Google Places Autocomplete No Tap Event (iOS device)

I set up Google Places Autocomplete and everything works will in browsers, emulators and android physical devices, but on iOS devices the tap on the autocomplete item is not firing the place_changed event and therefore not updating the input box with my selection. Any tips? Thank you, you can’t imagine how many hours I have just thrown at this thing.

should mention that I have already tried the approaches from: https://github.com/driftyco/ionic/issues/1798