Apple is a company that usually keeps its glorious software exclusive to its own Apple devices. However, Apple Music is available on both Android and Windows, and the client for both platforms has a quite sleek design. Apple’s video call app, FaceTime was also exclusive to Apple devices in the past. And then Apple let people to make a call with Android users with the introduction of iOS 15. After a long wait, Apple Maps is finally available on non-Apple devices. Apple Maps Beta has been released platform-independently for everyone, it’s a website for now.

You can now use Apple Maps on your computer with a Windows or Linux operating system. We specify Windows or Linux because Apple Maps is not yet active for Android. In fact, Apple has not released a client for Windows or Linux. You can access Apple Maps through the Beta website. We also tried using it on an Android device, but unfortunately, Apple set the Maps to be only available for desktop web browsers.

The newly released website is not working smoothly as it does on Apple devices, but it is still worth to try. You can visit Apple Maps Beta from the given link.

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Apple Maps, when announced, was criticized a lot because of inaccuracies, but the company has made several changes to the application where it is now more reliable compared to earlier and a legitimate competitor to Google Maps.

Now, the company is adding a new feature to Apple Maps which is not available on Google Maps, but users won’t be happy about it. The company is gearing up to start showing advertisements in the mobile application from next year.

As per the latest report coming from Mark Gurman on Bloomberg in his Power On newsletter, Apple’s engineering team has already started working on the software to support search ads. He further adds that users could start seeing advertisements in the app as early as next year.

Previously, it was reported that the Cupertino-based technology giant had tested an internal version of the Maps app with search advertisements. It won’t be the first application from Apple to have ads as the company’s App Store is already serving ads.

As for the ads on the App Store, developers can pay Apple to prioritize their software in search results, ensuring it shows up at the top of the page for specific terms. The search ads on the Maps will work similarly where businesses can pay Apple to have their establishment show up higher in local listings where users search for relevant terms.

The development comes at a time when Apple is planning to expand its advertisement revenue. Currently, the company’s advertising business generates about $4 billion in revenue annually, but Todd Teresi, who is heading the department, is aiming to increase it to at least $10 billion per year.

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Apple is collaborating with Boston Children’s Hospital’s Vaccine finder to provide information on the nearest COVID-19 vaccination center across the United States. The information on your nearest vaccination facility is location-based and can be accessed via Apple Maps on various Apple devices.

This new feature is obviously a response to the current scenario of extensive vaccinations against the dreaded COVID-19 across the world. The US has been heavily hit by the pandemic and is gradually making solid progress to stem the tide of new infections by massive vaccination programs in thousands of facilities spread across the length and breadth of the country.

The initial partnership between Apple and VaccineFinder is for about 20,000 vaccination facilities, with their comprehensive location data and several other relevant information provided upon activating the feature in Apple Maps. On the Apple Maps search bar, the search query: COVID-19 vaccines, done in the Find Nearby menu will provide the closest centers where users can easily be vaccinated. The same operation can be achieved when using Apple’s smart assistant Siri.

The VaccineFinder service collects real-time information on the availability of vaccines at a variety of facilities including hospitals, pharmacies, and other centers in the US. In addition, the facilities can directly submit relevant information on various aspects of the pandemic, which will become visible on Apple Maps. At the height of the pandemic last year, Apple began providing information on testing centers for the Covid-19 in a number of countries in Europe and Asia, as well as in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.

It is not known what plans are afoot to scale up the VaccineFinder partnership to cover many other countries outside the United States, as this would provide a massive boost in vaccination numbers as most countries continue to grapple with the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

Apple has continued to make its contributions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic on various fronts. It has produced short news podcasts on COVID-19 and this is called Siri Audio Briefs. And recently, a slew of studies conducted using Apple smartwatches showed that these smart wearables could predict the onset of the disease up to 10 days before symptoms are visible.

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(via)

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The Google Maps application can not be used on the iOS 6 platform. However, the users of the iPhone 5 can still open Google Maps via the browser. And now Google has just had new features to the service, the Street View feature.

The existence of these features have been confirmed by the Google since late last month. This feature can be found on the iPhone and iPad. To use this feature, iOS device owners can see the icon located on the bottom toolbar.

By pressing those button, the iOS browser will open a new tab to view Street View. Street View on the iOS browser is also similar to Street View on a desktop computer. This move by Google seems to be iPhone users stay true to his application. Especially after the recent news stating that Apple Maps access data faster than Google Maps.

Surprisingly, this feature was only able to be found in the iOS browser. You have to perform additional steps to be able to see the Street View on Android phones. The additional step is to put a pin on the map. Unlike in iOS by default raises pin locations.

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Apple Maps has been hype this week because it is considered to be inaccurate Maps. Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged these shortcomings and expressed an apology.

“At Apple, we strive to build a world-class product that serves the best experience to our customers. Launch new Maps last week, we fail to meet this commitment,” wrote Cook through an open letter posted on Apple’s website and quoted on Saturday (September 29th, 2012).

“We’re sorry to disappoint customers. We do everything we can to make Maps better,” he added.

Cook even advise users to use the service belong to rival Apple as the team tried to improve the Maps apps.
“While we fix Maps, you can try an alternative by downloading another map app on the App Store such as Bing, MapQuest and Waze or use Google maps or Nokia to visit their website and create their application icons on the home screen,” he said.

As we know, Apple Maps reap rain criticism. No doubt, this weakness was targeted by rivals, including Motorola and Nokia. Some analysts even considered the issues surrounding digital maps, is equivalent to the case of an antenna that had happened to the iPhone 4 when it was first launched.

At that time also, the late Steve Jobs, who served as CEO held a special press conference to explain the problems of poor signal reception on the iPhone 4 due to defects in the antenna.

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