Hey guys, it’s Greg with Apple Explained and today we’re going to explore the history
of Apple Maps.
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So when you think of a piece of mapping software, what comes to mind?
Maybe advanced, high resolution satellite imagery?
Or detailed transportation time calculating algorithms?
Well whatever comes to mind, it probably seems pretty boring.
But with Apple Maps, thats definitely not the case.
Because it has one of the most interesting backstories of any app Apple has ever made.
So let’s go back to 2007, when the original iPhone shipped with a maps application that
utilized map information, or map tiles, from Google’s newly released Google Maps service.
At the time, Google Maps was already getting really popular.
And the original iPhone Maps app was very well received, since it combine the reliable
map data backend from Google with the intuitive user interface frontend from Apple.
And this partnership resulted in a near-perfect maps app that had no glaring issues whatsoever.
And although by today’s standards it may have lacked basic features like GPS, turn
by turn navigation, or public transit directions, for 2007, it provided the best smartphone
map experiences in the industry.
I mean, imagine trying to navigate a map interface with a trackball on a two-inch display, because
that was the reality for many users who didn’t have iPhones.
Anyway, Google and Apple were close partners back in those days, and even the CEO of Google
appeared on stage to discuss service integration at the iPhone’s introductory keynote.
But troubles started to arise in 2009, when Google refused to give the iPhone Maps app
a whole slew of features already present in the Android version of Google Maps, like turn
by turn navigation and vector graphics for offline mapping.
This angered many people at Apple, who told the Guardian that Google “broke their promise.”
Referring to the five-year contract both parties had agreed to.
Additionally, Google began requested even more data from iPhone users through their
Maps app, something Apple wasn’t comfortable with providing.
So all of these disagreements between the two companies made Apple realize they were
going to have to build their own mapping service.
And that service was finally announced at Apple’s WWDC in 2012, as a new addition
in iOS 6.
Scott Forestall was the one who actually revealed the new Apple Maps app, and it featured turn
by turn voice navigation and something called Flyover, which provided 3D views of cities.
Now many people were excited to try the new Apple Maps app, but when iOS 6 was released
to hundreds of millions of customers worldwide, their experience with Maps left a lot to be
desired.
For example, various points of interest were misspelt, missing, and sometimes wrongly categorized.
Parks were sometimes airports, which proved to be an issue for land owners like Alan Shatter,
the owner of Airfield Park in South Dublin.
iOS 6 mapped it as an airport, prompting Shatter to release this statement to a local news
source: “…Clearly the designation is not only
wrong but is dangerously misleading in that it could result in a pilot, unfamiliar with
the area, in an emergency situation and without other available information, attempting
a landing…”
And cases like this were so common with Apple Maps, that just nine days after its launch,
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook released a letter to the public on Apple’s homepage, apologizing
on behalf of the company for headaches users experienced while trying to navigate using
Apple’s mapping service.
And even the act of releasing this letter caused controversy, because when Apple vice
president Scott Forstall was asked to sign his name at the bottom of the letter, he refused,
which led to him being forced to resign.
And when his departure from Apple was made public in October, Jonathan Ive took over
his role at Apple.
So that gave him control of both Apple’s hardware and software design, while Craig
Federighi led the development of macOS and iOS.
Now in 2013, Apple released iOS 7, which was the first version without Scott Forestall’s
involvement.
And along with a major user interface redesign and added features, Apple also heavily updated
Maps.
It fixed various inaccuracies and bugs thanks to Apple’s acquisition of five different
mapping companies, but it also introduced pedestrian navigation, a dark mode for night
uses, and car to pedestrian navigation detection was available to iPhone 5s users due to the
M7 motion coprocessor.
Also, Maps’ data was a lot more reliable and accessible, since more countries were
being mapped and the Maps app was becoming available on the Mac and select cars with
CarPlay.
iOS 8 in 2014 brought more enhancements to the data and new features for users to play
with, like Flyover Guided Tours of a few cities and Spotlight search indexing Maps results.
The same year, Maps on watchOS made its debut, featuring turn by turn navigation with haptic
feedback and some light searching functions.
iOS 9 Maps was another minor update, with navigation now offering detour options in
case of traffic, a nearby button to show the user local points of interest, and public
transit information.
