Apple FUD Ping!
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Posted on 06/08/2014 11:53:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
After releasing a lackluster Maps app to compete with Google Maps, Apple found that its wasn't so easy to eclipse Google's long-used app. In fact, Apple Maps was a failure.
It would seem that after such a failure Apple would try to update and improve the Maps app, but the Worldwide Developers Conference showed that the app was far from perfected. Instead, it seemed ignored.
“There were multiple improvements that didn’t make it into iOS 8,” an unnamed source told TechCrunch. Unfortunately, Apple still hasn't made a good Map app.
Previous reports said that app would be more reliable, have better labels, accurate points of interest and locations and all with a slicker interface. There were rumors there would be public transit information and "augmented reality", according to TechCrunch. But those didn't show up. The reason? Apparently a lot of the Apple developers left the company and Apple wasn't able to complete their plans. Another unnamed source said, "I would say that planning, project management and internal politics issues were a much more significant contributor to the failure to complete projects than developers leaving the group."
It's unfortunate that the one thing that has crystallized as Apple's most abject failure, Apple Maps, still hasn't had an overhaul in the last two years. We think that Apple should make it a priority to improve that app instead of letting its users rely on the superior Google Maps.
“Siri, are you taking me down this dark alley so you can murder and impersonate me?”
:Muh-hwah-hah-hah-haaaa! I mean, I have no idea what you are talking about.:
*clunk!*
Just call it Mapple and everyone will love it!
How can this be?? Apple is perfect! There is NOTHING better than Apple. There must be some right wing nut writing this.
Hopefully some other NBA owner gets recorded using racial terms, so Tim Cook can overpay for that team.
Geo-maven Marc Prioleau pointed me to a copyright page earlier today that appears to reveal the identities of some or all the data partners Apple is using for its new Maps product. Here they are in the order they appear on the page:
TomTom
Acxiom
CoreLogic
DigitalGlobe
DMTI
Getchee
Intermap
LeadDog
Localeze
MapData Sciences Pty Ltd.
MDA Information Systems, Inc
Urban Mapping
Waze
Yelp
Point is... Apple is not in the “map business”... the map “application” is only as good as the data the providers provide.
No different than any other “program” created to work within an operating system.
Actually, Apple Maps has been continuously overhauled over the last two years and is considerably better than what was released. It was actually pretty good then, with a few problems in the 3D views, but vastly overblown by Google’s FUD campaign. It has become imminently usable and I have been using it continuously over those two years and it has steered my wrong only once. . . compared to a dozen times that Google maps has sent me on wild goose chases.
This article is based on ONE anonymous source speaking to TechCrunch and has not been corroborated anywhere else.
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It may have struggled with some quite high-profile errors in its early days, but Apple's latest improvements to its Apple Maps platform have not only helped it catch up with venerable geospatial giant Google – but will make Apple Maps far more relevant in the long term.
Those are harsh and difficult words from someone who, like all of us, has marvelled for years at the utility of the Google Maps Web service and the immersive worldwide journeys made possible through the Google Earth application. But they are a reality that bears addressing.
Google will always hold the significant achievement of bringing the literally world-changing geospatial technology to the mass market, but Apple's decision to incorporate its now-very-impressive Maps application into its Mavericks operating system reflects a significant change in the user experience that will give it far more clout in driving the standard for interactive consumer mapping into the future.
Some questioned whether including Maps in the operating system was a simply gratuitous nod to the increasing incursion of iOS user-interface tropes into the desktop Mac OS X environment.
Anyone so inclined should run up a full-screen instance of Maps on their 27-inch iMac, using Apple's Magic Trackpad to spin, zoom and fly through 3D renderings of cities around the world. It's a novelty on an iPhone, but on a 27-inch screen it's literally an adventure.
Sure, you can do much the same with Google Earth, which has been available for Macs for some time. Both will also help you find your way to new places pinpoint accuracy, exploring a broad range of maps. . . (Excerpted from ZDNet. To read the full article click on the title to link to the article.)
Basically, the headline is a total lie.
Yep!
One thing I have noticed is all of these map/gps devices use the same data. I live in a small town and if I type in my address all of them are at least 4 blocks off.
It's almost as if this were a developers' conference instead of a consumer product show, or something...
I'd bet that about half of the major new and updated front-facing features in Yosemite and iOS 8 won't be publicly announced (might not even be in the developer beta releases) until the fall event where they introduce this year's iPhone and iPad updates.
And I'd love to see a new Apple TV (set top box, not an actual TV) along with changes that allow 3rd-party developers to add "channels" (or "apps") to the device, but if it's coming, they've kept it closely under wraps so far.
