Apple has acquired third-party mapping service Locationary in an attempt to remove big accuracy problems with its location and mapping service.
Toronto-based company Locationary uses a combination of crowd-sourced data and a federated data exchange platform, known as Saturn, to provide accurate locations for local business and points of interest, which is continuously updated and verified to ensure a high level of accuracy, something which Apple is clearly lacking up to this point.
Locationary goes one step further than simply telling you where to find a particular company, however, with the depth of information available able to go above and beyond by telling you opening times and further information, such as whether the place might be closed for renovations, which would really give Apple Maps a feature set able to rival the competition.
Apple is remaining typically tight lipped about its most recent acquisition, refusing to divulge any information about how it plans to use the Locationary service, or if it intends to even use it at all. The most that tech news site AllThingsD could extract from the Cupertino-based giant was that buying smaller companies was not an unusual occurrence for Apple and that they couldn’t discuss their 'purpose of plans' at this time.
This news could come as a breath of fresh air to Apple users, many of whom are resorting to using third-party navigation apps such as Google Maps to find their way, rather than being able to use the native software that their device offers, but whether any improvements to the Maps service will be included in the next update of iOS 7 remains to be seen.
Last year, Apple recruited ex-Google staff to try and fix the problems caused by the update that first appeared in iOS 6. Users were complaining the mapping app wasn't at all accurate and many of the 3D maps were incorrect.
by tcrammond via Featured Articles
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