| Scoobes said: Interesting info: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Apple-Google-Maps-iOS-iPhone,news-16109.html Apple still had a year left on their contract with Google for the maps app but thought it was falling behind and terminated the contract. A full year in which they could have beta tested their own maps app... |
http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switch
There's a difference between "a year left" and "a full year left". What I find interesting are all the anecdotes of people who did beta test iOS 6 but didn't report any errors to Apple. It might be worth taking slings and arrows now in order to get the data they need to improve it (while simultaneously withholding it from the industrial spy that is Google). In other words, this is the beta test; what I don't understand is why they didn't just announce it as a beta product the same way that Siri was last year.
I found this paragraph from http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/how-google-was-skyhooked-by-apples-new-ios-6-maps interesting:
Consider that in early 2010, when Skyhook Wireless inked a deal with Motorola another Android licensees to use its own WiFi-based geolocation features in place of Google's Location Services, Android product manager Steve Lee stated, in emails revealed through subsequent court proceedings reported by the New York Times, that the deal "would be awful for Google because it will cut off our ability to continue collecting data to maintain and improve our location database."
This was around the time Apple was being investigated for "tracking users". Shortly after they stopped using Skyhook for location services and switched to their own solution (which also required building up a large data set).
