In the last week Google has been busy updating and releasing new iOS apps. Google has recently became really good at designing apps and the user interface of them is becoming a lot better.First is maps, after Apple dropped Google maps from iOS 6 in September and replaced it with Apple Maps. Apple Maps was a huge failure with complaints about the service coming from all around the world. However earlier this week Google released Google Maps for iPod Touch and iPhone. The new app is extremely simple to use and navigating around the maps is really simple. The only section where the app starts to run slow is when you go into the options by sliding to the left. This app is also lacking Google Street View however it does include directions.
Google has also released a new Gmail app which is awesome. The app is extremely quick to use and it is effective because all of your options are where you expect them to be. For instance, the reply and forward buttons are at the bottom of emails so you only decide what you want to do once you have read the email.
The final app which has been updated is the on for Google+. It has taken some features from the Google+ iPad app and some brand new features. The loading bar is the cool, colourful one from the iPad and the fold at the bottom of the splash screen is used a lot by other Google products however everything else in the app seems brand new and original. A brand new Google+ feature which has been added is something called 'Communities' where you can post into a group of people who share your interests. Communities you can join include a cooking community, technology community or motoring community.This is all well and good however Google has also announced that they are dropping active sync so you will not be able to sync your mail, calender and other services.
Google has also announced that they will not be making any more Windows 8 apps. As soon as Windows 8 was launched, things were looking optimistic for the Google and Windows 8 relationship as they made a Google search app. This was called 'Get your Google back' and the app is one of the best Windows 8 apps available. It has the voice search feature and gives you direct links to all the Google services like Google Drive, Google Calender and Blogger.
Anyway, Google has made loads of apps for the iOS app store and it is going to be massive shame if they stop making them for the Windows 8 store. In some cases, that fact alone might stop people from investing in Windows 8 as the app store is half empty anyway.
