For years, the biggest omission in Apple Maps has been the lack of transit directions. But that all has changed with this year's iOS 9 update, which includes built-in support for buses, subways, trains, and more in select major cities.
The lion's share of the week's Apple news occurred during Monday's WWDC 2015 keynote, when the company unveiled OS X El Capitan, iOS 9, watchOS 2, and Apple Music. The rest of the week was not uneventful however, with word of antitrust investigations and the real story behind Apple's mapping vans.
Drivers using Apple Maps in iOS 9 will have the benefit of explicit traffic and construction warnings, including voice turn-by-turn suggestions for alternate routes, according to information shared with AppleInsider.
Apple has officially brought to an end the speculation surrounding its formerly secretive mapping vans, revealing that the vehicles are collecting data for future Apple Maps updates, and also emphasizing both privacy and transparency with a list of upcoming driving locations.
As expected, Apple announced transit directions integration are coming to the Maps app in iOS 9, featuring multi-modal routing, rail line information and Siri integration, among other functions.
While Apple Maps is currently restricted to dedicated apps on iOS and OS X, that will change, as a new job listing from Apple reveals the company plans to make its mapping service available cross-platform on the Web.
Apple has gobbled up mapping market share on iOS (and the Mac) since introducing its own alternative to Google Maps back in 2012, despite lacking a variety of key features. Hints at how Apple Maps may soon improve are coming from a seemingly unlikely source: China.
As part of ongoing upgrades to its in-house mapping service, Apple on Friday added a handful of entries to its rolling list of providers that supply the company with maps data, business listings and satellite imagery.
Apple will continue to work with TomTom on mapping data, the Dutch firm revealed on Tuesday, extending one of the oldest and most important partnerships in Apple's expanding navigation and mapping efforts.
Apple's recent acquisition of Coherent Navigation, a California firm that worked on high-precision satellite navigation projects for the likes of the U.S. Navy, might at first seem a bit outside of the iPhone maker's wheelhouse. But a closer look reveals what could, in fact, be an excellent match.
In the midst of a major overhaul for its Maps service, Apple seems to have made another under-the-radar acquisition as the company apparently snapped up Coherent Navigation, makers of high-accuracy GPS devices and software.
Apple is planning major changes to Maps that will involve radically overhauling the data services behind the platform, according to a job listing posted on Thursday discovered by AppleInsider.
Whether or not Apple is still in the running to buy Nokia's Here, the digital mapping service will likely sell for more than $3 billion thanks to a bid made by transportation service Uber.
Continuing its internal mapping initiative, Apple on Monday added Maps Connect support to five new regions, allowing users in those countries to add and edit points of interest.
Shares of Nokia fell more than 12 percent on Thursday after the company's networking division reported disappointing results. But a bright spot was its "Here" mapping division, which is rumored to be a potential acquisition target for Apple.
A report on Wednesday claims Apple is among a number of high-profile tech companies being courted by Nokia in the Finnish firm's attempt to sell off its HERE mapping service and related assets.
Apple is indeed working on bringing public transit directions back into its Maps apps for iOS and OS X, following a nearly three-year absence since the iPhone maker abandoned data from Google Maps, an official job listing confirmed on Tuesday.
Apple Maps was updated as part of Apple's iOS 8.3 release on Wednesday, adding a tweaked "Report a Problem" tool that lets business owners claim marked points of interest in-app, while at the same time removing select TripAdvisor data that started showing up up last week.
In what appears to be a recent update to Apple's in-house mapping service, hotel reviews pulled from TripAdvisor and Booking.com are showing up in local search results alongside data sourced from Yelp.
Apple on Monday expanded the reach of its Maps Connect service for small businesses to three more countries, namely Italy, Mexico, and Switzerland.
{{ summary }}
Neil Hughes
Roger Fingas
AppleInsider Staff
Daniel Eran Dilger
Sam Oliver
Mikey Campbell
