Former Navteq executive Torsten Krenz joins Apple's mapping team
9to5Mac reports that Apple this month hired Torsten Krenz to join the company's mapping team. Though not a household name, Krenz brings a considerable and impressive amount of mapping expertise to the table. Previously, Krenz served as an executive at Navteq, a Chicago-based company which provided detailed geographic and mapping data to companies as varied as Garmin, Yahoo, and Microsoft.
Navteq was subsequently acquired by Nokia in the late 2000s whereupon Krenz became the director of regional map and content for Nokia's HERE mapping program.
Though Apple still can't seem to shake the notion that Apple Maps is laughably less reliable than Google Maps, the company has steadily and rather quietly improved the service quite a bit over the past two years. Earlier this summer, for instance, we reported that Apple had begun rolling out improved mapping data on a daily basis.
Of course, one lingering feature which hasn't yet been incorporated into Apple's Maps app is transit directions. This remains a source of disappointment for anyone who lives in a city environment and would like to have everything neatly bundled within a single app. Now this isn't to say Apple doesn't have this on the agenda. On the contrary, the company has purchased a few notable transit apps over the last year or so. Specifically, Apple last summer acquired the transit app Embark along with the popular transit app HopStop.
With iOS 8 likely just around the corner, it's worth mentioning that there's a possibility Apple Maps will add a "Flyover city tours" feature that will present users with a guided tour of landmarks from major cities around the world.
