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So Forstall and his direct report were responsible for two botched product launches, Siri and Maps. This is a big blow to the camp suggesting firing Forstall wa

by IBM 9y ago

So Forstall and his direct report were responsible for two botched product launches, Siri and Maps. This is a big blow to the camp suggesting firing Forstall was a mistake.

tinus_hn 9y ago
Siri may have stalled now but it definitely wasn’t a botched launch. And Apple maps may not work great in all cases but it did succeed in forcing Google to provide decent maps on iOS. Before Apple Maps the vector maps were an Android exclusive.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sjwright 9y ago
  Apple Maps is like Bing: almost as good as the #1 service, but almost is not enough to make anyone care. Apple Maps is remarkably good today, doing nearly all of the important things well. Here in Australia, it's on par with Google Maps for driving (slightly worse for novel route planning, slightly better for guidance) and when travelling to major world cities I've found Apple Maps is frequently better than Google Maps for navigating on foot and public transport.
  - lolive 9y ago
    Am I the only one who feels that Apple Maps drains much less battery than Google Maps?
  - jbg_ 9y ago
    when in major cities in China, my experience is that Google Maps is almost unusable (not due to the censorship, as I use a roaming SIM which avoids those problems, but rather due to wildly incorrect data, missing metro lines, etc), and Apple Maps is at least on par with the quality that Google Maps achieves in other countries, and often much better. I find it interesting that Google doesn't care enough to add the most recent several metro lines in (for example) Beijing or Shanghai, considering that many people try to use Google Maps in China when visiting and usually seem to end up switching to Apple Maps as a result of the complete trash the Google Maps experience is there. I wonder if they switch back when they go home.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    almost is not enough to make anyone care. It's good enough that I use it primarily on my phone over Google Maps, in the UK
  - ak217 9y ago
    In reality Google Maps is farther ahead of its competitors than most people realize. Google Maps now provides wholly personalized points of interest and attention affordances in its UI. It's also well on its way to 3D scanning and annotating POIs in every structure in the world, including very large pedestrian-only interiors. It also has realtime transit and traffic feeds, and more pedestrian trails and venue detail than anyone else. All of these are areas where its competition is not just behind, but falling further behind. But the personalization combined with superior POI search really illustrates how Google's competitors don't even have the platform to properly conceptualize the type of product Google is building, much less build it.
    - AlphaSite 9y ago
      I don’t know if I’d say most of these things matter enough at the end of the day, just to cherry pick, Apple has 3D, interiors, traffic, transit and pedestrians. Not everywhere, but it’s a problem which time and money can fix. Both of which apple has in abundance. Also anecdotally I’m not sure if I can agree that Google’s POIs are vastly better, mostly just different but of a similar low quality (which is to say neither pleases me).
      - tschwimmer 9y ago
        I can't speak to your usecase and preferences, but a cartographer points out how much richer Google Maps are here: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
    - gambiting 9y ago
      It still feels years behind any dedicated maps though(like TomTom), at least in those countries that I've tried it(UK, Spain, Poland, Germany). It's just consistently wrong about which roads are connected with each other, it doesn't know that certain roads are one-way or that you can't make a left/right turn out of a certain street. I've reported dozens of mistakes and they just don't get fixed. Every single morning on my way to work it tries to route me left on a no-left-turn intersection - I've literally filed a map correction report for this 3 or 4 times, still nothing. TomTom just don't have this issue, I've been using it for 5 years now and it's never done anything like that. Also TomTom Traffic is vastly better than Google Traffic, consistently beating it for time and route prediction(I've been driving with Android Auto and TomTom 5000 set up side by side for a while, and if TomTom suggests a detour it's usually a good one - take the one google suggests and you're getting stuck on some small street that google thinks you can drive through but you actually can't).
- singularity2001 9y ago
  Do you have an idea how much Siri sucked and how much people hate(d) her?
x0x0 9y ago
I think Job was responsible for the maps debacle. When you set hard deadlines for software release dates because you want to have tentpole features for IOS releases, and you mostly refuse to do widespread beta tests because then it won't be surprising, you're creating the maps debacle. Now I'm sure maps was harder than it looked, but I'd also bet lots of people on the inside knew that. They should have let the date slip.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  I honestly think Jobs thought that no problem is hard enough that you can't cajole or threaten staff into just working harder. You see it all through his career. We are hitting territory where there are now problems so hard that it will now take time to create the software. He never got that.
- simonh 9y ago
  This is all moot with respect to Jobs. He resigned due to health reasons 20 months before Apple Maps was launched and died almost a year before it was launched. They couldn't let the date slip, because the deal with Google was set to expire and not having a built-in maps application at all was not an option. The question you need to ask is, did a pushy management style make Apple Maps better than it would have been otherwise or worse. I think it's hard to argue that pushing the team hard didn't produce a better product than they would have had otherwise.

