Since iOS 6 came out in 2012, Apple has been slowly perfecting its own maps feature, losing Google remnants bit by bit. But the latest beta shows Apple ditching Google maps in iCloud, favouring its own mapping service for the “Find My iPhone” feature.
While it’s not been made public yet, it can be seen and tested in iCloud’s beta site where Apple tests new features.
A test by AppleInsider showed that loading the current Google maps feature in iCloud transferred 4MB of data, but Apple Maps transferred 400KB. While functionality remains consistent, the vector based Apple Maps do seem to be more lightweight. At midnight almost every day there are changes featuring new updates to maps and points of interest data.
While Google Maps is still being used on iCloud, the change could happen any day now. The new design will pull data from TomTom and other services to collate its maps, so the design will look different to the Google maps layout – with a zoom button in the bottom right corner (rather than the top left) and no center map button.