Apple Maps has been the comedy of the mapping app world for years. Jobs' Mob made a mistake years ago when it abandoned Google maps and convinced its chums that its new super-cool, game-changing software, designed by the same people who wrote a clock programme which could not update for summertime, would be more useful than a chocolate teapot. True it has become a little better over the years, it no longer sends Australians to die of thirst in the desert or suggest too many routes which involve driving underwater, but it is still behind Google.
Now Apple has decided to improve the maps service and with typical self-awareness, it has decided that its software is not the problem, the world is at fault. So the company has now announced it will rebuild its Maps data using a fleet of specially-designed vans to gather information about the faulty universe. Apple will also use data gathered from iPhones to power traffic information, although we thought that it was not supposed to be using this information to spy on users' movements.
Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue said the company would be “building all of our own map data from the ground up”.
The improved Apple maps will be activated for users slowly, beginning with a small number in San Francisco in the next few weeks. It will then expand to Northern California.
The rest of the US will be upgraded region-by-region “over the next year”. No timeline for international rollout has been shared. One of Apple's vans was apparently spotted by a man leaving a pub in Yeovil, England.
In addition to the mapping vans, Apple will use anonymised data from iPhone users already using Maps. The company will also deploy satellite imagery to improve accuracy further.
The end goal, as stated by Apple, is to remove the company’s reliance on data from third-party services. It thinks that it is this approach that has given Apple maps issues with reliability and accuracy. Of course, it could not be Apple could it?
Apple insists that the majority of iPhone owners use Apple maps. However, if that were true, then iPhone users would be fired for getting lost so often. According to Creative Strategies, 45 percent of US iPhone users use Google’s app, compared to just 36 percent using Apple’s system - which is installed by default.
