SEE THE HILARIOUS — AND SCARY — MISTAKES IN APPLE’S NEW MAP APP

The Blaze ^ | September 21, 2012

[SMGFan]

There’s certainly a lot of buzz today about the new iPhone 5. But earlier this week Apple announced another new item that shouldn’t be overlooked: an update to its operation system now called IOS 6. Included in the update was a new map app that Apple created, getting rid of the standard Google Maps app. But as you’ll soon see, there are plenty of kinks to work out.

The fine folks over at Business Insider have put together a slideshow with the help of theamazingios6maps tumblr page detailing just some of the issues. Among the most hilarious? Road and bridges that are so distorted they look like roller coasters, an airport runway that looks like a quilt, and a very flat Eiffel Tower. Take a look for yourself:

[publius911]

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[TXnMA]

"Those collapsed overpasses look prophetic."

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As one who works with GIS (computerized cartography or mapping) every day, this doesn't sound like much of a problem at all.

Those descriptions of vertical distortions sound exactly like what you see in Google Earth when the (vertical) terrain exaggeration is turned up too high in "preferences".

Terrain height magnification is a single (application-wide) "global variable". If it is not adjustable by the user, (as in Google Earth) then simply coding in a single number will fix it. As in Google Earth, terrain may not look as "interesting", but it will be rendered more realistically.

No big deal...

[kevkrom]

Well see, that’s the thing. Why can’t I start using it by scanning in my loyalty cards like CardStar and others allow?

Because that isn't the Passbook business/usage model. The whole point of the exercise is to be a clearinghouse for interactivity between customer and business. Just adding in a loyalty card isn't an interactive relationship; tying it to the business is. Besides, there are already programs that allow you to capture your loyalty cards (I have one, called KeyRing).

When looked at from that light, Passbook depends entirely on 3rd party support -- the company behind the card, ticket, or whatever, has to be involved, or Passbook won't work. As such, I think it's premature to judge it, because we don't yet know to what extent 3rd party business will support it, and how well it will actually work in practice. I suspect it will actually work out far better than most people expect, but that it will take several months to get to that point.