HowTo: Figure out location from Apple “maps” in a real map like Google maps

In an earlier article, I mentioned that I had a lame work-around in case you ever needed to figure out a location from Apple “maps” or “Find my Friends”. Unfortunately, this approach will not work for “Find my iPhone”, as the application does not support sharing a location.

For “Find my Friends”, tap on the friend you want to figure out the location for. On the iPhone, tap the “Open in Maps” button. On the iPad, tap on the “Contact Info”, scroll to the bottom of the contact information, and tap “Open in Maps”.

Now that you have the location open in the Apple “maps”, it is the same that you saw in “Find my Friends” and would tell you nothing. Now, you can tap on the “i” (information icon on the pin location) to share the location. Select “Share a Location” and then select either “Mail” or “Message” and send the location to your own email or your iMessage ID on the same device.

Tap the location attachment in the email or Messages and you will see the Info drop-down as follows:

Now tap and hold the map url till the “Copy” option appears. Copy the map url and paste it into Google maps either in Safari or on the Google maps app on the iPhone. Edit the url so you have only the “lat,long” numbers and then tap search on Google maps. You will now be able to see the location which Apple “maps” cannot tell you.

You can also change the URL to something like “comgooglemaps://?q=00.200000,00.100000 (Home)” for the iPhone to open the link directly in Google maps, or, “http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&q=00.200000,00.100000 (Home)” to open the link directly on the web in Google maps.

Apple kills all location based apps! Crashes Mail to boot!

Although it has been a while, still, it had to be said as there seems to be no hint that Apple would ever fix this issue.

Ever since the fiasco of the Apple Maps (??) release with iOS 6, Apple effectively killed all location based apps including it’s own Find My Friends and Find My Phone. The very purpose of having location based apps was killed since maps did not exist anymore. It was only Apple’s idea of what maps should be…a clean design with nothing on it!

No longer can you locate anything (excepting for places where Apple actually got some maps) or anyone at anyplace anymore. Even in places where there was no navigation, one still had a very good idea of the location and places as long as Google maps was the default on iOS. Now, there is nothing!

Yes, there was the obvious effort to create a good demonstration on the iOS 6 release, but, a demo it was, and a demo it remains. Now, with the other mobile platforms like Android and Windows maturing to some extent, Apple had better watch out!

As a side effect, the so called “Apple Maps” also bring an Apple Mail client crasher to the latest OS X. Just share a location (if you can find something) and send it via email. Try a preview (press the space bar on the attachment) or opening the .loc.vcf location attachment in Apple Mail on OS X….CRASH!

In the overall mobile context, it would be worth pointing out that the Google speech recognition is far superior to Siri. Also, the Google services are not limited and work far better globally than Apple’s limited Siri.

After all this Apple started releasing hardware variations of the iOS devices with the same dated UI and no maps (also called Apple Maps) and therefore no usable location based services. One really has to wonder as to the direction Apple is headed in…