iOS 8 Maps
Aside from the new indoor positioning site, indicating forthcoming indoor maps, and the improvements in China, Apple’s mapping data still feels like it hasn’t shaken its early reputation. Search still sucks, and my local data is sometimes still a crapshoot. Despite the enormous improvements throughout iOS 8, it’s (I think, understandably) frustrating to go yet another year without hearing about progress in the Maps department.
Ingrid Lunden (via Christian Zibreg):
“There were multiple improvements that didn’t make it into iOS8,” a source tells us.
Two years after parting company with Google, Apple is still trying to work out its killer Maps app.
Apple never reveals its plans ahead of announcing them, but a fairly detailed report published prior to the conference from 9to5Mac laid out what it claimed was Apple’s map news.
Key changes included enhanced, “more reliable” data; more points of interest and better labels to make certain locations like airports, highways and parks easier to find; a cleaner maps interface; and public transit directions — that is, providing people with data about nearby buses, subways and trains. Further ahead, the report noted plans to integrate augmented reality features to give people images of what was nearby.
Why didn’t they appear? One tipster says it was a personnel issue: “Many developers left the company, no map improvements planned for iOS 8 release were finished in time. Mostly it was failure of project managers and engineering project managers, tasks were very badly planned, developers had to switch multiple times from project to project.”
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Also, just out of curiosity, has there been major (non-Apple) applications released on the Mac App Store using the MapKit?
[...] Get some attention. [...]
Maps lack of progress after nearly 2 years is so embarrassing it’s inexcusable. This is far more embarrassing than the initial release.