Apple is looking to improve its ill-fated Maps service by employing a host of navigation experts and asking for the assistance of its huge iOS userbase.
The iPad mini creator is attempting to improve its Apple Maps service by recruiting full-time experts to its team.
A whole range of Maps related jobs have appeared on Apple’s careers page, including a host of posts for Maps Ground Truth Local Experts.
“The Maps team is looking for people with a passion for mapping, great testing skills, and deep regional knowledge to help us build better and better maps”, reads the job listing. “In this position, you will be responsible for the quality assessment of Apple Maps for your region, including both data and map services. You will monitor changes to our maps, provide feedback on unique local map requirements, collect ground truth information, and evaluate competing products.”
For these positions, Apple is looking for Ground Truth Local Experts in specific cities all across the world, in an attempt to build more accurate maps for those cities and locations.
Apple is also looking to hire several map experts within its Cupertino HQ. Positions range from geodata scientists to QA staff to weed out any bugs in the service.
When Apple Maps launched last year there was a huge amount of consumer outrage after the service listed misnamed towns, poor journey planner results and often missed out entire roads altogether.
The service was actually so poor that Apple CEO Tim Cook actually issued an apology to iOS users.
In order to avoid repeating its previous mistakes, Apple is coupling the addition of experts with an opt-in “Help Improve Maps” service for iOS 7 users.
iOS 7 users will be asked if they wish to help Apple improve its Maps app, which also ties into the new Frequent Locations feature. This function allows Apple Maps to remember places the user has been, which can be saved to iCloud so that directions to that location can be quickly and easily presented to the user.
“If you choose to enable Improve Maps, Apple will correlate the street address associated with your Apple ID with the GPS coordinates obtained through the Frequent Locations feature on your device,” reads the iOS 7 Maps disclaimer. “This will enable Apple to better approximate the geographic location of that address.”
Also Apple has acquired location data company Locationary, indoor mapping service WiFiSLAM, and transit app HopStop to improve the Maps service.
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Via: AppleInsider
