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Comment by Xuzz | Hacker News Reader

What APIs would something like Google Now need that don't currently exist? The only one I can think of is a way to launch it easier, rather than with an icon. But the push and local notifications, geo-tracking, ability to access your Gmail, and even the ability for Google Maps to pre-download map tiles are available to Google on iOS. What else does it need?

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the ability for Google Maps to pre-download map tiles [is] available to Google on iOS

Google Now will automatically pre-download the map vector data before your trip, without you asking it to. For Google to do the equivalent on iOS, they'd need to be able to perform periodic background jobs, which isn't something that iOS supports currently.

It wouldn't be perfect, but the Google Now app could recognize that you're nearing an airport — something iOS does support, with background location updates — and then download the map data when it gets that notification. iOS apps can also share data between apps from the same vendor (via the Keychain, pasteboards, or various other mechanisms), so there wouldn't be an issue with passing that data over to the Google Maps app for offline viewing.

They aren't push notifications, but client-side notifications that respond to the user's learned habits and situation. I guess some of Google Now's functionality could be offloaded to push, but lots of it is based on the user's location, which isn't available on iOS to an app that isn't open.

User location is available to background iOS applications; Apple includes two APIs specifically for that purpose: fine and course background location updates. The app will be notified whenever the user's location changes, if it's activated or not.

I thought that only worked for apps that were once opened (since the phone last closed) and hadn't yet been killed by iOS's background task management thing?

I had a similar thought. Google Now's voice search is already available in the iOS Google Search app, so what would it take to get full Google Now functionality in that app? It seems like Google could get very close with what is already available api wise.

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