Mockup of iOS 8's transit feature
Maps application in the next major update of iPhone's (iPad,iPod) operating system iOS 8 may will be come with more functionality, reality, and smoothly. A report from 9to5Mac claimed that Apple is preparing to improve its Maps app, focusing more on the underlying infrastructure instead on the user interface.
Last year with iOS 7, Apple re-architected the app’s interface to fit the bright, translucent style of Jony Ive’s take on mobile operating system design.The first appear of Apple's Maps was in late 2012 alongside iOS 6, after Apple was relying on Google's Maps. but the beginning it wasn't successful.
But while the interface for Maps was redesigned last year, Apple’s focus for 2014 is under-the-hood changes.
..the software was riddled with bugs, unreliable data, and lacked many of the critical mobile mapping features found in the Google Maps app. Scott Forstall, the long time confidant of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, was in charge of the Apple mapping effort and was ousted for declining to apologize for the product’s shortcomings. Soon after Forstall, iOS engineering executive Richard Williamson was pushed out of Apple for his involvement in the app’s development.After these failures and its resulting, Apple shaken the dust off itself with a set of procedures, like the extended of engineering work and acquisitions of several mapping companies such BroadMap, Embark, and Hopstop. According to the report's sources Apple’s database for iOS Maps will be upgraded with enhanced data so it is more reliable.
The new application will also be injected with new points of interests and new labels to make places such as airports, parks, train stations, bus stops, highways, and freeways easier to find, the sources added. Sources also say that the mapping application’s cartography design has been tweaked to be slightly cleaner and to make streets more visible.Apple will bering to the iOS 8 version of Maps a new important feature: public transit directions.
Transit directions allow a person to use an iPhone to travel from one destination to another via public transportation. iOS 8 Maps will be able to tap into train, subway, and bus data and provide enhanced directions to major airports. The functionality will exist in major cities, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, and will expand to other locations across the United States and potentially other countries across the world around the public launch of iOS 8.These changes are only the beginning of Apple's proposed plans for its Maps application, as the company is reportedly also working to add indoor mapping views, improved car integration, and also begun work on augmented reality functionality that leverages the iPhone’s compass hardware to visually see nearby points of interest.
Read also:
- iOS 7 Maps go full screen, navigation gets night mode, new Siri options
- Google Maps get updated for iOS 7, adds transit features
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