Users can now navigate National Parks offline and save their favorite places.
Apple Maps is making it easier to get outside with updates to help travelers navigate national parks and create custom walking and hiking routes.
Park goers will soon be able save their favorite national park hikes to use offline (as national parks don’t always come with Wi-Fi), Apple shared with Travel + Leisure. Travelers can also create custom walking routes and add them — along with favorite restaurants, coffee spots, and more — to a new “Places Library” complete with personal notes about each.
The upgrade will take place in the fall.
“So many of our users rely on Apple services throughout their day, from navigating their commute with Apple Maps, to making easy and secure payments with Apple Pay, to curating playlists with Apple Music,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said in a statement, adding, “We’re excited to give them even more to love about our services, like the ability to explore national parks with hikes in Apple Maps.”
This is the latest update Apple has pushed to make spending time in national parks easier. Last year, Apple started allowing users to download a specific area on a map to use offline as part of the company’s larger iOS 17 update. As part of that, the company added place cards to its maps with information like trail length, difficulty, and elevation variations. Park goers can now filter searches by those parameters to find the perfect park and hike for them.
The new update comes on the heels of the company’s efforts to make traveling in Paris easier ahead of the Olympic Games there this summer. The tech company has introduced a seamless way to board Paris transit by allowing travelers to add a Navigo pass directly to their Apple Wallets. Visitors can also buy tickets from their iPhones or Apple Watches and simply tap to ride.
Source: Travel + Leisure
By: Alison Fox