The Official Google Blog

We hope you’ve had a chance to try the new Google Maps app for iPhone (announced last week and available for download in the Apple App Store). The app is designed to be simple—just to work whenever you need it. Still, we have a few tips to make finding things with Google Maps even faster and easier. All the tips are collected on our site but here a few of my favorites:

• Swipe to see more. In Google Maps a wealth of information is often just a swipe away. Whether you’re looking at search results or directions, you can swipe the bottom info sheet left and right to see other options. To get more details on any of the results, swipe that info sheet upward (or just tap it—that works too). Even with the info sheet expanded, you can swipe to see those other results.

• Place a pin. Get more information about any location by just pressing and holding the map. The info sheet that pops up tells you the address, lets you save or share the place, and best of all, brings up...

• Street View. By far the easiest way to get to Street View is placing a pin. Tap the imagery preview on the info sheet to enter into Street View, then explore! I recommend the look-around feature (bottom left button) which changes what you’re looking at as you tilt and move your phone.

Want to learn more? See the rest of our tips on the site. And as you explore the app on your own, share your own tips using #googlemaps. Most of all, enjoy discovering your world.

Posted by Vicky Tait, Consumer Operations, Google Maps
The Official Google Blog

People around the world have been asking for Google Maps on iPhone. Starting today, we’re pleased to announce that Google Maps is here—rolling out across the world in the Apple App Store. It’s designed from the ground up to combine the comprehensiveness and accuracy of Google Maps with an interface that makes finding what you’re looking for faster and easier.

The app shows more map on screen and turns mobile mapping into one intuitive experience. It’s a sharper looking, vector-based map that loads quickly and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views. The search box at the top is a good place to start—perhaps by entering the name of a new and interesting restaurant. An expandable info sheet at the bottom shows the address, opening hours, ratings and reviews, images, directions and other information.

At the heart of this app is our constantly improving map of the world that includes detailed information for more than 80 million businesses and points of interest. Preview where you want to go with Street View and see inside places with Business Photos to decide on a table or see if it’s better at the bar. To get you there, you’ve got voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation, live traffic conditions to avoid the jams and if you want to use public transportation, find information for more than one million public transit stops.

The world around us is constantly changing and, thanks to feedback from you, we make tens of thousands of daily updates to keep Google Maps accurate and comprehensive. Here’s a helpful hint for the new app: if you see something off, simply shake your phone to send us feedback.

To complete the Google Maps ecosystem, we’re also releasing the Google Maps SDK for iOS, and a simple URL scheme to help developers use Google Maps when building their beautiful and innovative apps.

The new Google Maps app is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch (4th gen) iOS 5.1 and higher, in more than 40 countries and 29 languages, including Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Please note some of the features mentioned in this post aren’t available in all countries.

Visit the App Store today and download the new Google Maps app. We believe this delightful new experience is a great starting point—and we’ll continue to improve Google Maps for you, every day.

Posted by Daniel Graf, Director, Google Maps for Mobile

The Official Google Blog

For all you diehard YouTube fans out there who can’t get enough YouTube on your mobile, we’ve got some great news: starting today, you can download the official YouTube app for iPhone and iPod touch from the App Store, bringing you more of the videos you love and more ways to share them with the people you care about.

The new app is built by YouTube engineers, to give our iPhone and iPod touch users the best mobile experience. Here’s what you’ll find:

Tens of thousands more videos: Watch official music videos like Taylor’s latest hit.

New YouTube channel guide: Swipe your finger from the left edge of the screen to reveal a guide with your subscribed channels on YouTube, giving you instant access to everything from Alli Sports to YOMYOMF.

Find awesome videos faster: Get to videos like “Gangnam Style” faster with new search tools that give suggestions while you type, and let you sort through videos or channels. Flip through related videos, comments and more info, all while watching a video.

More ways to share with the people you love: Share that incredible video you found on YouTube on Google+, Facebook or text message in the app, as well as from Twitter and email.

There’s even more to explore with the new YouTube app for iPhone and iPod touch, available for download from the App Store today. We’re working on an optimized version of the YouTube app for iPad in the coming months, and stay tuned for more details.

You’ve already shown us you love YouTube on mobile—to the tune of 1 billion mobile views a day—so we can’t wait to see what you think about this new experience.

Posted by Andrey Doronichev, head of YouTube mobile

(Cross-posted on the YouTube blog)

The Official Google Blog

Starting today, when you use the Google Search app on your iPhone, you’ll see a completely redesigned interface that gives you faster results, beautiful full-screen image search, and a simple way to access all your Google apps in one place.

