Bless those brave Mac folk, who I assume have lots of free time, that delve into the source of Apple's applications to see what they can see. A MacTelChat forum user took a spin around iPhoto and discovered that it can hold GPS data for images. This isn't anything new, granted, but when combined with the fact that they found both a reference to Google Maps and a hidden button labeled 'Show' in the info pane of a picture - let the rumors commence.Could this signal the much speculated partnership between Google and Apple?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-03-2006 @ 10:42PM
Steve Abramson said...
"Could this signal the much speculated partnership between Google and Apple?"
No moreso than the 'Search with Google' service built into the OS and accessible from any program in the menu bar. Or the google search window in Safari. Or Google's stock being a default in the Stock widget. Sometimes, companies can just admire one another.
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10-03-2006 @ 10:59PM
Ken R said...
#1- agreed.
More and more cameras are getting GPS functionality, and Apple had to choose a map service if they wanted to provide visualization of that info. It's just a string; they could switch it to Yahoo or MSN really easily!
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10-03-2006 @ 11:50PM
Robert said...
Let me preface this by saying this is *entirely* speculation, and is completely pulled from my rear end. But: Wouldn't it be awesome if Apple took it upon themselves to build a Google Earth client? Google Earth's Mac client (as we all know) is far from perfect ... but with the right database access, core image, core animation, and a financial tie-in, why not? A snappier, fun-to-use version of Google Earth.
The financial tie-in, you might ask? Let's say the equivalent of a Google Earth Plus account would be included with .Mac subscriptions. KMZ sharing through iDisk. Google Earth community features through .Mac Groups. All the Apple Store locations on a layer enabled by default. Flight Tracker widget integration. It's too easy!
The seeds for collaboration are there. Even if this iPhoto feature doesn't work this way *at all* ... it would still be so easy to implement, and tie into existing Mac features.
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10-04-2006 @ 1:14AM
Mike said...
Interesting news, by the way.
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10-04-2006 @ 1:14AM
Mike said...
Well, it could be, but I'd definitely look forward to it.
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10-04-2006 @ 2:51AM
Bert Goethals said...
I'm looking forward for the Flickr Export thingy to use this info to put my pictures on my map :)
also... a plugin to set these coordinates (using google maps) would be very cool
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10-04-2006 @ 5:58AM
Ian Moss said...
I cast my mind back to the first Public Beta versions of Adobe Lightroom, which, could access the GPS position from the the EXIF data of the camera (if available) and show in google earth - I seem to remember Adobe made a big fuss about it in the demo turorials...
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/
Off to check if this feature is in the new 1.5 update of Apple Aperture...!
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10-04-2006 @ 6:17AM
Mark said...
Were there not some rumours a while ago about Leopard having some built in GPS/mapping functionality? This evidence seems to backup these rumours.
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10-04-2006 @ 6:28AM
horman said...
it`s just a string (c)Ken R , if one provider of this function gonna bad apple can choose another one. IMHO: google the best!
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10-04-2006 @ 9:59AM
Stacey said...
If you read on down, they actuallty got it to function.
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10-05-2006 @ 4:46AM
Tom said...
It seems to me there is little value in being able to go from a picture to the relevant map in Google Earth, but much more valuable is the opposite. What if you were browsing Google Earth and, for any loaction, you could click a link to see photos of that location submitted by other users on a Flickr-type Google Earth Images site? iPhoto could allow one-click submission of photos with attached GPS data to the Google Earth Images site.
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