Busting the iOS 6 transit map myths

Andy Baio clears up some of the confusion regarding maps in iOS 6. It’s comprehensive, well written, and hits the nail on the head regarding mass transit directions:

Why is Apple doing this? Do they hate public transit?! Of course not. Transit directions aren’t in iOS 6 because Apple replaced Google’s maps with their own solution, which didn’t include access to transit data. Maintaining transit feeds and keeping it up-to-date for hundreds of cities was presumably too difficult to attempt for this first release, so they decided to outsource it to third-party apps.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of transit agencies in the United States (not to mention the rest of the world). That’s a lot of agreements to ink. Once Apple gets those worked out, I expect mass transit directions will return.

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