Get results, fast
When you’re on the go, you usually want to get things done quickly. Autocompletion of search suggestions is significantly faster in this latest version of the app, bringing you search predictions instantly with each letter you type. You’ll also notice that pages load faster, and checking out multiple pages is easy with the slide-in panel. Quickly swipe back and forth between webpages and your search results, and swap between search modes like Images and Places with a swipeable menu. Finding text within a webpage is a snap as well; just try tapping the magnifying glass on the bottom menu option on any page.

Easily switch between search modes using the swipeable menu at the bottom	Swipe the slide-in panel to instantly return to your search results

Beautiful Image Search
Searching for images will never again be a chore. Tap the images button at the bottom of the search results page, and watch high-resolution images load into a beautiful grid. Browse the images by scrolling down the full-screen grid, or tap on a single image to get details about it and then quickly swipe from image to image. You can also tap and hold an image to save it to your camera roll to use as your wallpaper or share with a friend.

Simple access
We’ve put all of your favorite Google services in one place for easy access. You can choose to browse Google web apps, or see just the apps that you have on your phone. Sign in once, and you’ll never need to sign in again to check a quick email, view your next calendar appointment or see what’s hot on Google+.

Download the Google Search app now for a fast, beautiful, simple search experience on your iPhone.

Posted by Noah Levin, Interaction Designer, Google Search app

The Official Google Blog

Apple will open two new stores in Asia by the end of the week, signalling the company’s push into the Chinese market and determination to ensure the launch of the next-generation iPhone gets off to an encouraging start.

The Cupertino-based company has been working hard to open two new stores before the rumoured mid-October launch of the iPhone 5, confirming yesterday that it would open its new store in the IFC Mall in Hong Kong on September 24. The flagship store will be based in the heart of the country’s financial district, adhering to the Apple’s policy of opening retail stores in affluent areas.

With notifications of the launch affixed to the building itself, Apple also launched a new Hong Kong retail page, also adding a specific page for the IFC Mall-based store.

This morning Apple also made changes to its Chinese website, announcing that it will open its new five-story Nanjing East store in Shanghai on Friday, a day before the Hong Kong store. Last Monday, Apple “pulled back” the curtain on the hoardings protecting its new retail presence in Shanghai teasing the message “We’re about to light up Nanjing Road”.

The new five-story flagship store was originally due to open in late August but was delayed due to heat issues and ventilation systems. Having resolved those issues, Apple expects to welcome over 40,000 visitors a day and will employ more than 300 staff.

Apple will reportedly use the lower two floors purely for retail and sales, with the ground floor will likely be used to showcase new product launches (new iPhone 5 perhaps)? The second floor will feature the Genius Bar, as well as customer training from the Apple Creative Team. The top three levels will include a briefing room and administrative offices which will be utilised by Apple corporate employees based in China.

Once opened, the store on Nanjing Road will be Apple’s fifth store in China, a country that the company has earmarked for huge expansion. Apple is expected to open its first Hong Kong store by the end of the third quarter as it aims to build on the $ 2.8 billion dollars it made in Asia in its last quarter.

China Telecom is expected to partner with Apple, bringing the iPhone 5 to customers in the country. China Mobile, the country’s biggest mobile operator, is said to be in negotiations to launch a 4G-enabled iPhone 5 in 2012, although a deal has reportedly not yet been signed.

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Ever lent money to someone and forgotten all about it, only to remember it months later when they ask for another loan? Or, even more embarrassingly, perhaps you find yourself borrowing money from others and having to be reminded by them before you pay them back. If you tote an iPhone around, PayMeBack may be the answer to your problems.

Available for a dollar on the App Store, this beautifully designed app seeks to keep you on top of the money you have lent or borrowed. The app is delightfully set in vintage leather, with even the skeuomorphic stitches done up with great attention to detail. The animations throughout the app are smooth and to-the-point, with no grand flourishes that slow down usage. Overall, the UI is nearly perfect.

To make things better, it also comes with a great set of features. When you lend some money to someone or borrow from them, you can enter the amount into the app (which uses the currency setting that is applied globally to your phone) and assign it to a person (or five) by either manually typing in their name or choosing it from your address book. You can add a note to remind yourself of just why you lent or borrowed that money and also have the app split an amount evenly between multiple people.

It also stores your location for every transaction to help you recall the circumstances surrounding your lending or borrowing of the money. And if you enter multiple transactions related to a single person in your address book, it has the good sense to add them all up into one tidy sum, so you can just walk up to them two years later and inform them that they now owe you a grand total of $ 4,527.80!

Or you can send them a URL from within the app that takes them to a nicely designed webpage informing them of that fact. If they are on an iPhone and have PayMeBack installed as well, they can click on a link on that webpage to add the transaction to their own list within the app.

