Apple Maps

Apple Maps started listing electric vehicle charge points as points-of-interest late last year, and now Apple is expanding that functionality to Europe. The new feature rollout will include listings for bike rental hubs in three cities around the world as well.

Expand
Expanding
Close

As navigation apps such as Apple Maps become a more integral part of society, a variety of effects are starting to become apparent. A new report from The New York Times details how Google Maps played a role in a fatal accident in 2015 on railroad tracks in California:

Following directions from Google Maps on a smartphone last year, Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez turned a Ford truck, hauling a trailer, where he thought the app was telling him to go. But he ended up stuck on the railroad tracks at a poorly marked California crossing.

Soon after Mr. Sanchez-Ramirez abandoned the truck, a commuter train barreled into it, killing the engineer and injuring 32 others.

Following a nearly two-year long investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board is calling on companies such as Apple and Google to add the exact location of 200,000 grade crossings to their mapping data…

Expand
Expanding
Close

LinkedIn updates suggest that Apple is beefing up its mapping efforts by poaching senior staff from Here – the map technology company which Nokia once hoped to sell to Apple.

Now co-owned by German automotive companies Audi, BMW, and Daimler, Business Insider spotted half a dozen hires over the last few months from Here. Interestingly, the roles appear to be based in Berlin, where Apple does not officially have a base but was once the site of Apple Car rumors …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Transit directions in Apple Maps for users in Japan are expected to go live to the public when iOS 10.1 is released, and Apple today has flipped the switch for iOS users running the latest iOS 10.1 beta build. According to local blog Ata Distance, Apple Maps in Japan supports transit data information with the latest iOS 10.1 beta, offering information such as transit times and fares.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple is now publishing public web pages for landmarks and POI in its Apple Maps database: here’s one such place. The website link shows details about the place such as location, name, telephone number and reviews. The design is identical to the cards in the iOS 10 Maps app.

When on an Apple platform, these URLs appear to act as deep links into the native Maps app. If viewing in Chrome or on a non-Apple device like Android, the fallback webpage is loaded. The purpose for these URLs is unclear, but it may possibly foreshadow a larger move by Apple to offer its own online mapping service to compete with Google Maps on the web.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple Maps is getting enhanced data for parking spots as Parkopedia today announces a deal to provide Apple with its database of parking services worldwide. That means that Apple Maps is now gaining enhanced data for the 40 million parking spots currently tracked by Parkopedia across 75 countries in North America, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Expand
Expanding
Close

New user-interface seen on the left

While Apple Maps got off to a rocky start, with many of us opting to use Google Maps instead, it did manage to gradually win back our confidence – with three times as many users as its Google rival by the end of last year. But Google is working hard to tempt back iOS users with an improved user-interface and a new way to highlight where the action is when visiting a new city.

The most visible difference is that many road outlines have been replaced with solid color. This small change makes a surprisingly big difference to the clarity of the maps, as seen above. But it’s the new ‘areas of interest’ feature that may provide the greatest temptation to switch apps …

Expand
Expanding
Close

In a press release, Apple has announced it is opening a new development office in Hyderabad, India. The team located here will apparently focus on improving Apple Maps, which is deeply integrated across Apple’s hardware and software as dedicated apps and embedded in other services, like Siri. The new center will create up to 4000 new jobs in the local economy. It is currently unclear as to the nature of the workforce, as Apple has preferred to keep its core software engineering team in California with most working solely in Cupertino.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple today has expanded its popular Apple Maps Flyover feature to a pair of new cities, while it has also rolled out Spotlight Suggestions to new countries and its traffic data to a single new location. Last month, the company expanded Maps Nearby, Flyover, and traffic data to a handful of new locations, following a more significant Flyover expansion that occurred in February of this year.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has today updated its list of iOS 9 feature availability to note the addition of its Maps ‘Nearby’ feature for more countries.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Alongside iOS 9.3 today, Apple has released watchOS 2.2, the latest software update for all Apple Watch owners. Starting with watchOS 2.2, iPhones running iOS 9.3 or later can pair and swap between multiple Apple Watch models; changing between Apple Watch models previously required a lengthy unpairing and re-pairing process. Apple Watch users will also notice an enhanced Maps app and more starting with the watchOS 2.2 update.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple today has released the fourth watchOS 2.2 beta for Apple Watch developers. In terms of new features, the watchOS 2.2 so far has added a totally revamped Apple Maps app and glance, and it’s required to use iOS 9.3 beta’s new multi-watch feature. We’ll check out the latest beta version of the upcoming release and highlight any changes below.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has today listed 20 new Flyover locations on its iOS 9 feature availability page, five of them in the USA, the rest overseas. The latest U.S. locations are:

• Columbus, Ohio
• Louisville, Kentucky
• South Bend, Indiana
• Springfield, Missouri
• Tucson, Arizona …

Expand
Expanding
Close

It’s no secret that when Apple Maps launched back in 2012 it had more than its fair share of issues. The issues included things like incorrect turn-by-turn directions, mislabeled landmarks, and much more. Three years later, however, Apple has been working to remedy the issues its had and according to a new report out of The Boston Globe, the improvements aren’t going unnoticed by users.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has an Indoor Survey app on the iOS App Store, designed to help pinpoint locations inside a store, restaurant or other business – but it doesn’t show up in a search, and you need to register in Apple Maps Connect to download it.

By dropping “points” on a map within the Survey App, you indicate your position within the venue as you walk through. As you do so, the indoor Survey App measures the radio frequency (RF) signal data and combines it with an iPhone’s sensor data. The end result is indoor positioning without the need to install special hardware … 

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple’s famed obsession with secrecy in its product development process is hampering its work in the field of artificial intelligence, say academics working in the field. Bloomberg reports that AI experts believe that lack of two-way sharing of information slows development.

“Apple is off the scale in terms of secrecy,” says Richard Zemel, a professor in the computer science department at the University of Toronto. “They’re completely out of the loop.”

Apple Maps was cited as an example of what can go wrong when AI teams within Apple are cut off from other work being done in the field – and even from researchers in other teams within Apple. Worse, it is claimed, the approach makes it impossible for Apple to recruit the brightest people in the field …

Expand
Expanding
Close

[Update 10/27: Apple Pay through American Express in Canada and Australia coming this year; Spain, Singapore, and Hong Kong next year.]

Apple Watch may have first launched all the way back in April, but the roll out in more countries around the world is still taking place. Availability for India now appears to have an official date with Apple’s website confirming a release scheduled for early next month on November 6th.

Details are limited on Apple Watch pricing and retail availability just yet, as only the date has been added to the India listing. The news comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook met with India’s Prime Minister last month, discussing Apple Pay and possibly bringing Apple Stores to the country, which would require manufacturing in the country, where Apple currently relies on resellers for distribution.

While Apple Watch is set to hit even more countries, signs that the Apple Pay could be expanding too have surfaced…
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple delivered a major upgrade to Maps in iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2 with the addition of transit directions in select cities, and now its rolling out additional cities and transportation methods to bolster that feature. In addition to expanding transit, Apple has found a new partner in Canada to provide rich local business data for use in Maps.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple is no stranger to acquiring companies to bolster its Apple Maps offering and now it appears that the company has acquired yet another company to do just that. According to a report out of Re/code, Apple today has acquired Mapsense, a San Francisco-based startup that focused on building software that analyzed and visualized location data.

Expand
Expanding
Close