MacMost Now 384: iPad Maps App

Take a look at the Maps app on the iPad. It provides quick access to Google maps, with the ability to search, get directions, view satellite and street view images and traffic.
You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).
Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now and on today's episode lets take a look at the at the Maps App on iPad. So the Maps App on the iPad is basically a super-sized version of the Maps App that you may have seen on the iPod Touch or iPhone. It looks beautiful. Let's take a closer look at it. So here is a basic maps view. You can lose your finger to move the map around. You could also zoom in and zoom out. To search for something, tap in the search field. You can search for recents or you can use the keyboard. You can search for a specific address or you can type in a general search term. In this case I'm typing in a search for a specific place. It'll find it pretty easily. Once you find it, you can press the I button. It will give you more information there. You can jump right to the website. You can save the information to a contact, you can share as a v-card, and you can bookmark it here in the maps program. You can also just jump right to directions. Let's say I want to search something that where is more than one location. So let's say I want to search an Apple Store. To do that it will set several pins in the map. You can see what each one is by tapping it. You will see that some are not Apple Store's at all, but they are related. I can scan around the map and find ones that are even off the edge. Or I can search for something even more general. Here I get tons of pins and I can zoom to take a closer look at each one. What else can you do? You can press this bottom corner here and switch to satellite view and you can view your map as satellite or my favorite view is the hybrid view. You can also, back to classic, zoom out here, and look at traffic. You can see here all the traffic reports. Ok, so how bout directions? Well go in here, we'll switch to directions and you can pick two locations. So let's say I'm going to look for a way to get from Coors Field to a specific location like say one of these Apple Stores. It will pick one of them here and will draw a map to it and you can see the directions. Now Google is not always great at giving you directions as you can see here it wants me to get on the highway and go north and turn around to be able to get back this way. It may actually be accurate but it seems like perhaps I should get to a go a direct route. I can switch to public transportation directions and I can switch to walking directions as well. So you can see it does save past searches, even directions. So here is a set of directions that I did recently and it will draw those and then you can tap on start here for directions and it will come up with a list and display the first step and go through each step of the drive and will show you each step. I can switch to the view of the list here and jump to any part that I want. One of my favorite things about google maps is street view. You can use street view in the Maps Apps by dropping a pin first. The way you do that is tap and hold until a pin drops. Like that. Now I can take this pin and I can actually move it around to any location that I want. I can put it say right here. And whenever I get this orange icon lighting up I know I can use street view there. If I press I, I not only get information about the nearby address, but I get a little picture here. I tap that and now I can view what it looked like when the Google car passed by. I can continue down the street using the arrows. And it gives me the little map down here at the bottom. I can return to the map doing that. If you want to find your current location, you press that little target button there. Also you have the bookmarks that you can add easily. So you can have locations like your home or places you go to normally and need directions to and from. It's very handy. Now of course the GPS location that the maps apps finds is not based on real GPS location like up in the satellites, it's based on local wifi networks. So it's decently accurate, but not going to be as accurate as your iPhone. We believe that the iPad 3G that will come out in May will have the ability to have real GPS. The Maps App is still not as powerful as Google Maps on the web. For instance when doing directions you cannot have multiple way points, but here's the good news, you can actually use Google Maps really well in Safari on your iPad. So if you need that functionality just go to the regular Google Maps in the browser. So Google Maps is a necessary application to have on the iPad since it's on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but other than that it's really nothing special. It is fun to look at satellite views and it's a lot fun to look at street views on the device and it's super fast. Just moving around in those views is really quick. You won't really notice a difference between using an iPad or using a desktop computer. Hope you liked this look at the Maps App on the iPad till next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.
MacMost Now 384: iPad Maps App

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