Google Maps App back on iPhones

Afrik Update

Tech

                             

Apple's iPhone has returned Google Maps, the world's most popular online mapping system, to its phones after its own navigation system failed to please customers.

Google Maps was returned late on Wednesday to the mobile telephones with the release of the Google Maps' iPhone app.

The release comes nearly three months after Apple Inc. replaced Google Maps as the device's built-in navigation system and inserted its own maps into the latest version of its mobile operating system.

Google Inc. said its new iPhone app is a major improvement from Apple's mobile application.

"We started from scratch,'' said Daniel Graf, mobile director of Google Maps. Google engineers started working on the new app before Apple's September 19 ouster, Graf said, though he declined to be more specific.

The additional tools in the free iPhone mapping app include turn-by-turn directions.

Apple Inc.'s navigation system was so coldly received by its users that some iPhone owners refused to upgrade to Apple's newest software, iOS 6, because they did not want to lose access to the old Google mapping application built into iOS 5 and earlier versions.

It prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to issue a rare public apology and recommend that iPhone owners consider using Google maps through a mobile web browser or seek other alternatives until his company could fix the problems.

Cook also replaced the executive in charge of Apple's mobile operating system after the company's maps became a subject of widespread ridicule.

Source:aljazeera