This is just another rumor speculating about things that were speculated on last month, and the month before that, etc. I guess I don't understand what makes this one so much more interesting or credible/worthy of much discussion.
Edit: Also, the link/headline is totally misleading. I'm sure others have said this too.
Hn is run on a software stack that allows a registered user to submit a link/URL to an item they determine to be of potential interest to the community.
After that link is submitted it appears on the listing of recently submitted articles at the /newest URL. Other users (with sufficient karma) that also find the link of value either upvote it, flag it, and/or comment on it.
As an item receives upvotes and/or comments an algorithm ranks it accordingly amongst other submitted stories, making it potentially visible on the "front page" of the site.
An items ranking is an overall generic indication that a sufficient number of users have found it noteworthy (or not).
It's all really pretty basic and uses a concept that has been around for about 7 or 8 years now. However this "how did this item get to the front page..." question seems to come up with enough frequency that an answer should be more easy to find, or maybe even be emailed to all new accounts so that people will not need to ask these sorts of questions amongst discussions of the article itself.
Because the HN community as a whole is actually interested in different topics/items than what he personally suspects it is interested in?
Because HN has changed/declined/gone to shit/been overrun with trolls from reddit/fosters a secret voting cabal/etc.?
Really, how many times are this "How did this get on the front page" kinds of questions going to be asked? I'm somewhat shocked those questions/comments don't get downvoted to hell, but then again I guess the HN community as a whole doesn't always feel the same way I do :) I just read what interests me...
It's common knowledge that Apple has been buying maps companies to build their own app, but AFAIK this is the first time we've gotten a solid release date.