One of the frequent feature requests I got for my iOS app MapRhino (Listing on the App Store) was to add the route to the view that the kids get.

MapRhino is an app for parents in the front seat of the car to share where they are going with kids in the back seat of the car. The kids’ iPads will show where they are on a map, show the car moving as it goes, and how long it will take to get there!

What the iPads didn’t show before was the route on the kid’s iPads. The app uses two different mapping technologies - Apple’s MapKit, and MapBox’s maps. The routes aren’t directly compatible between the two, and the data also has to be serialized, sent over a multipeer connectivity broadcast, and then deserialized on the iPads. I learned more about MKMapPoint and coordinates than I really needed to know, and had to do a C-style malloc for an array - yay for sticking with Objective-C on this app so far.

I added the feature over the course of an afternoon, tested it out, and it works pretty well. Hopefully more users will like it too!