Since the release of Apple's in-house Maps app as part of iOS 6 back in 2012, Yelp has been the company's sole partner for integrating customer reviews of businesses and other points of interest. In recent days, however, Apple's Maps app has begun including reviews from TripAdvisor and Booking.com on select hotel listings.
It is currently unclear what the criteria are for determining whether a given hotel listing includes reviews from Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Booking.com, but based on a spot check of several cities, the vast majority of hotel listings in the United States continue to display Yelp reviews. Other types of business listings also continue to use Yelp reviews on Apple Maps.
Internationally, Booking.com in particular seems to be more strongly represented, with brief surveys of London, Paris, and Sydney all showing reviews from that site on a majority of hotel listings viewed.
Apple has yet to update its Maps acknowledgements page to note it is now sourcing TripAdvisor and Booking.com, citing only Yelp as a data partner for reviews.
Apple has been working hard to improve Maps since its rough launch in 2012 that saw Tim Cook issue an open letter apologizing to consumers for not meeting their expectations with the new Maps app. The company has since improved its directions and three-dimensional imagery, although other changes such as transit integration planned for iOS 8 last year were pushed back as Apple's mapping efforts have reportedly been hampered by internal politics.
One major improvement that appears to be in the works is street-level imagery similar to Google's Street View and Microsoft's Streetside for Bing Maps. Minivans outfitted with sensor arrays and apparently leased by Apple have been spotted in several areas around the United States, with the behavior of the vehicles on residential streets and in parking lots suggesting they are collecting street-level imagery.
Thursday December 11, 2025 8:49 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon.
Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week.
iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Wednesday December 10, 2025 2:52 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you.
Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once...
Thursday December 11, 2025 11:28 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released new firmware designed for the AirPods Pro 3 and the prior-generation AirPods Pro 2. The AirPods Pro 3 firmware is 8B30, up from 8B25, while the AirPods Pro 2 firmware is 8B28, up from 8B21.
There's no word on what's include in the updated firmware, but the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3 are getting expanded support for Live Translation in the European Union in iOS...
Friday December 12, 2025 10:56 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Macworld's Filipe Espósito today revealed a handful of features that Apple is allegedly planning for iOS 26.4, iOS 27, and even iOS 28.
The report said the features are referenced within the code for a leaked internal build of iOS 26 that is not meant to be seen by the public. However, it appears that Espósito and/or his sources managed to gain access to it, providing us with a sneak peek...
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports.
In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
Thursday December 11, 2025 10:31 am PST by Juli Clover
The AirTag 2 will include a handful of new features that will improve tracking capabilities, according to a new report from Macworld. The site says that it was able to access an internal build of iOS 26, which includes references to multiple unreleased products.
Here's what's supposedly coming:
An improved pairing process, though no details were provided. AirTag pairing is already...
Friday December 12, 2025 10:10 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. iOS 26.2 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation iPhone SE.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones over-the-air by going to Settings >...
Friday December 5, 2025 9:40 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below.
Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
Thursday December 11, 2025 4:02 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple is working on a smart home hub that will rely heavily on the more capable version of Siri that's coming next year. We've heard quite a bit about the hub over the last two years, but a recent iOS 26 code leak provides additional insight into what we can expect and confirms rumored features.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
Macworld claims to have access to an ...
Cool. I still find Google Maps to be so much better and more useful. I'm glad Apple Maps is improving but are people really using it? I'm definitely not.
I'm using it all the time.
I live in one of the top 10 biggest cities in the U.S., and Google maps is a mess. It puts my address down the street, it sends me to the wrong part of town for my work, and it tries to route you through the airport to get to the other side of town, which easily adds a half hour to your travel time.
Apple maps hardly ever steers me wrong. It's not as good at searching for POIs, but once it knows where's you're going, it's way better at giving directions than Google maps.
