While improvements such as transit directions had been part of the early rumors for iOS 8, a follow-up report from 9to5Mac on May 1 had indicated that the feature might not make the cut for initial versions of iOS 8 as Apple was pulling resources from the iOS team to work on what would be introduced as OS X Yosemite.
Indeed, Maps improvements went essentially unmentioned at the WWDC keynote last week, and sources speaking to TechCrunch outlined "internal politics" including the departure of several key members of the Maps team as one of the reasons for Maps improvements not being ready for a WWDC presentation or inclusion in the initial iOS 8 beta.
As highlighted by BGR, one developer spotted a slide in an Apple WWDC session video showing an iPad version of the Maps app with a "bus" icon in the center of the bottom toolbar. While it is unsurprising that Apple is indeed working on transit directions for Maps given previous rumors and Apple's several corporate acquisitions in the area over the past year or two, the inclusion of a slide showing the feature suggests that discussion of the transit features may indeed have been a fairly late cut from the keynote presentation.
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The screenshot, which can be seen above, shows an icon of a train or a bus at the bottom center of the screen, which presumably indicates transit directions. It comes from the session titled “Power, Performance and Diagnostics: What’s new in GCD and XPC,” and BGR was pointed to it by Jesper.
Interestingly, Apple has moved quickly to address the errant inclusion of the screenshot showing a transit-enabled Maps app and has already pulled the session video and slides from the developer website.
Apple's scheduling plans for transit directions in Maps are still not entirely clear, as there is still plenty of time of the feature to be added during the beta testing period prior to public launch, which is expected around September. Alternatively, the feature could be held back for a later update such as an iOS 8.1 to give Apple more time to polish it.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)I mean I get that it takes time to find good people but given the resources available, they should be able to grow the team just a bit so they can tackle more ground.
$1 billion toward additional programmers would let them probably double their staff with equal or higher talent and then they can roll things out much faster across many products/services.
It's just too bad Apple split from Google on this product - Apple is using resources trying to re-invent something that is already done quite well with Google Maps.
To me the big difference between the two (since both now work in my area) are Streetview and that 3D mode.
At no point, other than flying low over a city is 3D mode going to be useful to me. Streetview on the other hand has been useful on a few occasions already. That's exactly it; seems that Apple is trying to reinvent maps when it's not necessary. Unless you're a helicopter pilot.
It's just too bad Apple split from Google on this product - Apple is using resources trying to re-invent something that is already done quite well with Google Maps.
If Apple didn't split from Google, we'd still be using the same crappy Google Maps we were using back then and Google would have never offered a new version of Google Maps for IOS users.
So glad they split.
But articles like this one throw gallons of water on that dim ember.
Apple Maps is already pretty darn good in my opinion.