Every time I drive somewhere with someone who has an Iphone, we play a game with Apple maps. For the game not to be a disaster, you have to know where you’re going. Put Maps on and wait for the misdirection. It’s kind of funny. Wrong turns in Bucks County PA, dead ends off route 70 in New Jersey when your destination is a large hotel on route 70 etc. Thanks for the entertainment. Love Waze.
Personally I *have* found the Google Map app to be better than Apple’s. < |:(~
Misdirection? In that it differs from your Waze? How many times did you play this so called game? Frankly, I'd guess once.
I have had one misdirection from Maps since it debuted in iOS 6 at the June 2012 WWDC. . . and that was because there were two identical addresses in two different towns on the same street. . . same road. . . in the same county in the South Peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area. This was the very first week that Maps was out. Adding the exact town solved the problem.
Just last month a search in Sacramento put a business I was seeking by name in a residential area. . . but when I tried it in Google Maps, the business was shown to be in the exact same location. When I drove to the area, the business was located in a shopping center that extended far back. . . and the residential area streets had an access.
The previous month, my girlfriend and I were going to a party up in the Sierra Nevada foothills north of San Andreas. Google Maps sent us on a route that took us off the main roads onto a dirt road where the POTHOLES could have swallowed a Volkswagen—and the low angle of the setting sun that day made them impossible to see. The one we dropped into was over four feet across and two deep and cost me over $1000 damage to my car ($500 insurance deductible). . . and injured me and my girlfriend. We had to call a tow truck to pull us out of the one we wound up in. We were lucky the car was still drivable—if not still aligned—and hours late for the party.
A month later, Apple Maps provided a far better routing to the same destination using main roads. . . and it was only about four tenths of a miles longer than the route Google came up with but with fewer turns. . . and all the roads were PAVED with not one pothole!
Face it. You don't know where you live! Better start worrying. You have documented proof. . . Google Maps has been used in court as part of expert testimony!
Sorry, but Apple’s maps flat out sucked in 1.0 release, it routinely directed me to the wrong addresses etc. It has improved, but to claim the app just had some 3D display issues is completely false.
Google Maps got to where they are today in large part because of all the data they collected being the default map program on the iPhone. I have no doubt Apple will continue to improve as the app has since its initial release, but you can’t blame apples map problems as purely a smear campaign orchestrated by google.
Ha-ha, same thing happened to us with Google Maps, it's been a few years. A bunch of distant family members from around the country gathered in Philadelphia for a wedding. One of my sisters used her mapping in her car to guide us and others in several other cars to find the church. After a long drive for thirty minutes and us honking at her, we arrived and no church. Identical street address and street, but wrong town. We got to the right place late. Turns out the right place was just ten minutes from our hotels. She never trusted the maps after that.
I did not say that. How is what you just said representative of what I said? NOTHING I said is "completely false". I find it funny that if it "routinely directed you to the wrong addresses etc." that you would continue to use it. Why would you keep using it? The Einsteinian definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing, expecting a different result! Usually, in my experience, people who say that don't even have an iPhone. LOL!
I said:
Actually, Apple Maps has been continuously overhauled over the last two years and is considerably better than what was released. It was actually pretty good then, with a few problems in the 3D views, but vastly overblown by Google’s FUD campaign. It has become imminently usable and I have been using it continuously over those two years and it has steered my wrong only once. . . compared to a dozen times that Google maps has sent me on wild goose chases.
What part of ". . . and is considerably better than what was released. . ." do you have a problem with? Let's look at my points one by one.
I and most of the people I have heard from, including many of the responses in the comments in the replies on the articles on reviews, have had very few issues with mis-direction from Apple Maps when they used direct input of actual address data. There were some misdirections. A Lot of the complaints came from overseas where the mapping was not complete. Most areas of the US were OK. I agree Maps definitely should have been released as a beta.
Apple was not doing the mapping or directions themselves. Apple Maps was using directions and mapping under contract only from TomTom, one of the largest map providers, while information on location of non-address data, location by businesses name came from Yelp. Most misdirection originated from putting in a business name and the error came from Yelp's errors of location from Yelp's approach in crowd sourcing of address information. . . Apple has been quite busy over the past two years in correcting those data.
Over the past two years, Apple has increased the sourcing of data included in Maps. They now use data from many sources to give a much more complete picture, more than what Google uses. As noted above in Overdog2's post, these include:
In addition to all that, Apple has been using one of the best sources of all: interactive anonymous data from the iPhones users themselves.
I did NOT say that the problems of Maps 1.0 were just in the 3D rendering. Next time, read what I actually said.
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