Apple’s Mapping Feature Wins Raves

I can’t possibly write today’s blog post any better than the person who submitted it — reader Adam Ornstein. Adam, take it away!

Congratulations on your “Apple will introduce new Mac Pros in 2013” scoop that’s been picked up by all the rumor blogs. There was, however, one minor point in your WWDC write-up which (loath though I am to become one of Those Readers) was not 100% accurate. You wrote:

“If you tilt the map, it goes into an amazing 3-D view — and in Satellite view, that even includes aerial videos of prominent landmarks. (Apple says that it’s spent the last couple of years filming Flyover scenes in helicopters.)”

“Aerial videos” implies just that — static helicopter shots of the ilk seen in movies, à la “West Side Story.” However, the Flyover feature is actually much more impressive than this. It’s like Street View for the sky, a dynamic interactive 3-D model of a city with 360º imagery overlaid on top. Visually, it does look similar to an aerial video, except that you can control the virtual camera. You can pan around these scenes yourself, looking over and around buildings (any city building that’s been shot, not just “landmarks”) to see what’s behind them, and everything is rendered live on the device in your hands.

This is the real centerpiece, the jaw-dropping new feature of Maps, and indeed possibly the most impressive in all of iOS 6. This however, in my opinion, is a rare case of something new from Cupertino getting fewer superlatives than it seems to have earned.

Adam is right. Apple has created photographic models of entire cities, not just “landmarks,” as I wrote — 35 cities so far, with more to come. It joins features like Google Earth and Street View as an amazing new way to view our world.