The iPhone 5 has been officially available through Apple and the carriers for two days now and although it has been heralded as a success, there are still a few issues that have some users expressing a little concern. One of the biggest talking points has been the removal of Google Maps in favor of Apple’s own vector based mapping system, which in itself wouldn’t be too much of an issue but Apple have gotten things drastically wrong in some users opinion.
A lot of the negativity is centered around the fact that the Apple Maps don’t contain a great deal of information in certain areas. We have already seen comparison images being posted to the web that show a location on both Apple and Google Maps, with the Google version containing in-depth coverage of the area with street names, local business and multiple points of interest. On the flip side, the new Apple mapping system shows very little information or detail for the same area.
There was always going to come a time when users looked to the jailbreak community for an interim solution to this mapping problem until Apple manage to push significant updates to their Maps. It shouldn’t then come as a surprise that the call has been answered by Ryan Petrich who has shown off a video of the iOS 5 version of Google Maps running on an iPhone 3GS that has iOS 6 installed upon it. Petrich is not only well known in the jailbreak community for being one of the hardest working developers but also getting in early on releases like this that greatly help out the community.
The video starts with the obligatory demonstration of the Settings.app to show that the showcased device is indeed running iOS 6. Further proof is given that the device is running by iOS 6 by the existence of the Passbook app, the fact that the Do Not Disturb setting is running and displayed on the status bar as well as the Apple Maps app opened and demonstrated. The Google Maps application is shown running with a lot of the features like zooming into areas of the map shown to be working as well as seamlessly switching between Standard and Satellite map types.
Petrich himself has indicated that the port of Google Maps to iOS 6 is nowhere near ready for a public release as it does still suffer from some crashing issues, but it provides comfort for those that badly miss the old mapping system. Using Google Maps in this manner on iOS 6 would require a jailbreak which is currently only available on A4-based devices. To jailbreak iOS 6, you can follow our step by step guide. A iPhone 5 jailbreak is also in the works. Let’s keep out fingers cross for a fast and stable untethered jailbreak for iOS 6 that can be enjoyed by all.
(source: Twitter)
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