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In context: Apple has at all times stored its Maps app locked away in its walled backyard. The corporate lately began increasing entry to it. Final yr, it launched a beta model of Apple Maps for internet browsers – although it was a piece in progress.
Initially, customers may solely access the Maps internet app from desktops or tablets. Now, Apple has quietly dropped the beta tag from the URL and opened the service to different cellular gadgets, together with its rival – Android.
Whether or not Android customers will wish to use Apple Maps is a completely totally different query. The online app features extra like an internet site than the native Maps app. We examined it and located no inherent benefit over Google’s market-leading Maps app. It is a pretty restricted expertise and would not help logins for saved knowledge, transit maps, 3D buildings, and different superior options.
It feels subpar for Apple merchandise. It looks like a minimal effort to appease regulators. The Cupertino powerhouse has confronted intense antitrust stress domestically and overseas. Regulators, significantly in Europe, have pushed the corporate to open its ecosystem. So now Apple Maps has an internet app. No person stated it should be good, and Cupertino has no real interest in competing within the webspace.
Regardless of the motives, any person on any machine can now entry Apple Maps from any browser by going to “maps.apple.com.” The online app helps search and navigation features. It additionally has Apple’s Look Round street-level imagery (added a number of months again), just like Google’s Road View.
Customers who desire a extra seamless native-app-like expertise can add the net app to their house display. Simply faucet the “Add to house display” button on Chrome. Doing this creates a rapidly accessible shortcut to the web site for many who plan to make use of it often.
Apple has lately expanded its companies footprint, steadily bringing merchandise like Apple TV+ and Apple Music to rival Home windows and Android programs. So, who’s to say a local Apple Maps app for Android is not within the playing cards? Nonetheless, Cupertino would probably want a financial incentive to make that transfer.
