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Google’s Daniel Graf discusses Google Maps for iOS (Video)

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Engadget sat with Daniel Graf recently, who is working on Mobile Maps at Google but originally joined the company in 2011 in an entrepreneurial role at Mobile Apps Lab, and got the lowdown on the Android and iOS versions of the mapping app.

In regards to the iOS counterpart that launched in December, according to Engadget, Graf said, “It has been an interesting project, because we got the opportunity to start from scratch. [The Android version] is actually seven years of history, seven years of product, […] seven years of user experience. On iOS, we didn’t have those seven years so that gave us a chance to take a step back and say. ‘Hey, what would be the next-generation mobile mapping experience?'”

He also talked about the iOS app’s user experience: “When Larry came on board as CEO two years ago, he talked about beautiful experiences and we had very functional and very useful experiences and in term of beauty I think there was work to do. Now two years later if you actually use our product on desktop, on Android, on iOS there’s a theme there … there’s a design language there, and I would say actually they’re beautiful.”

And finally, when discussing the iOS app’s launch, Graf said, “We obviously wanted this app out before the holidays, which we managed to do in December, so there was a lot of time pressure to get it out but we didn’t want to make compromises so we said is let’s focus on the key use cases which I think we nailed.”

Check out the interview above, or just go to Engadget.

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