0 notes
iMaps
When I saw Google’s Andy Rubin at the conference showing off the new Motorola Tablet running the new maps application I asked myself what happened to the maps company that Apple acquired a couple years ago.
This is why I’m starting to believe that one of the new big features in the iPhone 5 (or iOS 5) could be a proper maps application with real navigation.
Lets assume for a minute that I’m right and iMaps is coming. How will it be?
For a start it will be integrated with the address book and iCal.
Then it will have a proper bookmarking feature where we will be able to easily store all of our favorite places and also share them with our friends.
It could also integrate external places from services like Foursquare, and it will obviously be available for use by other applications that need to integrate maps in their systems.
I’m not sure if it will offer an internal rating/comment system for public places, but I think this could be something to consider. If an integrated places feature will be added it would be more like a directory service, where companies could add themselves in a very easy way and be found in a simple and clean apple-ish style.
I don’t think it will have any features similar to Google Latitude, street view or even 3D. Not at the beginning at least.
The design of the maps will be very nice and it will have a couple of visual gimmicks that we will love!
It will probably have only two voices, one male and one female an no option to install others (not useful).
What about Airplay? Could it transmit maps to a car’s screen? Remember the Apple/Volkswagen rumor?
Other features could be voice control, route bookmarks, traffic detection and a couple of others borrowed from dedicated navigation systems like TomTom.
Apple is a company that innovates (this is why Ping really doesn’t stick yet) and the maps application also needs to innovate for them to have a unique selling proposition. But they could be so far behind market that they may need to do a lot of work to catch up. This is why I don’t exclude the idea that they initially decide to just swap the google service with theirs, directly into the already installed maps application, and without marketing the change. Many people won’t even notice at first, but Apple could start developing on top of that, one feature at the time, probably starting from simple bookmark and routing features.
