Behold! Native Google maps return to iOS 6!
If the lack of a native Google Maps app on your iOS 6 device is giving you headaches, then good news: someone’s just made one, and you can grab it for free.
Katsumi Kishikawa has created an app for iPhone and iPad, called ClassicMap.
It’s a wrapper for map data culled from elsewhere. Its “Standard” mode shows you the same maps data that Apple’s own much-derided Maps app shows you in iOS 6. But flip up the bottom-right corner and tap “Classic”, and suddenly you’re back where you were in iOS 5: it looks, and behaves, like the Maps you knew and loved. The ones that Google created.
I say it behaves the same, but that’s not strictly true. This is much more basic, so there’s no direction-finding functionality and no Street View, and it feels quite a lot slower than the original. There’s no Points of Interest. But it works. It shows you where you are, and the search function shows you places you want to go. It’s got map, satellite and hybrid views in both Apple and Google – sorry, Standard and Classic – modes.
What’s more, for the technically minded among you, the whole project is up on GitHub for you to download and meddle with. It’s free. If your heart yearns for maps the way they used to be, go download it, before The Authorities decide to yank it off the Store.
Thanks: Chris Heathcote
No comments:
Post a Comment