Additionally, Apple bought out two more companies to further enhance their Maps app, a high
precision GPS technology company named Coherent Navigation as well as a startup called Mapsense
that created a mapping engine to enable data-heavy location visualizations, whatever that means.
And iOS 10 was a substantial update for Maps, with a refreshed user interface, the ability
to map out a fast food location or gas station while navigation is still in progress, drop
pins for parked cars, and third party app integration for Lyft, Opentable, and Uber.
iOS 11 built on top of this with lane guidance, indoor mapping for malls and airports, speed
limit information, and Augmented Reality Flyover.
Now a later update of iOS 11 also introduced a built in bike-sharing station locater for
New York City, London, San Fransisco, Montreal, Paris, and Brisbane.
Now currently, with iOS 12, Apple has been more accepting of third party apps in CarPlay.
Recently, CarPlay users got a nice little surprise when news spread that Google Maps
and Waze CarPlay apps were in the testing process.
Now we don’t have word when the apps will actually be available, but I think it’s
safe to assume it’ll come out by the end of the year.
Now let’s talk about how many Apple Maps users actually exist.
And we should keep in mind that a lot of iPhone users have both Apple Maps and Google Maps,
so there could be quite a bit of overlap in these numbers.
So Apple Maps is used by 23 million unique US devices a month, and while that is quite
a big number, it pales in comparison to Google’s 180 million users between Google Maps and
Waze.
And while we’ve discussed the journey Apple Maps has took up until today, we still haven’t
touched on the other projects Apple’s Maps team has been working on.
For starters, you may have heard about Apple’s mapping vans that have been spotted all over
the place.
Because Apple deployed a fleet of vehicles from 2015 onwards equipped with a dozen camera
sensors and a Lidar system, which is a 3D laser scanner used for measuring depth and
objects.
Each van is equipped with a hard wired 10.5-inch iPad Pro running special internal mapping
software that communicates with the roof mounted sensor array and visualizes what roads have
been logged on an Apple Map UI.
It records the data onto some solid state drives, and when they’re all filled up,
the drives are packed away to an Apple data center, where faces, license plates, and other
sensitive information is blurred out before any human sees it.
And although Apple says the vans only exist for improving road data, it would be fair
to assume it’s at least working on a Street View-like feature, and maybe even training
machine learning datasets for an upcoming autonomous car.
Right now, the vans are touring around 24 states in the US, as well as 9 countries in
Europe.
Now all this activity by Apple just goes to show how much their investing in their Maps
app.
In fact, many people believe Apple is working on their most ambitious update to Maps since
its introduction, which would include an entirely rebuilt map data system.
Right now, you can see what it looks like when you browse around the San Fransisco and
Northern California areas.
They’re planning on developing the rest of the country by utilizing their mapping
vans in conjunction with data gathered from current Apple Maps users, much like how Google
uses data from Waze and Google Maps users to pretty accurately estimate traffic and
travel times.
Apple’s goal is to reduce reliance on third parties for its map system, namely TomTom.
Now as simple as this sounds on the surface, achieving a total maps data overhaul would
be a significant achievement for Apple.
Because if you think about it, Apple has to not only nail down precise street and navigation
data, but there’s the burden of trying to understand different cultural infrastructure,
where sidewalks begin and end for pedestrian safety, nicknames for pockets of cities that
may not be recognized by official maps, and even making public transit fonts match what
they are on their actual signs.
And all the while, Apple still has to collect datasets complying with their own privacy
policy, so all the data has to be anonymous and uploaded in real time so not a single
thing could be traced back to the user.
Eddy Cue, the guy in charge of the maps project, explained to TechCrunch how deeply Apple respects
the privacy of customers and the measures they take to make sure it’s as secure as
possible.
He said, “We specifically don’t collect data, even
from point A to point B.
We collect data…in an anonymous fashion, in subsections of the whole, so we couldn’t
even say that there is a person that went from point A to point B.
We’re collecting the segments of it.
As you can imagine, that’s always been a key part of doing this.
Honestly, we don’t think it buys us anything [to collect more].
We’re not losing any features or capabilities by doing this.”
So hopefully someday soon we’ll see the results of Apple’s investments in their
Maps app, because they have been doing quite a bit over the years to make it more competitive.
But there are still some areas where Apple Maps falls short, so having Waze or Google
Maps available as an alternative is always a good idea.
So that is the history of Apple Maps, and if you want to vote for the next video topic,
don’t forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.