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Revamped Google Maps Finally Available On iOS
hcs_$reboot writes "After the disastrous Apple Maps replacement over Google Maps in September, Google has a Maps app on iOS approved and released by Apple today. The app includes turn-by-turn directions, vector-based graphics and live traffic data. It's available from the Apple Store for iPhone and iPod touch (and iPad — iPhone format)."
Adds reader snowtigger: "It's a sharper looking, vector-based map that loads quickly and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views. Google also released the Google Maps SDK for iOS, and a simple URL scheme to help developers use Google Maps when building their beautiful and innovative apps. The new Google Maps app is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch (4th gen) iOS 5.1 and higher, in more than 40 countries and 29 languages."
SlashCloud points out that Apple's own maps will be forced to improve as a consequence: "Directions will become more accurate, major towns and landmarks will appear in their proper places. But now that a free, standalone Google Maps app is available for download from Apple’s App Store, will iOS users even give those improving Apple Maps a chance?"
Yeah. Apparently Apple has finally figured out that killing your customers isn't good business. /snark =
Works out pretty well for the tobacco industry.
I would more say this was a win-win for Google. They made demands of Apple, Apple said 'no, we can do this without you', Apple took a huge PR hit for pushing out a sub-par application that did not have Google's data anymore... and now Google has swept in to save the day with their own branded application instead...
Google ends up looking good, Apple takes pretty much all the PR damage.. and Google gets to remind Apple who is more powerful.
That's not a reasonable position for Apple to take; not at all. They could have simply left the old gmaps app since their license had not *yet* expired, and at least avoided this debacle. Furthermore, you present "plastering" google's logo all over the app as if its certain this was something truly terrible - when that's not sure at all; it's not unreasonable to claim credit for an app you made so a logo might be reasonable.
All in all - if both parties had wanted this to work out they would have made it work. It's certain apple wasn't being reasonable, and quite believable Google wasn't either (but we really only have Apple's word for that). In any case - it's Apple's device; they're Apple customers, and that makes it Apple's responsibility to come up with a solution that doesn't suck - whether that solution involves using an old-fashioned app for another year, or a different provider, or kowtowing to Google isn't really important.
Regardless of who else is involved, Apple chose to harm their customers, probably intentionally, because that fit their strategic aims better. Given apple's dealings with samsung (and others), Apple doesn't come across as a very open-minded company: does it really surprise anyone they played hardball even if doing so cost them something?
Put it this way: if you blame some third party for a seller's failure to provide quality goods, that's not exactly a great incentive for said seller to be fair with you the next time - why bother? Defending Apple for their abuse of their customers reminds me a little too much of the stockholm syndrome for comfort.
I don't think these power-fights are good for customers.
Why is Google the villain?
No one said Google was the villain. No one has to be a villain. 2 companies simply failed to reach a mutually acceptable agreement. That doesn't make either of them wrong.
WinWin for us.
We used to have a sub-par Mapping application on iPhone. Now we have 2. Even better, with Apple pushing his own map app, Google will not be able to keep as under-featured as before.
At the end of the day, that's the take-home message for people looking at buying an iPhone. All the rest is just noise by people looking at the whole affair with their favorite-brand colored glasses.
Absolutely a win for consumers. We now have two vector-based maps apps with turn by turn directions and really clean interfaces, where before we had none. Google's data seems a little better, Apple's maps a little prettier. I suspect that both will improve over time: competition is good.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
tl:dr
Apple maps was an improvement over the previous google maps except it couldn't tell you where stuff actually was.
Look at the Google Maps SDK licensing terms.
Until Apple switched over to Apple Maps, those were the terms that iOS developers had to live with using the mapping SDK. Apple offers unlimited geocoding queries, Google has a limit of 2500 per day across all instances of your application!
Google also has higher limits if you pay them, but even those limits are way too low for a popular application.
Also under the Google Map regime, developers COULD NOT provide turn my turn directions on top of Google Maps. Now that Apple is providing maps there is no restriction at all to what overlays a developer chooses to put on a map.
In the end are not the users of a system served better by an endless variety of applications free to use maps in any way they like? It's not about any ONE application, it's about thousands of them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In another year they may well surpass Google overall if they keep fixing reported errors.
You remind me of a friend I had when I was 5. He was 4. He said, "when I turn 6, I'll be older than you!"