
Apple acquires online mapping company Poly9 - report - raghus
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/14/apple_acquires_online_mapping_company_poly9_report.html
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sgoraya
Slightly ironic since Poly9 was fairly Flash heavy (not all but many of their
maps were Flash - they developed several geo related API's too).

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ynniv
How is that ironic? Tough to deliver a 3D globe in a web page without Flash
right now. And the rendering engine is only a small part of compiling and
delivering geo data and imagery efficiently.

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sgoraya
Apple purchasing a developer of Flash, seemed to me, a little bit ironic; just
for irony's sake I suppose.

>Tough to deliver a 3D globe in a web page without Flash right now. And the
rendering engine is only a small part of compiling and delivering geo data and
imagery efficiently.

Agreed - and poly9 does/did so much more than a few maps in flash.

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avar
It'll be really interesting to see what Apple does for map data. MapQuest and
Bing just announced that they'll be using OpenStreetMap.

If Apple goes that route it'll be Google Maps with its walled garden model
v.s. the rest supporting an open source project.

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cageface
Sounds like Apple is trying to cut its dependencies on Google services.

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pavs
Makes perfect sense. If Google didn't increase its footprint with android,
they would been at the mercy of Apple and other mobile OS manufacturers. Maps
is one of the important features of iphone it makes perfect sense that they
are working on their own product instead of depending on a competition. Now,
consumers will have another factor to take in to account before choosing one
phone over another.

