Apple To Buy Transportation App — HopStop

A new direction for Apple Maps (pun intended)

In the present age, digital maps are an integral part of a person’s life considering how much of a haste we’re in all the time, and thus most of us are really pushing ourselves through the day.

And, in the vast arena of digital maps, the most critical assets users look for is accurate and updated transit data. A lacklustre guide would really be resentment-inducing.

And Apple just messed that up!

In a rare occurrence (with Apple), the most recent Apple Maps update seems to have lost transit information! Apple Maps not only lacked transit information but also had less-than-acceptable direction services.

Well, there’s been a growing chasm between Google and Apple, for a while now. Apple, for reasons known only to itself, decided to divorce Google’s absolutely brilliant Google Maps facility (so far a de facto integration) from their iPhones and iOS; relying instead on their own version simply called Maps.

While Apple’s Maps is just as good — visually and feature wise, however the critical part of a navigation app, it’s ability to ensure accurate navigation was just not upto the mark, yet. So when the new version hit iPhones as part of a recent iOS update, a lot of people realised that Maps was not only limited in it’s knowledge of the world, but also woefully inaccurate.

Apple faced ridicule of a scale unheard of — supporters, naysayers, media, blogs — everyone chastised Apple for the app’s poor health. In fact Apple even had to take out an advisory recommending (rather humbly) that users not use their Maps app and continue to rely on third-party apps (without mentioning Google, of course).

With the not so happening experiences with Apple Maps (some even term it as Apple’s biggest blooper under Tim Cook), Apple realises that this isn’t an app glitch. There are some serious problems with the data — topology, traffic, transit et al., as well as the algorithm that brings int all together.

Apple clearly realises that it won’t be a quick fix; so they did the next best thing — embarked on a buying spree.

Already a popular app, Hopstop Transit Directions was the near-de facto go-to iOS app, if you wanted this information. In fact, along with Google Maps, HopStop was the primary third party app that bore the load of Apple Maps’ failure.
More and more people turned towards it, especially after its most recent update, Hopstop became even more useful with an additional feature called HopStop Live.

Now, Apple seems to have acquired Hopstop lock-stock-and-barrel.

First, the acquisition of business location data firm Locationary, and now HopStop, Apple seems to have owned up for the below-average performance of its own application. .

With this acquisition, Apple might be able to compile an improved version of its Maps application for iOS 7, and include all the missing links and address inconsistencies with the added help of HopStop’s expertise and cache of information .

However, understandably, Google’s not standing still! Seeking to keep rivals from eroding its lead in mobile-navigation, it acquired Waze last month.

Waze takes in inputs from about 50 million users to improve directions and to display real-time traffic and road-hazard details. In fact, it is the world’s foremost crowdsourced and hence most updated navigation app, blessed with real-time traffic data that other apps can only gawk at.

Apple too was in line to take over Waze but it’s said that Apple felt the price tag was too high for its worth, so it went with HopStop instead.

From the outside, it’s difficult to estimate if that was the only reason, but once again, Apple may have made the wrong turn when it comes to recovering from their navigation nightmare.

There’s no question about it though. Apple Maps urgently needs an update. Hopefully this acquisition will do it for Apple.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.