The terrifying few months of what will be forever known as Apple Mapgate (no it won't) are over. Google just released Google Maps for the iPhone, so we can all stick Apple Maps in our "Utilities" folder on our homescreens where it can sit comfortably next to other useless apps like Compass and Stocks. But here's the weird thing: Google didn't just package up the old Google Maps for iOS app and re-release it. They spent the past few months actually making a better app, with features the iOS version of Google Maps never had before.
The Nexus 4 is the first Android phone that combines all the disparate parts of a phone - interface, options, ease of use, speed and smoothness, depth of features, quality and number of apps - in the right way. It is the best Android phone I've ever used, sure, but it's the only Android phone I've ever used that feels as intentional as the iPhone. It feels like it was put together with a vision of how this phone should work as a whole - not just "add this feature, add this feature." It's probably the best smartphone on the market, period.
Apple Maps has, as promised, come a long way since its disastrous beta days, but it's still not great, lacking public transit directions, bike directions, and offline maps, and still getting things wrong sometimes (or jeopardizing national security). We've been waiting for Google's replacement Google Maps app for iOS, but there might be a third competitor: Nokia.
Google Maps just unveiled a new ocean-level street view, which we'll call Snorkel View, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to virtually dive with sea turtles other creatures in some of the world's most pristine coral reefs. You can use the Street View tool in several tropical locales to zoom in and swim with the fishes.
America's space shuttles may be settling into their retirement roles as national artifacts, but for space fans who miss their presence at Kennedy Space Center, Google has a new offering - Street View images of the entire complex, shuttles and all. The web giant unveiled the new images this morning, and we have a preview.
Apple went through, by our count, six hundred million billion new features that'll be present in the next versions of its operating systems, both Mac OS X Mountain Lion for computers and iOS 6 for iPhones, iPads, and iPods Touch. Some of them we don't care about. Some we do! Here's what we liked.
Ever wonder exactly where grizzly bears live on this continent? Or where you might find Myotis lucifungus, the fuzzy, adorable little brown bat that is currently threatened with extinction because of white-nose syndrome? Now you can track them on Google Maps, thanks to a new program that aims to plot the location of every single living thing on Earth. It's kind of like the Gawker Stalker, only with lemurs instead of Malcolm Gladwell.
Previous
