Tech would obscure unimportant map info

A newly-published US patent application shows some of the results of Apple's buyout of Placebase in 2009. Simply titled Schematic Maps, the filing was submitted by Apple, but credits Placebase founders Jaron Waldman and Moran Ben-David as inventors. Prior to its acquisition, Placebase specialized in mapping API technology.

The application's concept involves altering the display of maps to emphasize some portions while diminishing others. Some sections of a map might be blurred and others dynamically highlighted or enlarged, for instance. As seen in Apple diagrams, the technology might be most useful when navigating, since it would show only the route to the destination as well as any connecting streets.

The filing also discusses formatting maps in a way best optimized for a given display. Enlarging and emphasizing routes may be most important on the iPhone, since a person using the device to navigate has only a small cluttered display area to work with. Tablets and computers, by contrast, can show most or all of a map without much trouble.

Whether or not Apple is planning to implement the application's idea is uncertain. It was originally thought that the company's buyouts of Placebase and Poly9 might be connected to Apple developing its own iOS mapping app, replacing Google's, but iOS 5 so far shows no hint of abandoning Google code. Apple only updates integrated apps with major revisions of iOS, and has relied on Google since the first iPhone launched in 2007.

by MacNN Staff