Google Maps for iOS 6 May be Awaiting Apple Approval Already

Feeling low about Apple’s Maps app in iOS 6, widely perceived as flawed? Wish you could go back to iOS 5, if only for the Google Maps app?

Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, according to 9to5Mac and The Guardian, Google has its own iOS 6 Maps app set to roll onto iPhones and iPads everywhere, awaiting Apple’s stamp of approval.

The bad news? It could be waiting for a long, long time. Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. A year, perhaps, if Google and Apple’s previous tussles over apps that replicate iOS core functionality are any guide.

“An updated iOS 6 version has been submitted to Apple and is awaiting approval, we’ve learned,” says 9to5Mac, though it identifies no source. The Guardian hedges its bets, saying that its Google sources are enjoying a little schadenfreude at Apple’s expense — and that Google is “preparing” an iOS 6 app which will “appear in time.”

(Google hinted as much at a press event in San Francisco last month to show off its latest advances in search, mapping and Gmail.)
The Waiting Game

So how much time will it take? That’s largely up to Apple, and it’ll be an interesting test of the temperature in the Google-Apple relationship. Past performance offers wildly different guides.

On the one hand, Google’s YouTube app — a replacement for the native Apple version of YouTube, which was dropped from iOS 6 — sailed through the App Store approval process in record time.

But Apple didn’t have a dog in that hunt. It was in the company’s best interests to have a fully-functioning YouTube app up and running on iOS 6 from day one. But when it comes to Maps, Apple may decide it doesn’t want any competitors to its in-house app just yet.

Which may make this more like another case study — that one time when Apple rejected the Google Voice app from the iPhone, reconsidering only after a whole year had passed. (And that all took place before anyone had heard of Siri.)

Is Apple going to let Google compete with Maps on its own platform? Is Google going to wait until users get heartily sick of Maps on iOS 6? Give us your predictions in the comments. Continue Reading Google Maps for iOS 6 May be Awaiting Apple Approval Already