The iOS 6 Review: Maps Thoroughly Investigated and More
by Brian Klug & Saumitra Bhagwat on September 19, 2012 2:21 PM ESTPassbook
Passbook is one of those features that’s hard to review without actually seeing it working. At present, what we can say about Passbook comes largely from what has been announced publicly, and actual execution will require third party developer support.
Passbook is a combination data store and gateway to a variety of tokens. Apple has passed around the idea that Passbook will be used for things like coupons, boarding passes, event tickets, and loyalty cards. At present the application offers a common API for generating barcodes based on a given token, abstracting this away from developers.
Passbook entries will then come from over the web through MobileSafari as a URL, through Mail.app, or through the PassKit API which will work with companion applications or through some form of APNS (Apple Push Notifications Service).
At a high level, Passbook is a solution to a real problem on mobile devices. Smartphones are portable enough to act as replacements to a lot of cards and pieces of paper we carry with us on a regular basis. Unfortunately today we still mostly rely on a disconnected collection of mobile apps and email notifications. Passbook has the potential to clean up and unify a lot of this.
In the past, the speculation involving Passbook was that this would be the gateway for NFC, but at present there’s nothing indicating that this is Apple’s intent. That isn’t to say it won’t come at some point in the future, however.
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tipoo - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
Pretty sure the 4S is faster than the 4 :)Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
I'm assuming you must be referring to the SunSpider results? In that case lower is better, so everything looks correct here.tipoo - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
I think they were changed, when I looked last the 4 had lower Sunspider and higher Browsermark scores, and it also had N/A beside the other two, now the 4S has the N/A and better scores.Henk Poley - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
Related, I consistently get a Sunspider 0.9.1 score of about 3000 +/- 1% on my iPhone 4 GSM. Typo? 33.. instead of 30.. ?dsumanik - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
blah blahThe new maps suck...they are a significant step down, in dataset AND functionality.
Users in the US might ALMOST get the same experience but everywhere else on the planet got screwed.
There are spelling errors, missing roads, improperly labeled cities and for the most part, significantly less detailed maps.
I live in a very remote community, in northern canada...there is a GOOGLE STREET VIEW picture of my house and street.
There is no way Apple will ever come up here to offer the same level of detail...im simply in too small of a market.
There isnt even color photos of my town.
LOL!
Jobs would never have let this slide until it was competitive... right now it simply is inferior in every single way.
mrgulabull - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
The "trouble building" you mention actually looks like that. It's the Walt Disney Concert Hall. If anything I'd say the 3d model is remarkably good.Here's an aerial shot from Google Maps
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=walt+disney+concert...
ratte - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
It's the building above that (the Dorothy Chandler pavillion) that looks badBrian Klug - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
OH wow, ok, well that's interesting... Fixing now.-Brian
nathanddrews - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
If you had seen the "Get Smart" movie, you would know. :Prd_nest - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
Seriously, whatever I have seen so far, Apple maps are absolute failure in India. It's actually pathetic in terms of actual data. Forget about features, they simply don't have data. It's so bad that I can't even think why they should launch iOS 6 here? Comparison with google maps?? just forget it.. and all those fancy 3D flyover, well probably by 2025 if we are lucky..