New Apple Maps app drops Google

Apple has built a new Maps application “from the ground up” for its range of iPad, iPod, and iPhone devices.

This confirms rumours that suggested Apple would eschew Google Maps in favour of its own in-house system.

Speaking at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on 11 June 2012, Senior VP of software engineering at Apple, Craig Federighi, explained that part of of Maps is local search.

Local search is a feature used by the iOS voice recognition system, Siri, to find locations nearest to you when making queries such as “Find a good restaurant”.

According to Federighi, they have already “ingested” more than 100 million business listings and are also building a traffic service.

Maps - iOS 6

This traffic service would use “anonymous, realtime” data from iOS users. Apple’s new Maps app will also get turn-by-turn navigation, Federighi said.

Federighi went on to unveil 3D maps support for their new app that was shown to work similarly to that on offer from Google. If you zoom in far enough, a 3D representation of the environment appears.

While building Maps, Apple realised that the best transit apps for metros, hiking, biking are coming from our developers, Federighi said.

Rather than building their own transit feature into the new Maps app, Federighi said that Apple will integrate, feature and promote the transit apps of third-party developers from within the new Maps.

The new Maps app from Apple is set to ship with iOS 6, which Federighi said would be out “this fall” (from September to November 2012).

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