News & Reviews:   Apple Maps

While many of you had a good 2025 wrap-up, Apple also announced that 2025 was a record-breaking year for its services division. The company said the year was defined by strong performance in key services ranging from the App Store and Apple Music to Apple Pay and iCloud, underscoring services as a major driver of its overall ecosystem.

Apple is now reportedly considering bringing advertising support to its mapping service, Apple Maps, as early as 2026. That said, what should you know about it?

When it comes to navigation maps in Malaysia, people would either go for Waze or Google Maps, but never Apple Maps. Apple Maps has been around for a few years already but is often not reliable when compared to Waze and Google Maps.

The iPhone and other Apple devices may soon feature more ads baked inside its pre-installed apps, such as Maps, Books and Podcasts. According to reliable insider on everything Apple, Mark Gurman, the company has internally tested search ads in Maps similar to Waze, whereby paid recommendations will appear when users search for restaurants, stores or more.

Last week, Apple released the public beta for iOS 14.5 that came with quite a few new features. For instance, it added support for face unlocking with a mask on and the latest gaming console controllers. It was also confirmed that Apple Maps will get a big update.

In an effort to battle COVID-19, Apple have been testing a new way for everyone - particularly the hospitals, healthcare support and businesses that are still open - to have access to COVID-19 testing locations on their Apple Maps app. In other words, the app will be able to help those who want to do a health screen test at the nearest location possible so it should prove to be convenient.

The modern smartphone user has gotten so used to navigating around using a map software that it's not wrong to say some are hopeless without one. Recently, Apple saw fit to release a newly redesigned Maps software for all iOS users in the United States.