This week Apple made some waves by announcing that in the next release of software for the iPhone, iPad, et al they would replace the Google-based mapping utilities with their own.
But then a few smarter folks noticed that while the Google toolset has transit information built in, Apple’s would not (third party apps can apparently provide transit information, but city-by-city, not globally).
The folks at WalkScore think this is a big step backwards, and have a campaign to tell Apple to do better. I recommend you click through and share your opinion!
8 responses to “Generate Some Transit Love from Apple”
Simple: Do not purchase said products. Stop using any such products you already own. Recommend against purchasing said products to family/friends/co-workers/etc.
I’ve never owned an i-anything and have no plans to.
Jason you are being a little extreme. How about giving the company a chance to see what pans out in a product which is not even on the market yet? iOS6 is months away from even being available – lets see what happens.
Also, there WILL be a Google Maps app, which I would imagine will include Transit.
Finally there are plenty of other apps for iOS which work with transit stuffs. I personally use PDXBus all the time…
Remember – Google didn’t have transit services right off the bat either, it took them a while to build it up. I would imagine Apple is working on it. A campaign to let them know customers would like it is a good thing.
maps.google.com will still work. Don’t forget that the map application on Apple hasn’t been updated in like 4 years so the quality isn’t going down that much by removing features
Trillium Solutions, a local software company who is an expert on this sort of stuff, puts in their two cents.
I think there is definitely cause for heightened scrutiny, but I’m reserving full judgement until I see how it’s implemented.
Who cares? I don’t do Apple products anyway.
Some of the millions of people who do might possibly care.
Others who self-professedly don’t care, curiously nonetheless, take the time to comment on a thread dedicated to the topic.
There is always this too:
Apple Feedback
Nick: Just counting 2011 and 2012 sales alone, Apple has sold over 150 million iPhones. Considering I bought my iPhone in 2010 and still am using it, I would bet it is safe to say that there are probably over 200 million iPhones in use currently. Add to that any iPod touch or iPad devices that are used with any kinds of maps and you have quite a few people “who care”.