“The tools that provide access to Apple’s Maps service are being rewritten in a major way, with the company now recruiting software engineers to help with a major rewrite of the Maps application programming interface,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“Apple’s roadmap involves significant changes to the backend for the Maps services hosted from the company’s servers,” Hughes reports. “The details were revealed in a pair of new job postings this week for senior software engineers on the Maps API team.”
Hughes reports, “‘We’ve got big plans for our API — we’re looking for leaders that can design and build clean, scalable, and performance APIs, as well as design and build systems to trace, monitor, and debug requests once they enter our distributed backend systems with their complex dependencies,’ the listings read. ‘We’re overhauling things front-to-back and want engineers that live and (breathe) distributed systems and services.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Possibilities:
web-based maps like maps.google.com.
iCloud maps integration that remembers your life.
Integration with healthKit.
Integration of indoor mapping data.
Maybe the ability to add your own pics, a la Streetview.
Integration with Photos app.
Other ideas?
Take satellite selfie! 😀
Maps is not that old, so a major reworking of the back-end at this stage is perhaps a consequence of the rushed development to replace Google maps before the end of the original contract.
Google may have created a monster by deliberately crippling the iOS version of Google maps. Apple’s new flatter, more teamlike, approach may have spurred a swag of new integration projects – you can see the way Apple is thinking by looking at the new integration between OS X and iOS.
The whole Android “experiment” by Google looks shakier every day – the sales volume is there, but it looks more and more likely that Android will only ever be the poor man’s version of iOS. That is assuming the whole project doesn’t collapse if Google loses badly in their dispute with Sun.
Apple will eventually complete their de-googling (and de-Samsunging) exercise, leaving Google corralled at the bottom end of the mobile market. Apple users will never see a Google app, and Google will never see a cent from the Apple user base. Advertisers of quality products will drift from Android to Apple and Android users will migrate to iOS as Apple gradually adds products at new price points, as they did with iPod.
Apple is like a steamroller. They are on top of their game and woe betide any organisation who has customers that Apple wants.
Maybe but I think as others have mentioned above there are massive integration opportunities that were barely visualised back when it was developed. Integration with the photos package next year, Mac/iPad phone capabilities, Carplay, Touch sensor, commerce, iWatch, Health all sorts of things need to be integrated and rather than just bolting them on Apple at stages likes to recite to make integration more seamless.
It was not about crippling the iOS Maps app, since Apple actually built the app. It was about withholding features that had already made it into Android, like turn-by-turn directions, vector graphics, and walking and transit directions, in order to gain concessions from Apple when the original map data contract expired. The original mapping app could not be improved because Google would not provide the data needed.
Even though it had growing pains, Apple “de-googling” its mapping functions in iOS has been a master stroke. Google had to respond by making its own Google Maps app for iOS, and making it feature-comparable to the Android version. iOS users that still prefer Google Maps can continue to use them. However, in the meantime, Google lost more than 75% of its access from (and to) iOS users. Given that user data is the life blood of Google’s ad revenue stream, losing
Hopefully driving directions will be introduced in India, its been a couple of years now since Apple maps have been launched and they are no where near the google maps service in India.
I would correct errors if I only could just simply drag the pin to the correct location…👍😎
Well about time, because apple maps is a pain and unreliable compared to google maps
Not my experience at all.
Nor mine.
i’ve never used google maps, i have a terrible sense of direction (none) and i have relied on apple maps to help me find my way around – turn-by-turn especially.
I checked the correction I’ve been sending in over and over again for ages now and it’s still not fixed.