One of the main features city dwellers wanted to see in the new Apple Maps was public transportation directions - sadly Apple didn't integrate them, annoying many who rely on public transit to get around. However it has proved a good thing for one man - David Hodge, the founder and CEO of Embark, a new startup in San Francisco that has built several public transit routing apps for iOS. Since the feature was absent in latest version of iOS, users turned to alternatives, including Hodge's - he reports a spike in downloads since late September when iOS 6 hit customers devices.
Pre-iOS 6 the apps were around but no-one was really interested - however in the first week of iOS 6 they saw 100,000 downloads, far more than they'd ever seen before. Hodge hasn't given a updated figure showing all downloads but he has said that the amount of users on the app has increased by between 2.5x and 10x in all markets.
Before iOS 6 the Maps app didn't include public transport, so why the sudden interest? Well now in Maps a special section exists that recommends local transit apps, such as Embark. They've been placed in the list alongside some pretty big contenders like Navigon and Garmin.
