“Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, revealed in his keynote speech last week a new location-awareness feature available on the iPhone and the iPod Touch. It allows the sleek devices to home in on their current location using Wi-Fi technology,” Carolyn Y. Johnson reports for The Boston Globe.
“There’s no GPS inside the phone, so ‘how do we actually arrive at the location?’ Jobs asked… ‘We’re working with two companies to do that: Google, and a company called Skyhook Wireless,’ he said.”
“Skyhook’s technology uses signals from Wi-Fi hot spots to triangulate and find a person’s location, instead of using a chip that lets a mobile device communicate with the Global Positioning System,” Johnson reports.
“Today Skyhook’s technology works in about 8,000 U.S. cities and towns, and the company is expanding its database by mapping Wi-Fi signals in Europe and Asia,” ,” Johnson reports.
“The software upgrade that includes the new location feature – it is available free on an iPhone and for $19.99 on an iPod Touch – allows people to simply press a button to see where they are,” Johnson reports. “A map displays a bull’s-eye that’s centered on the user’s location; Morgan said Skyhook’s technology typically is accurate up to about 165 feet, or 50 meters.”
More in the full article here.
i’m loving this feature on my iPhone
It’s pretty darn close. A great feature for the iPhone. Who needs a real GPS?
Skyhook: Kareem Abdul Jabbar, CEO
I’m loving this feature on my iPod!
Who would have thought, when the first iPod was released, that it would evolve into a true wireless device that can tell you your location.
An amazing device, and I’m sooo pleased I bought one.
Uh, no offense but the snippets above don’t answer the question, “How does the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch use Skyhook’s technology to find your location.”
Seems like you should re-recap the article or change the headline.
This is awesome and a welcomed addition to my iPhone and iPod Touch. I’m just worried about Skyhook becoming self aware and may start sending out those Terminators.
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Why is it, that for the past few years, no-one knows where they are or where they’re going?
No match for a true GPS system with voice and turn by turn directions.
There is no WiFi in the deserts of Cupertino. (plenty of smog though)
Silly Apple.
used it 3 times on iphone and its been pretty much exact every time.
‘Why is it, that for the past few years, no-one knows where they are or where they’re going?’
Brain damage from cell phone usage.
@Old Mac Man
True.. not nearly as accurate as a real GPS, but it also does not have a lot of the downsides:
1) Does not use a lot of battery power
2) Works inside buildings, and among tall buildings (actually works better in a large city..)
3) No need to “find satilites” so it works quickly from a cold start.
Actually I want a hybrid device like that. One that an use wifi and cell towers for location, but one that can also use a GPS when reliable wifi, or cell phone signals don’t cut it.
Where is the bluetooth gps receiver for the iPhone anyways?
It’s pretty sweet in the city, but out and about where I live near Bath in the UK it’s pants – often many,many miles out!!
Read the article again. You will see that it describes how is uses WiFi Hotspot triangulation to locate your position. They are adding more and more spots to their database everyday. Maybe you should check your facts before posting anything.
It’s not a GPS replacement, it’s convenient to get you near your actual location, then you drop a pin where you really are, and then do a search for directions.
While it doesn’t have a voice or live update, it does give traffic conditions on major highways, which you have to pay a subscription fee to get from GPS. It’s invaluable to me to get thru NYC.
I don’t think that turn-by-turn directions on a GPS are really all that useful for daily commuters. I go to work and go home in the same general direction every day. If I want to avoid traffic and maybe take a different route, the iPhone’s traffic is good enough for me – and its pretty accurate most of the time. For those times when I need to go somewhere off my normal routes, the new “locate me” function is good enough – and it doesn’t cost $200+ for a dedicated GPS unit that I’d hardly ever need every day.
It’s a cover while waiting for the next generation of stupidly low power requirement chips.
The iPhone of 2010 will be blow people’s minds, while Microsoft and it’s lackeys will trumpet the fact they may have a 2007 bad iPhone copy in 2011.
It will be called the “Zhone”, and it will have a touch interface consisting of a keyboard with fixed icons for apps. And it will come with a USB keyboard for data entry. It will sync with the Big Ass Table to let you know at all times that you are a dumbass for buying anything but mice from Microsoft.
This is more useful to me than those GPS systems. I’ve tried TomTom. What a PITA. Not only does it consistently direct you with the most inefficient route, the interface is convoluted with useless added junk when all you need is exactly what iPhone/Touch/GoogleMap/Skyhook interface provides. Usability wise, its Apples way all the way.
I like the feature… but it doesn’t show me that close. The bullseye is usually about 2 – 3 miles to the west of my actual location. Even when I was at the apple store in Mission Viejo the other day, using their wifi hotspot, it showed me west and the store wasn’t even in the circle.
I don’t want to be standing in that bull’s-eye! Who knows what is being aimed at it!
An advantage over the GPS in my 2007 car is that the data is several years old. On my iPhone I can find much newer points of interests and addresses. I have found that just using cell towers method in southern Santa Clara county it locates me within a thousand feet or so. Easy to move the pin and quickly get routing. Much faster than my car GPS. Maps is the best feature on the phone in my opinion.
Although I’ve had mixed results with this first version, it’s accurate as long as it can find a signal. More so on WiFi than Edge.
Truly the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy!
Some people need decades to figure out where they are.
“I was raised in the west. The west of Texas. It’s pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to California.”
– George W. Bush in Los Angeles as quoted by the Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2000.
The real advantage of Maps is the always up-to-date maps of Google. I bought a Palm Zire with TomTom about 2 years ago. While it was nice, TomTom changed their software so I couldn’t upgrade the Palm, AND I couldn’t even buy new maps. If I wanted new maps, they had to be bought, and that was just a yearly software upgrade. My home never appeared on my GPS, even though the streets had been in 2 years before I bought my Zire. So if you’re going to a newer area of town, you’re on your own.
Google’s maps are MUCH more up to date than a fixed system like TomTom, and the accuracy is close enough. If you know approximately where you are, you can get directions to where you’re going. Isn’t that what we all really want, anyway?
The other advantage of the iPhone’s Maps is that you actually pay attention to the route when you’re driving. Too many times with my TomTom I would simply turn where I was told, and later realize that I didn’t really watch how I arrived at my location (landmarks, street names, etc.). So I was dependent upon the TomTom to get me back to the same location even though I’d been there before.
I don’t know much about GPS, but aren’t we missing some basic information without GPS? Not to mention that with a GPS I can go anywhere on the planet, right now, that is not shielded from satellite communications, and more or less instantly know where I am within a few feet (as opposed to a few hundred feet), and I can see all of that information (including the satellites that I’m tracking) on my display.
As I say, I really don’t know, but the technology seems like a really watered-down kind of tracking compared to the existing GPS technology and infrastructure.