
Site default logo image

Image: reuters.com

Reuters is today running a profile on Apple CEO Tim Cook. There’s of course the inevitable angle in there: stock down, no major new products launched, questions asked about whether Cook has what it takes.  But what emerges is a picture of a man who knows he isn’t Steve Jobs and isn’t trying to be.

In the day to day at Apple, Cook has established a methodical, no-nonsense style, one that’s as different as could be from that of his predecessor. Jobs’ bi-monthly iPhone software meeting, in which he would go through every planned features of the company’s flagship product, is gone. “That’s not Tim’s style at all,” said one person familiar with those meetings. “He delegates.”

Yet who also doesn’t shy away from making big decisions in tough circumstances.

[The Apple Maps fiasco] prompted him to fast-track his thinking on the future direction of the critical phone and tablet software known as iOS, a person close to Apple recounted.

Cook soon issued a public apology to customers, fired Forstall, and handed responsibility for software design to Jony Ive, a Jobs soul-mate who had previously been in charge only of hardware design.

“The vision that Tim had to involve Jony and to essentially connect two very, very important Apple initiatives or areas of focus – that was a big decision on Tim’s part and he made it independently and very, very resolutely,” said Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney Co. and an Apple director … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple and Google having ‘lots and lots’ of meetings, getting along better, says Eric Schmidt

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Jul 12 2013 - 4:29 am PT
0 Comments
Site default logo image

Photo: salon.com

The sometimes stormy relationship between Apple and Google appears to be growing friendlier, with Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt telling Reuters at the annual Allen & Co conference in Sun Valley that the two companies were having “lots and lots” of meetings.

Schmidt did not provide details about the nature of the meetings during comments to reporters at the annual Allen and Co media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho on Thursday. He noted that Google Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora, who joined him at the press briefing, was leading many of the discussions.

The two companies are in “constant business discussions on a long list of issues,” Schmidt said.

The two companies started out close. Schmidt joined Apple’s board in 2006, and the iPhone launched with both Googlemaps and YouTube on board. That was to change after Google’s Android platform began growing in popularity. It was revealed in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography that Jobs threatened “thermonuclear war” on Google over what he felt was a copycat product … 
Expand
Expanding
Close