Macworld Says iPhone Needs GPS…A Truly Unique Thought…

Hello, Apple? Macworld thinks the iPhone would be the "ultimate mapping application" ... if it had GPS. Not that we haven’t heard this before but while everyone is snapping up the iPhone why is the cognoscenti already hoping for version 2? As usual, maps are the first item in the any list when speaking of wireless technology and the mapping apps are again the first item listed in the Macworld article with respect to the "wish list" of the next iPhone version. Again, I ask, why did Apple leave out GPS support in v1?

I spoke to Brian Varano, marketing manager at TruePosition today about how the iPhone will determine the location of E911 calls and he acknowledged that since it uses the AT&T network, the location of calls is determined by uplink time difference of arrival (U-TDOA), a multilateration technique to calculate distance based on receiving information from three or more cell towers; not as accurate as having either GPS or certianly assisted GPS (AGPS = network + GPS).