Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | APPS | 10.01.2012 @ 1:00 pm
We’ve spent the past week or so bemoaning the many failures of Apple Maps and to be fair, it had it coming. When you abruptly remove the greatest mapping app ever made (we miss you, Google Maps) and replace it with something so hilariously subpar, you have to be prepared to accept whatever scorn is bound to come your way. Surely Apple knew that they’d have problems straight out of the gate with this thing and surely they knew that people weren’t going to be happy with it. So why? Why go cold turkey on Google Maps and put themselves out there like this? This Gigaom piece says it better than we ever could, but here’s it in a nutshell: Android/Google has gotten too good to be a partner in any way shape or form. Apple’s Maps may be messy, but it’s the first step on the road to an ecosystem that is entirely defined by apps created by, well, Apple. It’s a first draft of an app and hopefully, it’s a first draft that they’ll fix before Google has their own maps app ready for disappointed iPhone 5 users.
Awesome fact of the day: Bluetooth technology was named after Danish king Harald “Bluetooth” Blatand, whose 28-year reign (958-986) was notable for how he united various warring factions and brought nations together. Pretty appropriate for a technology that “securely unites devices from different manufacturers with different purposes.”
The mobile market’s best kept secret is that the Windows Phone is a darn good device…and some people are starting to catch on. Unfortunately, the people catching on don’t seem to be iPhone or Android users, who are perfectly content with their devices, but rather Blackberry users, who are jumping ship faster than ever before. RIM has been in trouble for a long time now, but could it be the Windows Phone that supplies the finishing blow?
Considering how apps tend to mimic what came before, any app that arrives and does something we’ve never seen (or even conceived of) before deserves a moment of celebration. Brian Eno’s latest iPad music app is most certainly something we’ve never seen before. Check it out in action: