Tuesday, September 24, 2013

This week in class, Professor Kagan implied that Apple was fighting a war against Google.  Exhibit A was Apple's recent iOS 7 upgrade to Siri and Safri, making Bing the default search engine.  Exhibit B was the inclusion of iOS Maps at the expense of Google Maps in iOS 6.  There are some who disagree with the Professor's interpretation of Apple's maps strategy.

You see, the default Google Maps App made available on iOS 5 was vastly inferior to the Android Google Maps App.  This had the effect of making Apple's rival phone software significantly more appealing (with location services taking a big chunk of the time we spend on mobile devices).  By removing Google Maps as the default, Apple forced (by popular demand) Google to make its superior app available in its App Store and removed on of the great advantages Android had over it.

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