The only change I would suggest to that last feature, and in fact to the app overall, is to reduce the number of steps involved in sharing an item, which currently requires up to ten taps to complete. I’d also suggest winnowing down all the sharing options available to the user—which includes everything from Delicious to Facebook and Google Reader to Tumblr—to just the most essential ones.

Besides those complaints, however, PayMeBack is a great application that does what it promises to with aplomb. The App Store does have other apps that perform the same basic functions as PayMeBack—with OweMe being just one of the examples—but none do it with quite as much style, or offer nearly the same amount of features, as PayMeBack does. We suggest that you give it its due.

PayMeBack is available on the App Store for $ 0.99 and is compatible with all iPhones running iOS 4.2 or later. It is not a universal application.

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Reports that Apple is working on a cheaper iPhone have been given a massive boost after it emerged Asian suppliers have already begun manufacturing a lower-priced version of the iPhone 4, a device that will feature a smaller 8GB flash drive.

Reuters, citing sources close to suppliers manufacturing the device in Korea, says that the new device will be almost idenitcal to the existing iPhone 4, but will launch with a bigger touch screen, improved antenna and an 8-megapixel camera.

If true, the report would reinforce rumours that Apple is to simultaneously release two iPhone devices, the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5.

The iPhone 4S would possibly see Apple make a dedicate push into the mid-range smartphone market, attempting to appeal to consumers that have been tempted by the huge increase in low to mid-range handsets running Google’s Android operating system.

A cheaper iPhone would also suggest that Apple would push its new iCloud service, a web-based platform that stores music, documents and settings, reducing the need for on-board storage on the device itself.

Apple is expected to launch the iPhone in October, suggesting the iPhone 4S would launch at the same time. Sources close to the Foxconn and Pegatron have said production of the two devices will reach 45 million units.

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Google’s Android mobile operating system overtook sales of Apple’s iPhone for the first time in Australia, accounting for 42.9 percent of smartphones sold in the country compared to Apple’s 37.2 percent share, according to a new report by Kantar ComTech WorldPanel.

New product launches by HTC and Samsung are thought to have boosted sales, with Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC’s Desire S, Desire Z and Incredible S smartphones launching recently in the country.

Taking into account the last four weeks alone, Android sales accounted for 54 percent of sales in the country, compared with Apple’s 29 percent share, suggesting consumers in Australia are beginning to take advantage of the varying selection of Android handsets available across varying price points. Growth of the sales Australia have now begun to mirror Western Europe and North America as a result.

The survey, which polled more than 10,000 Australian smartphone buyers, has received independent confirmation of sorts, with IDC telecommunications analyst Mark Novosel indicating that the data “definitely makes sense to me”.

However, Apple’s slight sales dip may not indicate a lack of demand for Apple smartphones, Telyste analyst Foad Fadaghi believes the rise in share of Google’s Android platform may only be temporary as consumers hold off buying a new iPhone in anticipation of Apple’s next-generation smartphone dubbed the ‘iPhone 5′. The iPhone 5, expected to launch in October, is said to sport Apple’s new dual-core A6 processor, improved cameras and will feature the new iOS 5 operating system.

Google’s Android share could be impacted should Apple’s legal action against HTC and Samsung affect sales of HTC and Samsung smartphone and tablet sales, with Apple already successfully banned the import and sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 device in Australia.

Apple could also launch a new lower-priced iPhone, engaging the number of Android smartphone vendors that offer low and mid-range devices directly for the first time.

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Apple appears to be positioning itself for a bumper final quarter, reportedly reducing its order volumes for its next-generation iPhone in the third quarter from 7 million units to around 5.5 million units whilst increasing orders by as much as six million units to 20 million as the company prepares for e fruitful holiday season, Digitimes reports.

The Cupertino-based company has boosted orders for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA and iPhone 5 by 13% for the second half of the year, increasing its total order volumes from around 50 million units to exceed more than 56 million units. Predicting that demand will be healthy for the iPhone 5, the device accounts for nearly half of the total orders for iPhone devices in the second half of the year.

iPhone 5 orders for the third quarter of 2011 have been lowered from seven million units to 5.5-6 million units, while fourth-quarter orders have been raised from 14 million units to more than 20 million units, the sources pointed out. Total orders for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4 CDMA for the third quarter exceed 20 million units, and fourth-quarter orders have been reduced to eight million units, the sources indicated.

Sources indicate that Apple’s total iPhone shipments will reach 95 million units, as the smartphone market continues to boom and Apple aligns itself with carriers and boosts its retail presence in Asia, a region it sees as a “massive opportunity”.

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