Thoughts on Maps
Apple has a long relationship with Google. In fact, we met Google’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Google and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Google was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Google’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.
I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Google’s Maps products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Maps on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Google has characterized our decision as being primari