Apple Hints at Future Turn-by-Turn GPS Directions With Traffic for iPhone
As part of its Q&A regarding location tracking
posted earlier today, Apple discloses that it is currently collecting "anonymous traffic data" from users' devices with the aim of providing an "improved traffic experience in the next couple of years".
What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.
That traffic experience would presumably be built on top of a turn-by-turn navigation system separate from the Maps application included in iOS and driven by Google.
In November 2009, an Apple job posting described an iPhone engineering position that would help take Maps "to the next level". The company followed that up last December, with a set of four job listings seeking iOS engineers with experience in developing navigation software, further fueling speculation that Apple is working on its own navigation system.
On a broader scale, Apple has increasingly looked to beef up its own mapping and geolocation services in an attempt to distance itself from Google, which has provided the core Maps application for the iPhone since the device's 2007 debut. Apple acquired mapping company Placebase in July 2009 and followed that up by purchasing small Canadian mapping firm Poly9 one year later. Apple also moved its location services for iOS in-house with the release of iOS 3.2 on the iPad in April 2010, separating itself from Google and Skyhook Wireless for such services.
Google has offered free turn-by-turn navigation on Android since late 2009 and had hinted at that time that it could bring the service to iOS, although the company later backpedaled from those claims.
Popular Stories
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Top Rated Comments
I'm not so sure.... I think it could easily be interpreting both ways. but that last part about providing a superior "traffic service" makes me think it means road traffic. What kind of "traffic service" would they provide for network traffic? It would read something along the lines of "to minimize [network] traffic" or "to provide superior reception". But to provide a traffice service implies road traffic.
So get off your high horse, even if it does mean network traffic (which I don't think because of what I said) there are easily ways to interpret for both
The better Apple does, the more desperate you are to find something, *anything* to hold against them. Most of which is actually meaningless. The latest is the cell-tower logging issue. You do realize that about 90% of tech companies out there would kill to have this be their biggest problem . . .
Hopefully whatever that's released in June will have it or at least some of it.
If Apple top Google Maps on Android as it is today then hats off to them as Google Maps is fantastic. Im really looking forward to seeing what Apple can do.