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As Gruber likes to remind us at every chance, Apple has more than $100 billion cash lying around. How about they use a little of that to license some half dece
by cooldeal 14y ago
As Gruber likes to remind us at every chance, Apple has more than $100 billion cash lying around. How about they use a little of that to license some half decent maps from Google or, failing that, Nokia/Navteq?
Even Amazon(that Gruber sneered for making far less money than Apple [1]) managed to license Nokia maps and wrapped a nice API around it, and you think the iPhone buyers have a responsibility to work on making Apple maps better after paying for Apple's high margins so that Apple can make even more money on selling "premium" phones? Give me a break.
[1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-correction http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-corr...
- jpxxx 14y agoThere is no possibility that this platform change was over Apple's inability to come up with the cash to license a competitor's dataset. Their move was political, strategic, or both.
- fpgeek 14y agoThen they could have spent the money hiring armies like Google's to get the map data right.
- boundlessdreamz 14y agoIt is possible that Nokia didn't want to license the map data. That can be a selling point for windows phones now. Since Kindle is not a smartphone platform, it is not competing with Nokia.