Traffic -- user submitted info??

Apple had been collecting traffic info (if you opted in) since iOS 5 (iirc). There was no way to manually upload the information. As far as I can tell, we probably wont get full Waze style functionality (report cops vehicles on road etc).

 

Settings/Location Services/System Services/Traffic was added in iOS5. Although some people will have turned it off, as it sends position updates regularly using your data plan.

 

Traffic data is also crowd sourced from TomTom and Waze.
There currently is no way to report a traffic jam or slowdown, but in theory your GPS will show you are not moving and report it to Apple.

 

I'm wondering why its so sparsely available right now.

Yes its a beta, I get it. But it seems like a feature that should have worked from the beginning since its data that they've already been collecting.

 

Well its fairly hard to provide live traffic information when there are not many devices actually providing it live.

Im guessing the data collected in iOS 5 will be used to provide the best routes based on average traffic speeds and also provide a baseline for what is deemed slower traffic than normal instead of using the speed limits so we won't really see any live traffic data until iOS 6 is released and Apple has a decent amount of data coming in.

 

Ah that makes more sense.

Thanks.

 

They may have been collecting the data for over a year, but that doesn't mean they have fully implemented the code that leverages that wealth of data. They could be working on the algorithm that triggers the lines or any other piece of the puzzle.