Apple starts using their own mapping service, ditches Google Maps

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Yesterday we saw the appearance of the new iPad which was accompanied by a new Apple TV and some other goodies. A special interest happened to be around the new iPhoto for iOS and OS X. As Stephen Hackett of 512 Pixels (via Matthew Panzarino) discovered first, the app isn’t using Google Maps any longer. Apparently Apple is now using their own map service. Here’s how I found out using mitmproxy and some simple changes in iOS that redirect all wireless traffic through a designated proxy.

Using mitmproxy – this tool was also used to discover the recent Path privacy brouhaha – it was easy to figure out that the requests went to Apple’s own servers:

But not only iPhoto for iOS is using Apple’s service, also iPhoto on OS X uses it to create the slideshows, as Jonas K. via Twitter mentioned earlier:

With the help of mitmproxy it’s easy to find out what’s going where. Of course nobody except Apple currently knows for sure where the mapping data is actually coming from. The current guess currently is OpenStreetMap (OSM). If you want to compare the various mapping sources, including Apple’s and OSM, there’s a site for that.

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