After short absence, Google Maps returns to the Apple iPhone

Google Maps, which was temporarily banished by Apple from all iOS 6 devices, is back in style. 

|
Google
Google Maps is returning to iOS 6 devices, including the Apple iPhone 5, pictured here.

Back in September, Apple booted Google Maps from iOS 6, and replaced it with an in-house mapping application called Apple Maps. Panic ensued. Users, who had been leaning on Google Maps since the launch of the first iPhone, in 2007, suddenly found themselves saddled with a buggy, incomplete, and sometimes wildly incorrect piece of software. 

"[Apple] Maps," seethed David Pogue of the New York Times, "is an appalling first release. It may be the most embarrassing, least usable piece of software Apple has ever unleashed." 

Now, a couple months later, Google Maps is returning to iOS 6-equipped iPhones and iPod Touch handsets. The new Google Maps app, which is available for download from the App Store, displays more map on the screen, and includes turn-by-turn navigation, a feature sorely missing from earlier iterations of the app (if not from Apple Maps). In addition, Google has added far more data on more than 80 million businesses, the Mountain View company says. 

Google Maps, Google's Daniel Graf wrote in a blog post today, is "designed from the ground up to combine the comprehensiveness and accuracy of Google Maps with an interface that makes finding what you’re looking for faster and easier. The app shows more map on screen and turns mobile mapping into one intuitive experience." 

There is currently no customized iPad version of the overhauled Google Maps app, although as Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land notes, "the new Google Maps app will obviously also work on the iPad."

Happy to have Google Maps back? Drop us a line in the comments section. And hey, why not follow us on Twitter? Find us @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to After short absence, Google Maps returns to the Apple iPhone
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2012/1213/After-short-absence-Google-Maps-returns-to-the-Apple-iPhone
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe