Re:A Letter from Tim Cook on Maps
by mturmon on Friday September 28, 2012 @01:03PM
(#4586537)
Good question, I've wondered this myself.
I'm not in this domain, but they do have the location of millions of phones as they move around during the time the Maps app is open. This could solve problems like adjustment of roadway locations, finding one-way streets, identifying highly-used locations. If people take a different route than the one recommended, this is also a clue.
The location information would also provide a focus-of-attention mechanism (concentrate manual effort along oft-driven routes).
I'm not familiar enough with their privacy rules to understand what portion of this data was already available to Apple versus stuff that is only available on the server side.
I'm not in this domain, but they do have the location of millions of phones as they move around during the time the Maps app is open. This could solve problems like adjustment of roadway locations, finding one-way streets, identifying highly-used locations. If people take a different route than the one recommended, this is also a clue.
The location information would also provide a focus-of-attention mechanism (concentrate manual effort along oft-driven routes).
I'm not familiar enough with their privacy rules to understand what portion of this data was already available to Apple versus stuff that is only available on the server side.