Maps

After receiving 250,000 downloads on the Android Market, Thrutu decided to bring its popular multitasking app to the iPhone.

The app allows users to share photos and important information with other Thrutu users without interrupting their conversation. This is a great tool for giving people directions by letting them know where you are. With the touch of a button, you can instantly send someone your location and view each other on a live map while talking on the phone. You can even snap pictures of landmarks to make it easier for your friends to locate their destination.

Apple is scooping up new talent left and right these days. After purchasing PA Semi to help them design their own microprocessors, Apple has bought the mapping outfit Placebase. Could this signal a further divide between Google and Apple?

Google provided the data and helped develop the Maps iPhone application from the very beginning. Now Jaron Waldman, founder and former CEO of Placebase, is a member of the Apple Geo Team.

The iPhone 3.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) includes new programming interfaces that will make it possible to embed Google Maps directly into applications. iPhone software developers will be able to use Google Maps for creative new purposes, displaying spatial data such as radar and cloud cover or real estate prices over the built-in mapping capabilities of the iPhone OS.

The Maps application itself has not changed as of iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5.

As was widely predicted, iPhone firmware 1.1.3 was released today after the 2008 Macworld Expo and is now available for update via iTunes or via direct download. Most of the predictions about what new features would be coming with with 1.1.3 were dead on, mostly due to the fact that a version of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware was leaked ahead of release.

The new firmware includes the following changes, add-ons, and fixes: