MacRumors

Apple is continuing to work on improvements to its Maps app for iOS and OS X, and a new job listing suggests that better use of crowdsourcing and integration with Siri and Passbook are the next features the company will introduce to provide a better Maps experience.

The job posting, first shared by 9to5Mac, seeks a "Maps Community Client Software Engineer" to join Apple's Maps team. The engineer will focus on "building and extending the Maps application to allow Apple to crowdsource improvements to the Maps experience," and the position calls for high-level UI development and refining of the "Report a Problem" feature in Maps.

According to the job description, deeper integration between Maps and other system services like Passbook and Siri may be on the horizon to improve crowdsourcing.

As an engineer working on Maps Community, your primary responsibility will be high-level UI development and architecture of the "Report a Problem" feature of the Maps application, and you will work closely with designers and engineers across the company to add new features and build the very best crowd-sourcing experience. You'll also be working on the frameworks and plugins that enable Maps to integrate deeply and seamlessly with parts of the system such as Siri and Passbook, to extend and enhance the feedback experience.

Since Maps received a highly critical reception following its launch alongside iOS 6, Apple has gone to great lengths to improve the software by leaps and bounds. In addition to terminating several people involved with the Maps project and restructuring its entire executive structure, the company has also acquired a glut of mapping companies over the past several years, including C3 Technologies, Broadmap, Embark, Hopstop, WifiSlam, Locationary, and most recently, the developers behind Pin Drop.

The company has also hired a range of "ground truth experts" around the world to improve the quality of the information given by its Maps app, and it's utilized crowdsourcing to introduce significant improvements to Points of Interest (POI) data.

Apple is said to be working to add much-needed features like transit directions and indoor mapping improvements to Maps, but development has reportedly been stymied by internal issues and poor project management.

In an ongoing class action lawsuit that alleges Apple deliberately crippled competing music services by locking iPods and iTunes music to its own ecosystem, Apple iTunes chief Eddy Cue today testified on Apple's Digital Rights Management (DRM) policies.

In the early days of iTunes and the iPod, all iTunes music purchases were encoded with Apple's FairPlay DRM, preventing music bought via iTunes from being played on music players other than the iPod. In the two-pronged antitrust lawsuit that covers both iTunes music being restricted to the iPod and iPods being unable to play content from third-party services, Apple's use of restrictive DRM is one of the major complaints against the company.

According to Eddy Cue, in testimony shared by The Verge, Apple was against DRM but was forced to implement it in order to secure deals with record labels. FairPlay, developed by Apple, was not licensed to other companies to allow competing music services to play iTunes music because Apple "couldn't find a way to do that and have it work reliably."

As issue, Cue said, were things like interoperability with the growing multitude of MP3 players. New devices from other companies would come out, and might not work with that system. "Others tried to do this, and it failed miserably," Cue said. "One of those was Microsoft." Cue also noted that when Apple first floated the idea of the iTunes Store to record labels, that they rebuked the idea because they had their own stores with DRM systems that could be different from song to song, and from device to device.

With its FairPlay DRM, Apple essentially prevented iTunes music from being played on competing music players and it also kept competing music services, like RealNetworks, from selling music that could circumvent iTunes and play on the iPod by disallowing RealNetworks' attempts to reverse engineer FairPlay.

As revealed yesterday, Apple also quietly deleted music downloaded from rival services by directing iPod owners to restore their devices to factory settings. According to Cue, allowing third-party music services to work with the iPod "wouldn't work," causing the integration between iTunes and iPod to fail. "There's no way for us to have done that and had the success we had," he said.

In addition to arguing that its DRM was required for deals with record companies, Apple is also positioning its efforts to lock down iTunes and the iPod as a measure to protect consumers from hackers and malicious content. "If a hack happened, we had to remedy the hack within a certain time period," Cue told the court. If the problem wasn't fixed in a timely manner, record companies could pull their music from iTunes, so Apple had to push regular updates to iTunes and its DRM to prevent "hacks" circumventing the technology.

The class action lawsuit, which has featured emails from Steve Jobs, began on Tuesday of this week and is being heard in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. Apple marketing head Phil Schiller is still expected to testify, and a video deposition taken from Jobs before his death is also expected to be heard before the court proceedings end.

Alabama Representative Patricia Todd is introducing a new anti-discrimination bill that will share a name with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Called the Tim Cook Economic Development Act, the forthcoming bill aims to put an end to work-place discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Todd was inspired to name the bill in honor of Tim Cook after he condemned discrimination against LGBT employees in Alabama in October after being inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor. "As a state, we took too long to step toward equality," Cook said during his acceptance speech. "We were too slow on equality for African-Americans. We were too slow on interracial marriage, and we are still too slow on equality for the LGBT community."

Just days after giving that speech in Alabama, Tim Cook came out as gay himself in an inspiring letter published by Bloomberg Businessweek. In the announcement, Cook said that publicly sharing his sexuality was done in an effort to "bring comfort to anyone who feels alone" and to "inspire people who insist on their equality."

Earlier this week, a report from BuzzFeed suggested Apple was initially hesitant to have Tim Cook's name associated with the bill. Todd originally announced her plan to add Tim Cook's moniker to the act just days after he came out as gay, but after a phone call from an Apple employee who "expressed concern" over the usage of Cook's name, she agreed not to use the Apple CEO's name after all.

"I did get a call from Apple asking me not to name it the Tim Cook bill," she told BuzzFeed News. "They don't want their corporation tied up in the political battle. I understand where they are coming from. I quickly said I would not name it after him."

After BuzzFeed published details on Todd's conversation with Apple, the company reversed course and released a statement saying Cook was "honored" to hear about the bill being named after him.

Tim was honored to hear that State Rep. Todd wanted to name an antidiscrimination bill after him, and we're sorry if there was any miscommunication about it," Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet wrote in an email. "We have a long history of support for LGBT rights and we hope every state will embrace workplace equality for all.

Todd also reportedly received a call from Apple's legal head Bruce Sewell, who "apologized profusely" and said there had been an Apple representative trying to protect the company from controversy. He went on to tell Todd "I'm here to assure you we support this 100 percent," and he said Cook was glad to see his speech in Alabama had inspired action.

Even before coming out as gay, Tim Cook has had a long history of supporting equality. In 2013, he lectured on equality at his alma mater Auburn University, and during that same year, both he and Apple publicly supported the Employment Nondiscrimination Act and released a statement in support of Supreme Court gay marriage rulings. Earlier this year, Cook and Apple marched in support of the LGBT community during the 44th annual Pride parade in San Francisco, and the company has a dedicated section about diversity on its website highlighting its deep commitment to equality and human rights.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple today announced that it will once again join Code.org's "Hour of Code" campaign, hosting a free one-hour introduction on the basics of computer programming at various Apple Stores on December 11. The company also plans to host other workshops and special events for Computer Science Education week, from December 8 to 14.

"Hour of Code" is an initiative that's sponsored by non-profit website Code.org, which hosts a variety of tools for learning and teaching programming. Each year, the site hosts a global movement aimed at reaching millions of students through a free workshop that teaches basic programming techniques.

Computer Science Education Week is December 8-14. We're supporting Code.org by hosting workshops and other special events at your local Apple Store. Join us on December 11 for the Hour of Code, a free one-hour introduction to the basics of computer programming.

Along with the one-hour workshop being hosted at many Apple Stores around the world, Apple has also set up special events featuring developers and engineers that will take place over the course of the week in select cities.

The Apple Store in SoHo, New York, for example, will feature the team behind Hopscotch, a visual programming language designed for young programmers, and the Apple Store on Regent Street in London will feature NaturalMotion, the team that has created games like Clumsy Ninja.

Apple is reportedly planning to expand its 2015 iPhone lineup to include a new 4-inch model, according to Asian sources [Google Translate] cited by G for Games. The smaller form factor would bring back the ease of one-hand usage that was lost when Apple introduced its larger iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus handsets. The supply chain sources suggest the new phone may debut in the second half 2015 with female users as the targeted audience for the smaller phone.

Even without a new 4-inch model, Apple's history of product lineups suggests the 4-inch iPhone 5s would remain in the lineup in 2015 as the low-end offering once the current models slide down and the iPhone 5c is presumably discontinued. But if Apple wants to maintain a 4-inch option beyond the 2015 lineup, it would make sense to invest in an updated version of that size as the iPhone 5s ages.

Still, the sourcing on today's rumor is not entirely clear and a track record is unknown, so it is difficult to assess the potential validity of the claim. As a result, we would not put too much stock in it for the time being until or unless additional information surfaces in the coming months.

Even without a new 4-inch model this year, iPhone sales have been strong for the new 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, with Apple setting a new sales record in the first weekend of availability. While the iPhone 6 is outselling the 6 Plus, the larger handset is holding its own in the phablet market, accounting for 41 percent of large-screened smartphone sales in the past three months.

Third-party keyboards like Swype and Fleksy promise to make typing on iPhones and iPads faster with features like predictive text and swiping, but new third-party keyboard NinType goes even further, combining taps, swipes, and shortcuts to allow users to type more than 100 words per minute.

Created by app developer Yose Widjaja, NinType's magic comes from its ability to support two-handed swipe-based gestures for spelling out words. Using two thumbs, it's possible to use a combination of taps and swipes to write words and insert punctuation quickly.

The NinType typing experience is significantly different from the standard iOS typing experience, so it does take some time to adjust to the two-handed swipe and tap input. Users are advised to use the keyboard as a standard keyboard to begin with, inserting swipe-based words gradually to adjust to the difference.

NinType has a built-in game-like tutorial that's designed to walk users through all of the app's features, and it is deeply customizable with a top bar that can be arranged to a user's liking, different visual effects, extensive shortcut options, and settings for nearly every aspect of the keyboard. There are a number of handy gestures in NinType, including a swipe on the spacebar to move the cursor, a swipe on the backspace key to quickly delete words, edge slides for inserting punctuation, and flick to autocomplete. NinType does not require users to enable full access.

MacRumors went hands-on with the NinType keyboard to show off how it works and to highlight some key features like themes and the ability to easily insert emoji. NinType also includes features like a built-in calculator, support for multiple languages, a tool for counting words typed per minute, and a "word transformer" mode for stylizing the words that you type.

Like most iOS 8 keyboards, NinType occasionally experiences some hiccups that cause it to fail to show up at times, but this appears to be more of an issue with iOS than with NinType itself. Aside from that, we ran into a few crashing problems during our time testing the keyboard, but the developer has been hard at work pushing updates and resolving any lingering issues.

NinType is available for both the iPhone and the iPad and can be downloaded from the App Store for $4.99. [Direct Link]