A developer has noted that Apple’s iOS 5.0 has already been thrusted knee deep into field testing – at least that is what FutureTap, the creator of Where To?, claims. After all, FutureTap did mention that they have received a crash report from a device that runs on the upcoming iOS firmware. To date, Apple has always tried their best to maintain an internal testing framework, but it is conventional wisdom that Cupertino has its hands forced to conduct more and more public work in order to make a better judgment against real-world conditions.
“MKUserLocationBreadCrumb” was mentioned in the crash logs, and that is an unusual code string since it does drop hints that Apple might be altering some of the mapping and/or location frameworks in iOS 5 – although there isn’t any benchmark to place that against according to its extent. On the most basic level, the firmware might just receive Google’s Maps Navigation, a feature which has been restricted to Android devices to date.
Perhaps Apple is working to gather anonymous traffic data in order to produce and maintain “a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.” To date, patent applications do point towards Apple creating their own Google Latitude-style location-sharing app, but nothing has come to fruition yet. Only time will tell as to how far and well Apple will execute iOS 5.0 with its nuances.