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Google Brings Lane Guidance, Uber Integration, New Filters and Offline Mode To Maps for iOS

In a major update released today and detailed on the official Maps blog, Google has announced a variety of new features for Google Maps for iOS, available for iPhone and iPad.

For users in the United States and “parts of Canada and Japan”, Google has added lane guidance, a turn-by-turn navigation feature that allows the app to show the lane to stay in or move to; lane guidance is often found on dedicated GPS devices, and it should enable Google Maps to provide drivers with more precise directions.

Previously available only through a hidden command, Google has added a new offline mode to Maps that lets users easily store multiple areas as offline maps for usage in areas with no cellular or WiFi coverage. In the new version of the app, a new “Save map to use offline” is featured in the detail screen of a location (or dropped pin); offline maps can be given a unique name, and they can be viewed in a new list of the Profile view in the app. When offline, Google Maps will allow to zoom and pan on saved maps, but search and directions won’t be available.

Alongside improvements to public transit directions (which now include total walking time and next scheduled bus or train), Google has also revamped the filter functionality of nearby search results:

With new filters, you can browse through restaurants, bars and hotels by opening hours, rating, price, and more—where available—to find just what you’re looking for, right when you need it.

The other big addition is Uber integration inside the Google Maps app. For users who have the Uber app installed on their devices, Maps will allow to compare their ride with other directions and, through a “Get an Uber” button embedded in the app, it’ll be possible to switch directly to the Uber app with one tap. Notably, Google’s investment arm Google Ventures is an investor in Uber.

Google added other functionalities for iOS users in version 3.0 of the app as well. iPhone and iPad contacts can be accessed directly from the app, and Voice Search (a feature previously available in the Chrome and Search apps for iOS) has been integrated in the app’s search box to look for locations without typing. A scale bar to estimate distances is now visualized on the map, and the process of saving and sharing locations has been refined; recently saved places and searches will be available in a “Places to review” list (requires sign-in).

Version 3.0 of Google Maps for iOS is available on the App Store.

Apple Highlights Best App Store Releases In “Best Of April” Section

With today’s weekly App Store refresh, Apple has launched a new curated section highlighting the best app and game releases of April 2014, called “Best of April”. The new showcase, available on the iPhone and iPad App Store but absent from the Mac App Store, suggests Apple’s intention to start offering a monthly recap of the App Store’s best releases, handpicked and curated by the App Store’s editorial team.

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Facebook Open-Sources Pop, The Animation Engine Behind Paper

Facebook has open-sourced Pop, the animation engine behind the company’s alternative client for iPhone, Paper. Used to power transitions and animations inspired by real-life physics and interactions, Pop has allowed Facebook to build Paper’s popular gestural controls, which have become one of the app’s marquee features. In Paper, many of Facebook’s functionalities are only available through gestures, as the app focuses on content and stories while removing chrome and other standard UI elements in its reimagination of the classic news feed.

Writing on the Facebook Engineering blog, Kimon Tsinteris (co-founder of Push Pop Press, which Facebook acquired in 2011) has explained the motivation behind Pop and the kind of animations it offers to developers willing to implement the framework in their apps:

When I co-founded Push Pop Press in 2010, our goal was to create a realistic, physics-everywhere experience. We wanted a solution that would allow us to evoke the same delightful experience of UIScrollView throughout the whole application. Pop is the latest manifestation of that vision, allowing us to keep the familiar and powerful programming model of Core Animation while also capturing a gesture’s velocity and better reflecting user intent. Paper has given us the opportunity to further refine both the vision and the animation engine behind it.

“Spring” and “decay” are dynamic animations that help bring Paper to life. “Spring” gives Paper elements their attractive bounce. “Decay” brings movement to an eventual slow halt. Both take velocity as an input and are good candidates for realistically responding to user gestures.

According to Tapity’s Jeremy Olson, Pop can be used to “revolutionize the way you think about animation in your app”; Olson has been testing Pop to create animations for Tapity’s upcoming iPhone app, Hours.

Two weeks ago, members of Facebook’s Paper team shared details on the making of Paper and some of the interface, framework, and user experience decisions behind the app in a developer event available on YouTube (embedded above). Facebook will also integrate Pop in Origami, the free design prototyping toolkit used by the Facebook design team to create interactive mockups without programming.