by IBM 9y ago

So Forstall and his direct report were responsible for two botched product launches, Siri and Maps. This is a big blow to the camp suggesting firing Forstall was a mistake.

tinus_hn 9y ago

Siri may have stalled now but it definitely wasn’t a botched launch. And Apple maps may not work great in all cases but it did succeed in forcing Google to provide decent maps on iOS. Before Apple Maps the vector maps were an Android exclusive.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sjwright 9y ago
Apple Maps is like Bing: almost as good as the #1 service, but almost is not enough to make anyone care. Apple Maps is remarkably good today, doing nearly all of the important things well. Here in Australia, it's on par with Google Maps for driving (slightly worse for novel route planning, slightly better for guidance) and when travelling to major world cities I've found Apple Maps is frequently better than Google Maps for navigating on foot and public transport.
- lolive 9y ago
  Am I the only one who feels that Apple Maps drains much less battery than Google Maps?
- jbg_ 9y ago
  when in major cities in China, my experience is that Google Maps is almost unusable (not due to the censorship, as I use a roaming SIM which avoids those problems, but rather due to wildly incorrect data, missing metro lines, etc), and Apple Maps is at least on par with the quality that Google Maps achieves in other countries, and often much better. I find it interesting that Google doesn't care enough to add the most recent several metro lines in (for example) Beijing or Shanghai, considering that many people try to use Google Maps in China when visiting and usually seem to end up switching to Apple Maps as a result of the complete trash the Google Maps experience is there. I wonder if they switch back when they go home.
- Angostura 9y ago
  almost is not enough to make anyone care. It's good enough that I use it primarily on my phone over Google Maps, in the UK
- ak217 9y ago
  In reality Google Maps is farther ahead of its competitors than most people realize. Google Maps now provides wholly personalized points of interest and attention affordances in its UI. It's also well on its way to 3D scanning and annotating POIs in every structure in the world, including very large pedestrian-only interiors. It also has realtime transit and traffic feeds, and more pedestrian trails and venue detail than anyone else. All of these are areas where its competition is not just behind, but falling further behind. But the personalization combined with superior POI search really illustrates how Google's competitors don't even have the platform to properly conceptualize the type of product Google is building, much less build it.
  - AlphaSite 9y ago
    I don’t know if I’d say most of these things matter enough at the end of the day, just to cherry pick, Apple has 3D, interiors, traffic, transit and pedestrians. Not everywhere, but it’s a problem which time and money can fix. Both of which apple has in abundance. Also anecdotally I’m not sure if I can agree that Google’s POIs are vastly better, mostly just different but of a similar low quality (which is to say neither pleases me).
    - tschwimmer 9y ago
      I can't speak to your usecase and preferences, but a cartographer points out how much richer Google Maps are here: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
  - gambiting 9y ago
    It still feels years behind any dedicated maps though(like TomTom), at least in those countries that I've tried it(UK, Spain, Poland, Germany). It's just consistently wrong about which roads are connected with each other, it doesn't know that certain roads are one-way or that you can't make a left/right turn out of a certain street. I've reported dozens of mistakes and they just don't get fixed. Every single morning on my way to work it tries to route me left on a no-left-turn intersection - I've literally filed a map correction report for this 3 or 4 times, still nothing. TomTom just don't have this issue, I've been using it for 5 years now and it's never done anything like that. Also TomTom Traffic is vastly better than Google Traffic, consistently beating it for time and route prediction(I've been driving with Android Auto and TomTom 5000 set up side by side for a while, and if TomTom suggests a detour it's usually a good one - take the one google suggests and you're getting stuck on some small street that google thinks you can drive through but you actually can't).
singularity2001 9y ago
Do you have an idea how much Siri sucked and how much people hate(d) her?

x0x0 9y ago

I think Job was responsible for the maps debacle. When you set hard deadlines for software release dates because you want to have tentpole features for IOS releases, and you mostly refuse to do widespread beta tests because then it won't be surprising, you're creating the maps debacle. Now I'm sure maps was harder than it looked, but I'd also bet lots of people on the inside knew that. They should have let the date slip.

chris_wot 9y ago
I honestly think Jobs thought that no problem is hard enough that you can't cajole or threaten staff into just working harder. You see it all through his career. We are hitting territory where there are now problems so hard that it will now take time to create the software. He never got that.
simonh 9y ago
This is all moot with respect to Jobs. He resigned due to health reasons 20 months before Apple Maps was launched and died almost a year before it was launched. They couldn't let the date slip, because the deal with Google was set to expire and not having a built-in maps application at all was not an option. The question you need to ask is, did a pushy management style make Apple Maps better than it would have been otherwise or worse. I think it's hard to argue that pushing the team hard didn't produce a better product than they would have had otherwise.