The iOS 6 Review: Maps Thoroughly Investigated and More
by Brian Klug & Saumitra Bhagwat on September 19, 2012 2:21 PM ESTPassbook
Passbook is one of those features that’s hard to review without actually seeing it working. At present, what we can say about Passbook comes largely from what has been announced publicly, and actual execution will require third party developer support.
Passbook is a combination data store and gateway to a variety of tokens. Apple has passed around the idea that Passbook will be used for things like coupons, boarding passes, event tickets, and loyalty cards. At present the application offers a common API for generating barcodes based on a given token, abstracting this away from developers.
Passbook entries will then come from over the web through MobileSafari as a URL, through Mail.app, or through the PassKit API which will work with companion applications or through some form of APNS (Apple Push Notifications Service).
At a high level, Passbook is a solution to a real problem on mobile devices. Smartphones are portable enough to act as replacements to a lot of cards and pieces of paper we carry with us on a regular basis. Unfortunately today we still mostly rely on a disconnected collection of mobile apps and email notifications. Passbook has the potential to clean up and unify a lot of this.
In the past, the speculation involving Passbook was that this would be the gateway for NFC, but at present there’s nothing indicating that this is Apple’s intent. That isn’t to say it won’t come at some point in the future, however.
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Leonick - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
The satellite images are interesting. You can zoom further in on my house in the middle of a forest in Sweden than you can Seoul, the image is in greyscale for some reason but you get fairly close and it's also fairly recent. (A shame the road that goes by the house doesn't have a name or can be found with search even though the road itself is on the map.)Another interesting thing that I noticed while looking around is that at least here in Sweden Apple seem to have a lot more current imagery than Google or even Eniro (local service) does (Eniro seem to mostly have the same as Google though). In Kalmar, a moderately sized city on the south eastern coast a bridge was constructed over the railroad about 2-3 years ago, in Google Maps there are just two piles of sand on both sides where the bridge will be, in Apples imagery the bridge is there.
Spoelie - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Wouldn't it be swell for Google to now sue Apple over mundane features like dropping a pin in their maps app? Sweet vengeance over Apple suing OEMs over the bounce animation or showing a menu while tapping on numbers, ...Not that I agree with such practices, but at least it would balance things out ;)
yticolev - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
If I'm not mistaken, the push pin in the Maps app is Apple developed, not Google. The entire Maps app used an Apple interface with Google data.welltoldtales - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
"one of the new OSes have done a great job of dealing with the problem of displaying content from two applications at once"I know people will rip me for saying this, but the Blackberry Playbook actually does THE best job of multitasking. Having used on with my work I attempted to use a 3rd gen iPad and simply couldn't handle the lack of multitasking. Same with an ASUS Transformer.
steven75 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
Do you know about the multitouch gestures? Most iPad users do not, but they are indispensable for multitasking.faizoff - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
There seems to be many people unhappy with the native maps app. I read about it yesterday in many forums but today many news sites seem to be reporting it as well.Heck BusinessInsider has a step by step guide to get the website google maps on your home screen.
http://www.businessinsider.com/get-google-maps-bac...
Conficio - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
"and at present it [Google] literally is the 9000 pound gorilla for maps."That is only true if the Google maps can connect to the Google servers. If that connection is not there a 5 year old navigation device with no updates beats it hands down.
Flying Goat - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Have you played with Google maps offline mode? I haven't, but it may be handy, assuming you plan in advance, of course.chinkgai - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
i'm not sure i like his writing style. he doesn't seem as concise as the other writers here.marioyohanes - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Brian, you might wanna check Siri again in international location, I'm pretty sure Dubai will works just great now. From my experience in Jakarta Indonesia, last week I couldn't ask Siri for anything related to location based questions. However, yesterday, as iOS 6 officially launched, I can even ask Siri for nearest dentist and it even listing nearest food stall with delivery option. I'm very overwhelmed with how good Siri is righ now, for the first time, my investment in 4S paid off :)