Roger Fingas
Google will announce a "brand new experience" for Google Earth on Apr. 18 — something which could simultaneously signal a much-needed upgrade of the Earth iOS app to 64-bit code.
The company has so far been vague on details, except that the unveiling will involve a "new Google Earth" and an event at New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art, according to Engadget. Google has promoted virtual reality tours and augmented reality museum experiences in the past, and there might be some new layer in Earth. It could also be that the company will update the platform with support for Google Daydream, its Android-based VR technology, expanding on an app for the PC-based HTC Vive.
The Google Earth iOS app has become neglected. Its last update was in May 2016, and then included only bugfixes and a modernized Google logo.
Without a 64-bit upgrade, the app is likely to become obsolete by the end of the year. Apple has been phasing out support for 32-bit titles, preventing new ones from appearing at the App Store, and popping up iOS warnings that they can slow down 64-bit devices. More recent messages say simply that 32-bit apps — including Earth — "will not work with future versions of iOS."
While it was briefly thought that the cutoff could happen as soon as iOS 10.3.2, it's now anticipated that Apple will stop support with its next major release, presumably "iOS 11." That should be shown off at June's Worldwide Developers Conference, and be finished in time for new iPhones in the fall.
Oliver Haslam
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8 Comments
It's a sign of things to come. Google has to Update if they want to stay relevant on the iPhone!!! So it's not unexpected. Google does update their app's. That's a good thing. Lets flush all the old crap from the store. I'm thinking a lot of that junk are things like fart app's.
Google Earth in VR sounds pretty cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCrkZOx5Q1M
Google has much more pressing issues. Like how they are going to prevent Samsung from destroying the rest of the Android OEM competition. With that, Samsung will be dictating the terms of including Google software on their devices.
Apple's massive purchase of Samsung OLED panels, will essentially give total control of a critical piece of hardware to a single company. While LG can also build panels, they won't be able to stay competitive with Samsung over the long term.
Google is going to feel the heat. The 876 million for LG display is going to need to be far more if LG is going to stay competitive. It is going to take several more years for anyone else to be able to compete in this market. By then, Samsung and Apple may be consolidating the spoils. Does anyone wonder why Apple is taking over development of its own GPUs? Those OLED displays from Samsung will be capable of doing grand things with a capable GPU.
This one's not going to turn out well for Google. They should have played nice with Apple. They would have maintained their role as the default search engine in perpetuity. Now they get to watch as Bing does Siri searches, Apple maps pushes Google maps off of the platform and the browser comes with a host of choices for search rather than defaulting only to Google without the ability to change search engines as once was the case. Even today, Onniweb on OS X gives no other choice but Google. Hence I have to type in DuckDuckGo if I use that particular browser.
I suspect Google updates on iOS will be far more scarce as they try and figure out how to stop Samsung from completely taking over the Android ecosystem.