“New job listings from Apple suggests the company is still hard at work at a new, advanced version of its iOS Maps application along with improvements to location services for the iPhone and iPad,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“This week Apple advertised two new hirings on its official site (1, 2) for the position of ‘iOS Maps Application Developer,'” Hughes reports. “The positions discovered by AppleInsider are based in Apple’s corporate campus in Cupertino, Calif. ‘Come work for the team that revolutionized the mobile technology industry as it continues [to] define what computing looks like in a post-PC era,” the listing reads. ‘The Maps team is looking for an exceptional developer to join us in our mission to radically improve how people interact with maps and location-based services.'”
Hughes reports, “For years now, there has been mounting evidence that Apple is cooking up a major revamp of the iPhone’s native Maps application, perhaps in concert with new and enhanced location-based features. In 2009, the company purchased Placebase, a competitor to Google Maps, which led to speculation that Apple could be interested in eschewing Google’s mapping content for its own.”
Read more in the full article here.
if google is going to do a phone OS
then will do maps…
so
wah
Then why won’t Apple do search?
good question. why do you think they don’t?
Radically improve = Eliminate reliance on google for
It about time, I hate google maps, I hate google anything. Maybe apple should just by Garmin, love their gps.
I think that folks are expecting way too much here. I doubt that two guys with BS degrees are going to revolutionize digital mapping. How many folks you think work on Google Maps? Seems to me Apple is just wanting to tweak a few things.
just use the MapQuest app.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mapquest-4-mobile/id316126557?mt=8
It’s free and works pretty good.
I wish mapping could be integrated with AutoCad WS.
That would be great for utility companies.
“post-PC era”
Can’t get enough of that term.
I find Google Maps just fine from a user standpoint. Hardly see how it could be improved, though I routinely hear folks with no sense of direction and aren’t comfortable actually reading any map, cite built-in turn-by-turn as a major Android selling point. So Apple may be going after that market, or they may just be upset with whatever they pay Google to use their Maps app… If they are trying to replace it for that reason, I sure hope they don’t replace it with something inferior and then try to block the Google app based on “duplicating built-in functionality.”
My biggest issue with Maps is it’s inability to retain info and constantly re-loading the same map over and over.
Even adding an option to save a particular selection, in (choose your own level of)detail, to use when you are near a weak cell area, or with no cell towers at all.
Oh, and the ability to alter the route chosen and still retain the whole route.
I don’t like the toll/downtown/pot hole road etc. etc. so I wish to plot around it.
Yes BlackWolf!! That is exactly one of the things I would like and is missing. It would help on the mileage issue.
Don’t mean to join a Google gang tackle, but what in the name of all things holy, have they done to the “images page(s)”. What a steaming pile of useless crap.
Google. Racing our way to irrelevance.