“Apple has agreed to buy Locationary in a quest to bolster its mapping services, the latest acquisition to outline a heated rivalry with Google,” Scott Martin reports for USA Today.
“Toronto-based Locationary’s technology promises to improve search and navigation results for mobile apps as well as increase advertising and commerce performance,” Martin reports. “‘Apple needs to sort of shore up their map product if they are going to compete long term with Google and other technology companies. Adding this in will help make their maps more accurate,’ says Gartner analyst Brian Blau.”
Martin reports, “‘Locationary’s speciality — enhanced local business data — will be a great addition to Apple’s Maps application, since outdated business location and status information is the bane of any map service’s operations,’ says Brian Proffitt, an instructor at the University of Notre Dame.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Apple acquires crowdsourced location data company Locationary – July 19, 2013
Couple more acquisitions to put the finishing touches on Maps. Then, Apple will roll out Search and set GOOG up for many more quarters like the last.
Apple maps will never catch up to google maps, apple maps r shit final, google maps a the best, on my iPhone 5 sorry apple but your shit on the maps
You tell em’ corny!
Apple maps is young and has a ways to go to catch up with Giggle maps but I think the fact that Apple maps is going to be baked into OSX Mavericks is a BIG deal. A big deal for the same reasons that the iTunes store & the App store being baked into OSX are a big deal.
Sure Appl maps are currently lagging the competition but it is foolish to underestimate Apples ability to make things insanely easy for a user. Insanely easy + customer loyalty + peace of mind (walled garden) = big time sucess.
I suspect that by this time next year we will read MDN headlines like ‘more blood on the Apple Atlas’
Sorry a few more thoughts.
From a software developer POV Google maps are sh!t meaning that the Goggle maps API licensing is at best draconian and unless you have DEEP pockets not even worth considering.
M$ has Mappoint but I speak from experience when I say the API & documentation is a big bag of poo (even by M$ standards)
IDK about Bing maps.
If Apple includes a maps API for OSX developers that doesn’t cost extra (included in the Mac dev program) then BOOM! Google loses more than just iOS mobile.
Funny I have no problem with Apple maps. It always gets me where I want to go with great accuracy. Granted the first few months this was not the case and there were problems. Google maps has have always been hit or miss for me.
OK smart guy, if Google Maps are so great, explain why they have the business that runs my website located 5 blocks from it’s original location in the middle of a residential neighborhood? Or how a bank branch I at which used to hold accounts still appears in Google searches, even though it’s been a dance studio for the last 10 years? Apple Maps occasionally gets rural addresses wrong sometimes, but it gets me to all the locations I’ve ever asked of it in my mid sized Canadian city. Google, not so much.
Google has a long ways “catch up” to Apple in the app portion of making maps.
Once Apple learns how to draw a thicker red line, then there will be little reason to use Google maps.
Felix, are you stupid or ignorant? Or both? If you had an attention span greater than your average fairground goldfish, you’d know that many of Apple’s products, hard and soft, come from companies all over the world. Do you know where the ARM processor business is based? In England. Do you know where the Maps data was sourced from? Europe. They have bought other companies in Israel, for example.
But having read the comments made about a New York born singer, of Hispanic decent, singing the Star Spangled Banner at a New York game, I shouldn’t be surprised at such ignorance from an American. Grow up, little boy.
Our decent is from the continent of Africa. The migration over time and locations created differences that are now defined as specific ethic groups. Sadly, most never understand that we can trace our ancestors back to one in Africa. But, again the greater ignorance is defining a limited few out of the total of our species. We are one and the same.
@NCG598
please take your parroted, worthless, unsubstantiated darwinian, satanic dogma and ram it.
Did you ever consider the possibility that the Bible is more designed to teach morality rather than history, and that Darwinian evolution is the MEANS through which God works His will rather than a repudiation of your religion?
lol @ there being a “god” in 2013.
Come on folks! smh
Let the religious people have their beliefs, Jay. Does it hurt you any? No? Didn’t think so.
However, to have religious beliefs is not an excuse to close your mind to outside possibilities. (Of course, not having religious beliefs is no excuse either.)
In a word, no.
I strongly urge you to actually acquire a Bible and do some study and stop pseudophilosophizing about its supposed purpose and merits.
Darwinian evolution emanates from the very pit of hell. God does not require help from Satan or jay jay abels to work His will.
As bob Zimmerman said, ‘gotta serve somebody.’
Considering that YOU subscribe to a religion that is nothing more than a heretical cult offshoot of MY religion–a “religion” that would never have grown beyond cult status if it hadn’t been hijacked by a Roman politician who injected copious amounts of paganism into it to make it more palatable to his fellow Romans–I’d advice you to shut your trap and not try to lecture me on the correctness of whatever fictitious stories about a zombie Jewish carpenter you choose to believe. And maybe next time show a little gratitude for me trying to stand up for a man of faith against someone attacking him for his beliefs.
Science is not an attack on religion, and only an insecure and misguided follower of a false god would fail to see the majesty of His work no matter what form it takes.
God is the reason that humanoids left the trees and moved into caves.
What? God wanted the trees for himself?
Agreed. All are descended from Noah.
http://www.icr.org/article/human-dna-variation-linked-biblical/
Certainly, a step in the right direction.
It certainly can catch up – will it? Guess we’re gonna see.
Apple is clear and patient when it develops. Maybe to a disadvantage sometimes, but it will slowly assemble a solid mapping system that will likely to the the most trusted. Google is prone to sudden shifts and over reactions that will cost it a lot in the “maps war.”
Not sure if that’s a new form of wit. Anyway, the 3d code in Apple’s map software is from a Swedish company called C3.
Try already compete well today. And since Apple Maps is already on my iPhone, I am no longer a Google Maps users. That’s really effective competition.