Pop is the latest entry in Facebook’s library of open-source projects, joining KVOController, Shimmer, and Tweaks. Pop is available now on GitHub.

Apple Refreshes MacBook Air With Faster Processor, Cuts Prices In Some Countries

Apple this morning refreshed their MacBook Air models with the latest generation of Intel’s Haswell processors. The new processors give the MacBook Air a slight speed bump, taking them from 1.3GHz to 1.4GHz (and Turbo Boost from 2.6GHz to 2.7GHz). The refreshed models are otherwise the same, offering 128GB or 256GB storage, 4GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics 5000. Built to order machine options are also unchanged, with upgrades of 8GB of RAM, 512GB storage and a 1.5GHz i7 Processor available.

“With MacBook Air starting at $899, there’s no reason to settle for anything less than a Mac,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Macs have never been more popular, and today we’ve boosted the performance and lowered the price of MacBook Air so even more people can experience the perfect everyday notebook.”

The four preconfigured models have all taken a $100 price cut in the United States - but those price cuts have not translated to every region, with Australia being one region where the prices of the models stay the same. But that can be explained by the recent weakness in the Australian dollar. The below graph illustrates the comparison between US prices and Australian prices, after converting the Australian prices to a 2014 average of the US Dollar and removing GST (which are included in the Australian prices).

The new MacBook Air models are available for purchase now. You can read Apple’s press release here.

Facebook Acquires “Activity Diary” App Moves

In a blog post published on their press website, Finnish company ProtoGeo Oy has announced that Facebook has acquired their fitness and activity tracking app for iOS and Android, Moves.

Today, we’re delighted to announce that Facebook has acquired our company and the Moves app. Since we launched Moves, we’ve been focused on running a simple and clean activity diary that millions of people have enjoyed using.

Now, we’re joining Facebook’s talented team to work on building and improving their products and services with a shared mission of supporting simple, efficient tools for more than a billion people.

According to the company, Moves will continue to operate independently as a standalone app, with “no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook”.

Moves is the latest in a series of acquisitions that have seen Facebook expanding towards established markets (messaging and WhatsApp) as well as new categories (VR and Oculus Rift). Moves used sensors on a smartphone to keep track of a user’s location during the day, building a visual log of places through a “bubble UI” that indicated for how long users stayed in a specific location and when they left. Moves was capable of associating standard GPS coordinates with relevant points of interests, and it could also guess whether a user walked, ran, or used other transportation systems to arrive at a location. With that information, Moves’ diary counted steps taken and estimated calories burned, allowing users to browse a visual timeline that also contained data about their physical activity throughout the day with the possibility of expanding the UI to show entire weeks and months.

Last year, Moves launched an API to allow third-party apps to access collected data, with a dedicated website highlighting iOS, Android, and Web clients with Moves integration. Moves also added support for Apple’s M7 co-processor for the iPhone 5s, which helped the app collect motion data with higher accuracy and lower battery consumption. Moves couldn’t automatically determine a user’s activity (such as “excercising” or “watching a movie”) based on location alone, but it featured an intuitive interface to add context and verbs to tracked locations and times.

Amid rumors of Apple looking to enter the wearable and fitness tracking space with a standalone device later this year, Moves poses an interesting acquisition for Facebook, which has built a large location database over the past several years and recently rolled out a feature to let users easily discover friends nearby.

Following today’s news, Moves is currently available on the App Store for free.

Apple Q2 2014 Results: $45.6 Billion Revenue, 43.7 Million iPhones, 16.4 Million iPads Sold

Apple has published their Q2 2014 financial results for the quarter that ended on March 29, 2014. The company posted revenue of $45.6 billion. The company sold 16.4 million iPads, 43.7 million iPhones, and 4.1 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $10.2 billion.

“We’re very proud of our quarterly results, especially our strong iPhone sales and record revenue from services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re eagerly looking forward to introducing more new products and services that only Apple could bring to market.”

We’ve been a bit busy today with the launch of MacStories 4.0 so we weren’t able to do our usual ‘notes from the call’. But we do have our usual graphs below, so that you can quickly digest this quarter’s earnings results.

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