Google Supplies iOS Developers With Updated Maps SDK

By Daniel Perez on 02/22/2013, filed in Home > Apple

We think it’s safe to say Google Maps is probably the most popular map tool available these days, especially on iOS due to the the many, many inaccuracies Apple Maps offers to iOS users. Considering how popular Google Maps is on iOS, it’s still a pain in the rump when you click on an address inside of an application to have it launch Apple Maps instead of Google Maps.

Google today is announcing an update to its iOS developer tools to make it easier for developers to integrate Google Maps into their applications. The updated SDK offers the ability for a developers applications to access Google Maps data to offer ground overlays, gesture control and geodesic polylines.

Google is also announcing its improved SDK can be downloaded by all iOS developers, which was only available to developers the company previously approved to be given access.

Hopefully making their new Google Maps SDK available to all iOS developers will mean less frustrated iOS users as being able to automatically open an address within Google Maps, or even completely integrating Google Maps into their application, will be something all iOS users will appreciate.

Google: Google is an Internet Search company with profits mainly derived from its AdWords advertising program. Google is also known for other high-profile web-related products such as Chrome, GMail, Google Docs or Google Map, and it has also made a very successful entry into the mobile handset market with its Android mobile operating system. The company was created in 1998 and went public in 2004. Google is one of the most visited site in the world.

iOS: was once upon a time called iPhone OS, or "operating system", which is the software that provides all the basic device functionality and is the interface between the hardware and applications. iOS was introduced with the iPhone on January 9 2007, and it was originally not intended to be programmable by third parties. Steve Jobs had envisioned that developers could create Web Apps that would run in the browser. This changed less than one year after when the iPhone SDK (software development kit) was introduced in October 2007. Today, hundreds of thousands of apps have been created for this platform. iPhone OS became iOS on June 2010. Interestingly, both iPhone and iOS were former trademarks of Cisco, that Apple now uses under a license.

iPad: the iPad is Apple's tablet computer. While not "invented" by Apple (the newton was arguably a PDA), the iPad has re-ignited the tablet format as it appeared at the right time, with the right hardware and apps. the first iPad was launched on April 2010. It was followed by the iPad 2 in March 2011 and a new iPad (gen 3) in 2012.

iPhone: iPhone: The iPhone is Apple's line of smartphones. That was also the original name of the first iPhone, which was announced on January 9th 2007 by Steve Jobs during the Macworld Keynote. The iPhone was released to the public in June of the same year. The development of the iPhone started in 2004, was internally called "project purple" and was the fruit of a collaboration between Apple and AT&T. Since then, Apple has released new iPhone models every year, with the iPhone 3G in July 2008, the iPhone 3GS in June 2009, the iPhone 4 in June 2010, the iPhone 4S in October 2011 and the iPhone 5 in September 2012. The iPhone represented more than half of Apple's revenues in 2012.

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