Apple allegedly acquires Spotsetter to improve its Maps app

Apple’s Maps application has come under fire in the past for offering a navigation solution that leaves much to be desired.

The Cupertino based company has vowed to improve its application and has been acquiring a few companies to help bring Maps up to speed. You may now add Spotsetter to that list.

If you’ve never tried Spotsetter, here’s what it is: an app that displays trusted reviews and places that your friends’ recommend on your map. You can also manually search for a place through Spotsetter to see if your friends had anything to say about a particular place. Now for the really interesting part: Spotsetter’s founders are ex-Google Maps engineer Stephen Tse and ex-Siemens consultant and FitFiend CTO Johnny Lee. This means that Apple should be getting some valuable navigation and mobile apps experience from the two of them.

Now if Spotsetter sounds a lot like Foursquare, that’s because it is; the app even uses a lot of data from Foursquare, in addition to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, to function.

Apple hasn’t made an official announcement regarding its acquisition of Spotsetter, but Lee announced that the company closed a few days ago, and the application is no longer available in the Google Play or App Stores. If the acquisition does turn out to be the real deal, then expect all of Spotsetter’s features to be integrated into Maps, making Apple’s option a little more compelling to use. Or you could just download the already awesome Google Maps app.

Source | Via