19 March 2013

Better maps than Apple or Google? The developers have no doubts

The Apple Insider has published the reflections carried out by some programmers, on the ease of app development that need to draw on the maps of the two mapping services. Let's see what the results are.

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When Apple released the new service of Maps in iOS 6, were many disappointments of audiences and critics, denoting a sharp deterioration compared to the application already on iOS 5, making use of Google maps, on average, more accurate and reliable.

If from the point of view of the consumer criticisms were merciless against the Cupertino company, the developer community has always seen favorably on the change, ensuring their use of the software development kit (SDK) that Apple has built and finished in five years for the development of iOS. This allows to integrate the mapping service within native applications in an intuitive and simple, and extremely productive.

On Apple Insider says that Michael Grothaus Fast Company defines support for Apple developers as more mature, complete and "unlimited" and offers huge advantages compared to the Google platform. Among the features that are missing in the service of Mountain View there are indicators, polylines and overlays, all present and easy to integrate with the Apple SDK.

The same considerations have been made ​​also by Lee Armstrong, developer of the app Plane Finder, to search for flights, in which the additional features of the Apple SDK led to the creation of some overlap complex, necessary for this kind of software , so that the drivers can exploit to the fullest. With Google Maps these are not possible.

Bryce McKinlay, a developer of Tube Tamer says that thanks to the Apple SDK has failed to implement the indicators animated, personalized and draggable on the map, impossible with the Google platform. These are the same people who used Steve Jobs back in 2007, in the demonstration of multiple searches of the first iPhone.

Were many other reasons why these developers have preferred to use the Apple SDK. First of all, those of Google are not as "open source" as this society leads us to believe. Furthermore, the application for iOS Google Maps has a fixed frame rate at 30FPS (probably to save battery), which gives a feeling of "no flow" to the user, compared to all the other applications on iOS.

It must be said that this does not change the fact that the maps used by Apple are still on average more inaccurate and poor points of interest with respect to the proposal from the competition, but certainly the third-party applications are able to have better control and unique features to ensure user experience easier and faster.

To get more detail in the reflections of the developers please see the original article in Apple Insider .

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