Apple Beefing Up Maps With Crowdsourcing, “Ground Truth” Hires
Apple Insider points out that Apple is hiring for dozens of positions in its mapping group. There are more than 80 positions that respond to the keywords “Apple Maps” on the company’s jobs site.
Among a range of other positions, Apple has been seeking “ground truth local experts” for various cities. Here’s one such job description:
In addition, as the blog explains, iOS 7 invites users to “help improve maps” by enabling a new feature called “frequent locations.” Frequent locations will give Apple another (anonymous) method to verify business locations and other destinations by tracking user movements in the aggregate. Participation will also convey drive and other travel time data to Apple.
Because this is entirely opt-in, Frequent Locations shouldn’t raise the hackles of privacy advocates.
Apple received a huge black eye with its initial launch of Maps because there were myriad problems and errors that were discovered by bloggers and developers in a very public way. Since that time the company has been trying to repair the damage by investing more and more into improving business and transit data and mapping accuracy.
Recent acquisitions of Locationary and HopStop are part of that larger effort.
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