“Once upon a time, Google made Apple an offer it thought they couldn’t refuse: Give us access to all your customers’ location data and let us serve them ads in Maps, or do without critical features like vector tiles and turn-by-turn navigation. But Apple did refuse. And hard. And that meant the clock was suddenly ticking on Apple Maps. Fast,” Rene Ritchie writes for iMore. “Apple had always made the Maps interface on iPhone and had been considering building its own map data for a while. Almost certainly, though, it thought it had more time.”
“Now it was in a mad dash to rip out Google and replace it in time for the launch of iOS 6. So Apple had to license all the data it could from TomTom, Open Street Map, Yelp, and others,” Ritchie writes. “Because the data were all from different companies, it was all in different formats, and Apple’s aggregation, cleansing, and coherency did not go well — and, in many places, it went terribly.”
“As a result, the director in charge of Maps — who previously spearheaded the hugely successful Mobile Safari project — was let go and Tim Cook was compelled to issue an unprecedented apology,” Ritchie writes. “Around the same time, though, Apple began ramping up an entirely new Apple Maps project. Or, perhaps, the Apple Maps project as it should have been and was meant to be.”
“The new Apple Maps is starting its Bay Area, California roll out today,” Ritchie writes. ” Here’s why that’s so important to Apple, us, and our collective future.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
SEE ALSO:
iOS 12: The myriad ways Apple is about to improve Maps – July 2, 2018
Apple granted patent for rendering road signs during navigation – June 30, 2018
TomTom shares fall after report Apple is building own Maps database on – June 29, 2018
Questions about Apple’s new Maps, answered – June 29, 2018
Apple has been rebuilding Maps from the ground up for years and it’s due to launch very soon – June 29, 2018
I’m on board.
The last week I’ve seen 4 Apple mapping trucks in rural Iowa, getting ready for street view.
Will Apple call back Scott Forestall to give the presentation of Apple Maps Reboot, I wonder? (and jest)
I have a hunch this is more about Car Play and autonomous cars than anything else. They’re skating to where the puck is going.
Will Apple maps be restricted to Apple devices or be available from any computer like my Work place PC?
“As a result, the director in charge of Maps … was let go…”
Why?
I’d say he played the best hand possible with what he was dealt.
He wasn’t the party that made the decision to aggregate map data from a variety of sources. That was a decision by Apple’s top leadership… just like Apple’s decision to start compiling their own data.
they can’t find the new Macs either?
I think I can see why Scott Forestal balked at being the one to apologize for the failure of Maps given he was under a lot of pressure to deliver a product that I’m sure he knew wasn’t ready but was forced to release anyway come what may. Being between the proverbial rock and a hard place. So he became the scapegoat and fall guy.
The CarPlay navigation function in the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) has been abysmal. At least a third of the time the display shows only a cursor moving across a grid – no map. When a map is displayed, it lacks the aesthetics of the manufacturer’s built-in navigation. The 3-D effect is barely perceptible. When I need navigation assistance, I turn off CarPlay and use the car manufacturer’s.built-in system