Apple reportedly acquired location data company BroadMap, smart note-taking app Catch

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

Among Apple's many acquisitions in 2013, two might have previously gone unreported - location data company BroadMap, and smart note-taking app, Catch. Mark Gurman has done some solid reporting here, combining sources with LinkedIn listings, and discovered that many former employees of both companies now call Apple home. From 9to5Mac:

According to their LinkedIn profiles, Jesse Sheridan, Brian Scaffidi, Mark Newcomb, and Kris Rousseau are either managers or engineers for Apple’s mapping software. They all say they joined Apple in either March or April. We have also discovered several other former BroadMap employees working at Apple that were not on BroadMap’s executive team. It does not appear that the CEO joined the other executives at Apple. BroadMap employees did not respond to requests for comment, and Apple did not respond to a request for comment regarding BroadMap.

And:

While Catch being acquired following promotion from Apple does not exactly indicate that Apple is the buyer, we have heard from multiple sources that the majority of Catch employees are now working for Apple. The sources say that the former list of Catch employees, which even includes co-founder Andreas Schobel, are working on iOS-related software.

Nothing is official until Apple PR issues their "from time to time" boilerplate, but Apple is still suffering from the poor job they did aggregating, cleansing, and sanitizing location data for the iOS 6 Maps app, so the more location smarts they can throw at it the better. Likewise, both Notes and Reminders got the short ends of the iOS 7 makeover stick, so the more talent and technology there, the better.

Gurman is also reporting that previous acquisitions Cue and Topsy will be used to enhance Siri over the next few years. Read his full story via the link below and then let me know - do you think these acquisitions make sense?

Source: 9to5Mac

Update: Apple has now provided the usual boilerplate in a statement to Ina Fried for AllThingsD:

Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

5 Comments
  • Here's to hoping this will get some faster fixes for errors in Points of Interest...
  • I'm sure this will bring some exciting new features in the future. Sent from the iMore App
  • I've used Catch in the past. Great app, it works well, and is a bit more robust than Apple's Notes app.
  • This is awesome. I loved using catch and kind of figured something was going one when catch announced they were not longer supporting the app. I still use the app as it syncs via icloud, just no updates are available or support....yet.
  • I love this and can't wait to see any changes coming. The Maps app updates will be interesting especially with the iBeacons coming soon. Sent from the iMore App