“It’s fair to say Maps got off to a difficult start, but Apple is prioritizing improvements, with the company and its data partners working to ensure it eventually becomes better than Google Maps — why else will a future upgrade to the latter feature map tiles that seem so similar to those used by Apple?” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“Apple’s focus on Maps improvements has been clear, starting with sackings at the top and a promise from company CEO, Tim Cook. More recently it is known the company has been recruiting staff worldwide to improve the accuracy of its mapping data, and this drive for improvement is also becoming visible elsewhere,” Evans writes. “MapBox this week introduced a new map editor for the OpenStreetMap project. iD users can now easily contribute data to OpenStreetMaps from within the browser, which should hopefully improve data quality — that’s good news for Apple Maps, as the firm uses OpenStreetMaps as one of its data sources. (Google Maps also draws data from the service).”
Evans writes, “Apple also uses data provided by TomTom. That company has also quietly been improving its offering, including the recent provision of new navigation engine, NavKit, which can be ported to any operating system and also provides 3D maps… Steve Jobs did promise to go “thermonuclear”, after all. I suspect Apple is now about to raise its game.”
Read more in the full article here.