Foursquare joins growing ranks of Apple Maps data suppliers

The Acknowledgements Page for Maps was quietly updated to reflect this on Oct. 22, according to Apple Maps Marketing.

Originally popular as a check-in service, Foursquare now revolves around discovering and rating local businesses and attractions. The company is in fact a direct competitor to Yelp, which also supplies listings for Maps.

Talk about a deal between Apple and Foursquare dates back to late 2012. It's not clear why an arrangement would take nearly three years to complete, though Foursquare's overhaul in 2014 — pushing check-in functions into a separate app, Swarm — likely added to the complexity.

Even with the improvements to Maps in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, Apple is known to be working on collecting still more data for the service. Vehicles are touring cities worldwide to gather street-level reconnaissance, presumably with something akin to Google Street View in mind.

In the long run though the company may use some of its data to help build a self-driving car.