Insiders Detail Steve Jobs' Role in Apple's Mapping Effort

Bloomberg has recently provided an interesting glimpse of Steve Jobs' role in Apple's mapping effort. The project has been a number of years in the making but which only now has made its way into the public's hands. The report claims Apple's mapping effort was Jobs' idea. He wished Apple to move away from using Google’ Maps on iOS devices.

Apple insiders say Jobs himself initiated the mapping project, putting mobile software chief Forstall in charge, and he installed a secret team on the third floor of Building 2 on Apple’s campus to replace Google Maps on the iPhone. At the time of his death, Jobs had come to loathe Google, which he felt was copying features of the iPhone while withholding a key feature of Google Maps that allows smartphones to dictate turn-by-turn directions aloud.

Jobs also discussed pulling Google search from the iPhone, but figured that customers would reject that move, according to two former Apple executives.

In 2010, Apple even was in discussions with Microsoft to make the switch to Bing as the default search engine for iOS. Apple currently offers users the choice of Google, Yahoo!, or Bing as their Safari search engine in iOS, with the company having also added Baidu in China with iOS 6.