Apple has finally addressed why they were tracking movements on iPhones and the reasoning seems to be as simple as “improv[ing] traffic experience in the next couple of years.” Seems like Apple has no evil master plan behind collection of location data like we all thought.
What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.
It’s assumed that the traffic-like experience would exist outside of Maps, away from Google, in order for Apple to distance itself from its main competitor — Google. With this done, Apple will be able to run its own turn-by-turn services without having to rely on Google in any way.
Google has had free turn-by-turn since 2009 and has said similar services could be brought to iOS, but since a major “war” has arisen between the two companies over the years, Google has retracted those claims.
With the rumors of iCloud launching soon, could we also expect this to be a feature in that whole package, new way for us to pay for turn-by-turn navigation but also get the features of MobileMe bundled in?
Article Via MacRumors
