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Apple stock split, an acquisition, missing Maps, and more news for June 9, 2014
A mixed bag of news for this Monday. Apple's stock split took place and the company acquires a social search engine company, but internal issues seem to have kept Maps from gaining new features prior to last week's iOS 8 announcement. Lucky you! Every share of Apple stock you own just became seven shares. Apple's stock split seven-for-one, and opened at US$92.70 per share this morning -- equivalent to a pre-split price of $648.90. If the stock price happens to squeak by $100.72, that will represent an all-time high price for AAPL. Apple's stock last hit the pre-split high of $705 per share back in September of 2012. TUAW sister site TechCrunch is reporting that Apple has acquired Spotsetter, which is described as a "social search engine for places." TechCrunch's Sarah Perez says that the acquisition "was mainly about acquiring the technology and the talent of the two founders, ex-Google Maps engineer Stephen Tse and Johnny Lee". The company's app (which is no longer available) used an algorithm to pull in content from a number of social and review sites to put your friends' recommendations as a layer atop a map. It's thought that Spotsetter's technology will be used in future versions of Maps. And speaking of Maps, internal squabbles at Apple and missed deadlines are allegedly behind the absence of any word of an update to the mapping service at last week's WWDC keynote. Unnamed sources told TechCrunch that ""Many developers left the company, no map improvements planned for iOS 8 release were finished in time. Mostly it was failure of project managers and engineering project managers, tasks were very badly planned, developers had to switch multiple times from project to project." Ouch. We hates the rumors, we does, my precious. But Re/code's John Paczkowski says that there's a good chance Apple plans to hold a press event in October to announce a wearable device that would "make good use of the HealthKit health and fitness information-gathering app it recently showed off at WWDC".
Apple reportedly snaps up social maps app Spotsetter
Last year, Apple bought a string of companies in an effort to better its rather unpopular Maps app, and it looks like Cupertino isn't quite done yet. According to TechCrunch, the company has also snapped up social maps app Spotsetter in a deal that's a lot more low-key that its Beats acquisition. Apple reportedly bought the company not only for its technology, but also for its two founders: former Google Maps engineer Stephen Tse and ex-Siemens consultant and FitFiend CTO Johnny Lee. Spotsetter, if you've never heard of it before, shows your friends' recommendations and trusted reviews of various establishments overlayed on a map. Also, you can use it to search for particular locations and see if your friends have been there, or to read reviews about them.
