Jan Zdarsa It will be almost a year since Apple bought Placebase, which was one of the smaller competitors of Google Maps. According to the French site Le Soleil, Apple bought another company called Poly9.
Companies like Apple, for example, buy similar companies in order to hire new talented developers and designers, but it would be a big coincidence if Apple bought two companies in a relatively short period of time and both of them were dealing with maps. So Apple is definitely preparing a product where working with the map will be very important. According to all reports, really quality people worked at Poly9, and Apple got some interesting additions to its team. The Poly9 product was strikingly similar to Google Earth.
Apple has previously been looking for a person to take the map application in the iPhone "to the next level". According to this ad, Apple wants to change the way people work with maps. Before the release of iOS 4, there was speculation that Google Maps might be replaced by an Apple product, but that did not happen. So what is Apple planning? Planning to remove Google Maps from iPhone? What do you think?
Probably not, I think that Google Maps cannot be replaced just like that. I still think that Apple = the best HW, Google = the best SW, it would be great if these two worked together. ;)
Maybe in iOS 5 we will have free navigation from apple :)
I'm still hoping that Apple will drop GMaps and replace them with their own product, and I think it will happen, but I'm afraid it won't be long. We already have the first news for iOS5. :D
I use Google Earth on my computer and navigate with Navigon on my iPhone. But I would appreciate it if there was a way to connect it. Simply program your routes and places on your computer and then transfer it to your iPhone and its Navigon during synchronization. Doing everything straight away in the tydliphone is quite inconvenient. Does anyone have any idea if it works somehow, even with other software on the computer?