Apple App Not Apt

Nowadays, people take their cellphones everywhere, to the park, to the store, to the dinner table, to the bathroom. It has become such a huge part of our lives in the past few years, and justifiably so. It's a phone, camera, music player, calendar and computer in the palm of your hand. A more recent feature is GPS. If you're lost in NYC, you pull up the Maps app. If you're driving somewhere new, you pull up the Maps app. Most of you have heard how Apple dropped the ball with iOS 6 and the new Maps app. Some people are still stranded in that park... Fortunately, Google has just launched the much anticipated Google Maps app, previously a default app for all new iPhones before iOS 6, available for free in the App Store.

The consensus is it's in fact more user friendly, accurate, and reliable than Apple's own version, and it has always been so. So one might wonder, why would Apple get rid of the previous, well-functioning Google maps in place of their own? Although Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, says they simply had their own vision of what maps should be like and it could only be done by themselves, it can be deduced that they just did not want to be associated with their highly competitive rival, Google, maker of the increasingly popular android phones. Big mistake. 

Apple seems to have turned the other cheek by permitting Google to launch the new Google maps, but what it comes down to is iPhone sales, and with GPS being an integral part of daily life, it seems they understand that restricting iPhones to the Apple brand, despite how it benefits the competition, will only hurt them.

Jonathan Louie