In a year when the new iPhone hardware design is a subtle refinement, holding out for the dramatic reinvention in 2017, the new version of iOS is the headline. This year, iOS 10 makes the platform competitive in new spaces, showcases the latest hardware improvements like Touch ID and 3D Touch, and pushes Apple’s machine learning agenda forward. And, most importantly, iOS 10 opens the platform to developers in all-new ways, giving access to new corners of the operating system that most closely impact the user experience.

We examined how developers can begin to take advantage of these new features, and how new frameworks like SiriKit, richer notifications, and the Messages SDK can help brand marketers build better experiences for their customers. Apple has become the kind of company that only makes big moves—and iOS 10 is one of their biggest yet.

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The debut of Apple Maps in iOS 6 was perhaps Apple’s biggest public blunder in recent history. The navigation directions were inaccurate, driving people to the wrong destinations or instructing them to turn into dead-end streets. The headline Flyover mode, which showed 3D models of skyscrapers in major cities, was entirely useless to most users, and generated unsightly algorithmically generated shapes over bridges and trees. Apple Maps was a laughing stock, and its initial public perception has haunted the app for the ensuing four years, with a significant portion of iOS users tucking it away in a folder and defaulting to Google Maps, instead.

But Apple hasn’t taken that public failure sitting down—it’s doubled down on its commitment to the fledgling app, investing scores more developers and a widespread community program to correct the most glaring errors. Today, Apple Maps is an entirely different experience, with accurate results, reliable data and navigation, and the kinds of UX flourishes that one would come to expect of Apple. Thousands of eyes are now attending to Apple Maps’s initial faults, and millions of users are continually reaping the benefits. Apple is a markedly different company today than it was in 2012, just by virtue of scale. A Maps team that once included a handful of developers, focused predominantly on the Bay Area maps and data points, has been augmented to the scale of many hundreds—and the difference is easy to see.

Google Maps remains a preferred option for many people—underscored by the fact that users can remove Apple Maps from their home screens in iOS 10. But in its latest release, Apple wanted to add the kinds of utility and machine learning–assisted functionality that will make users choose to keep it around. Apple has a long way to go yet reestablishing the trust it lost with users when Apple Maps face planted in iOS 6. But these new features—the deep integrations with Siri and support for third-party developer extensions with the new Maps SDK—are aimed squarely at dethroning Google Maps as the perceived premiere maps option on the platform. And if there’s anything Apple knows, it’s how to use developers’ innovations to further its own platform goals.

What’s new for Maps in iOS 10

In iOS 10, Maps does a number of exciting new user-facing things. Extending the trend started with iOS 9, Maps is deeply integrated with Siri and the system’s proactive intelligence features, suggesting destinations and alerting users about travel times automatically based on usage history and calendar events. And within the Maps app itself, users will see an all-new design, focused on the new ways that customers have come to use mapping apps in the decade since iOS first launched. But beyond these refinements (and the subtle introduction of Apple’s new San Francisco system font within the Maps vectors to replace the non sequitur Avenir), Apple is opening its Maps platform to developers for the first time with the Maps SDK, making the number of things users can do within Maps virtually limitless.

Apple Maps has gotten a lot better at getting users from A to B—but now, “B” can be third-party apps and services.

With the Maps SDK, third-party developers can extend their brands and services into the Maps application itself, surfacing a piece of functionality and logo to allow users to interact with the destinations they’ve searched for. Looking at a restaurant? You can instantly make a reservation through OpenTable, right from within Maps. Searching for an address? Get a ride there from Uber without leaving Maps. Maps has had data integrations before from the likes of Yelp, but this kind of user-initiated functionality is new, and allows users to set their preferred data providers just by downloading the appropriate apps that support the Maps SDK.

Someday, any brand with a retail presence will be able to bridge the gap between brick-and-mortar and mobile with the Maps SDK.

This functionality in Maps is a perfect opportunity for certain brands to extend their services into a new UX outlet—and it’s only going to get better. While today, the brands that benefit most from this SDK are those that can accept restaurant reservations, there is a future scenario where any brand with a retail presence can leverage the Maps SDK to bridge the gap between iOS and brick-and-mortar locations. Imagine a hotel chain accepting reservations directly from Maps. Or a retailer linking users directly to in-store inventory from its Maps listing. The Maps SDK opens the door for all kinds of new cross-functional applications of mobile technology, and its current form is only the beginning of its potential.

Many users don’t care about Apple Maps—why should brand marketers?

Apple Maps in iOS 10 is a massive strategic investment for Apple, since the service is integrated into both every facet of the broader iOS user experience as well as into popular third-party apps like Uber and OpenTable. iOS users will begin to discover the power and utility of Apple Maps for perhaps the first time, reintroduced to them post–iOS 6 under the guise of a spiffy new interface and a number of widgets and extensions. Maps is now integrated into services that iOS customers will come to love, and as the Apple Maps user base grows—even just among those who use its widgets or Siri functionality—so too grows the opportunity for developers to reach that audience.

Like the additions of other extensions in iOS 8 through 10, ranging from search access for in-app content to widgets that offer a snippet of data at a glance, the Maps SDK is a new opportunity for brands and their apps to meet users in their contexts, rather than forcing them to come to the app to manually find the content they need. It’s an extension that continues apps’ steady evolution into something beyond a static piece of software, and the possibilities are compelling.

The Maps SDK is another opportunity for third-party apps to meet users in their contexts.

The new Maps SDK is perhaps the purest example of mobile software reacting to users’ implicit needs and contexts, suggesting helpful third-party services that can help them reach the places they’re thinking about in a variety of new ways. This is the culmination of Apple’s and others’ investments in machine learning and proactive mobile features, and it’s an exciting case for the assistive future of these platforms. Maps will continue to evolve to better accommodate users’ implicit needs for the locations they frequent throughout their days—and now third-party apps and brands can come along for the ride.