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Insiders Detail Steve Jobs' Role in Apple's Mapping Effort, Desire to Replace Google as iOS Search Engine

Ditching Google Maps WAS the right decision. It makes no sense to rely on a competitor for a core feature of the phone, which maps are.

The problem was that the replacement was released too early, before it was ready. Of course there would always be some issues no matter when it was released. But they could have released Apple Maps as a downloadable app for a year to get lots of real-world feedback, then for iOS 7 just said "...and now in iOS 7, Apple Maps is built right into the OS."
 
Why not partner up with MapQuest or someone? MapQuest's app is pretty much the same as Google maps, just without street view, which is often just eye candy anyway.

MapQuest is free and has turn by turn spoken street names. Better search integration with hotels, shops, etc. too.
 
rorschach said:
Ditching Google Maps WAS the right decision. It makes no sense to rely on a competitor for a core feature of the phone, which maps are.

The problem was that the replacement was released too early, before it was ready. Of course there would always be some issues no matter when it was released. But they could have released Apple Maps as a downloadable app for a year to get lots of real-world feedback, then for iOS 7 just said "...and now in iOS 7, Apple Maps is built right into the OS."
Click to expand...

Yeah, I just said that.
 
Of course, Google search is being gradually replaced by Siri. All voice searches going through Siri. The only thing left is typed search. Bing is becoming better and MS will give up and agree Apple terms when WP8 will fail spectacularly so they'll want hundreds of millions of iOS users to compensate for their inexistence in mobile space.
 
notabadname said:
Long-term, it will prove to be the right competitive move. With a 100 million iOS devices and growing, it is not a wise competitive move to continually generate add dollars and traffic to your rival. Much less have a major feature like turn-by-turn denied. Apple had to ween themselves from Google eventually.

They will get the App refined quickly. I don't miss Google's presence at all.
Click to expand...

Nobody has yet explained to me why Apple should have (or even could have) made a different choice among these three:

http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair

Nor has anyone explained why we tolerated map errors from Google for years, and only suddenly do such errors matter SO MUCH MORE, even if they’re not truly more common than before.
 
ThisIsNotMe said:
Apple does what it needs to do to bring turn by turn to the iPhone and then people bitch and moan.
Click to expand...

Apple brings turn by turn and Google brings self driving car...

On subject. Bing isn't that bad but i find it skewed towards shopping/commercial results rather than actual information as such - it may just be me.

As someone above noted this will start to go through Siri and around Google as time progresses.
 
KdParker said:
He is not pulling it, just not making it the default. I don't think the average person would notice.

Bing normally pulls back the same results as google anyway.
Click to expand...

Yup. That's because google has proven that ms scrapes their search results. There was a hoo ha about this a while back.
 
dv8r said:
Apple brings turn by turn and Google brings self driving car...

On subject. Bing isn't that bad but i find it skewed towards shopping/commercial results rather than actual information as such - it may just be me.
Click to expand...
Google is about the same these days. It used to be a good search engine.
 
mr.steevo said:
Two days ago my wife's iPhone randomly switched search engines from Google to Yahoo! search.

Steve? Is that you?
Click to expand...

This happened to me as well. I got my iPhone 5, did a restore, and then started seeing the weird search results. Then I realized I was on yahoo instead of google.
 
bretm said:
Why not partner up with MapQuest or someone? MapQuest's app is pretty much the same as Google maps, just without street view, which is often just eye candy anyway.

MapQuest is free and has turn by turn spoken street names. Better search integration with hotels, shops, etc. too.
Click to expand...

I hated MapQuest and deleted it. Too much screen space dedicated to the said integration. I'd much rather use something like Yelp! and then have it switch over to Maps.
 
theSeb said:
Yup. That's because google has proven that ms scrapes their search results. There was a hoo ha about this a while back.
Click to expand...

not really
the internet is becoming concentrated among a smaller number of companies so there is less to search

most of the tech blogs for instance are owned by a few large companies
 
theSeb said:
Google is about the same these days. It used to be a good search engine.
Click to expand...

Agree. Seems like 2-3 years ago, Google switched from the most relevant information on top to the most relevant shopping results (I'm not talking about the paid search results, those have always been there.).
 
When politics drive Apple's decisions, rather than using the superior product, customers will loose (BIG TIME).
 
they should make their own search engine called "AskSteve"

----------
PBG4 Dude said:
Agree. Seems like 2-3 years ago, Google switched from the most relevant information on top to the most relevant shopping results (I'm not talking about the paid search results, those have always been there.).
Click to expand...

so true.

i can't search for anything on Google these days without at least pulling up an Amazon product on the first 2 pages of search results
 
theSeb said:
Yup. That's because google has proven that ms scrapes their search results. There was a hoo ha about this a while back.
Click to expand...

Agreed. But it still works for the average consumer.

Whatever became of that situation? Lets call it 'ScrapeGate'.
 
Krazy Bill said:
Just remove "Mac" from the site name already and get it over with. The domain, iOSrumors can be had for $39.95. Better grab it! :eek:
Click to expand...

I've been saying for a while now that all Macbooks in the future will be iPads. Think detatchable keyboard and possibly a Mac Mini-to-iPad Airplay model for high end users. Think a Macbook Air with all the guts shifted to the screen side. We're almost there. Take same Mac Mini and Airplay to AppleTVs around the house/office. Ecosystem complete.
 
So par as normal Job's ego was a problem. He was very give me everything I want and not wanting to pay for it or play ball.

It is pretty clear Apple Maps sucks because of Jobs not due to the lack of Jobs.
 
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