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Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google

Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation.

inferiorhuman 7y ago
Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation. You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Edit: Also this: https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-against-yelp-advances/ https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-agai...
- duskwuff 7y ago
  > You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Apple Maps doesn't use Yelp as a primary data source. It's used to add extra information (like reviews and photos) to existing points of interest, but the points of interest themselves are catalogued by Apple or their data providers. If you click around in Apple Maps a bit, you'll find that not all POIs have Yelp data. > Edit: Also this: [a lawsuit about social features in the Yelp app] I'm not sure how this is relevant.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    I'm not sure how this is relevant. Apple Maps steers you pretty hard towards the Yelp app if you want any business info.
metildaa 7y ago
Apple has taken good stances on most privacy issues, but Apple Maps is poorly run. The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. Apple instead hires a ton of contractors in Austin (and now India) to manually trace roads and guess business hours based on anonymized GPS traces. Apple lacks the scale of Google's army of unpaid Google Scouts (though they could easily fix this) and is wasting time on minutia rather than task their staff/contractors with sourcing & importing higher quality data regularly. One example would be importing county shapefiles, Apple could easily vault ahead of Google Maps if they diffed their map against each of the thousands of county maps in the USA, and they would be the only one regularly doing this (OSM does this occasionally, but not often). They could also scrape business data from each state and use that to produce more accurate & detailed business listings than Google, among many other low hanging fruit.
- jdminhbg 7y ago
  > The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. They weren't able to do this while they were still reliant on third-party data, because the contracts required them to submit those changes to the third-party providers first and then once they were accepted, get them in downstream updates. This is one of the main reasons they invested in building out their own data; they'll be able to accept user-sourced fixes much more quickly.
- givinguflac 7y ago
  There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps, I used to do it all the time. The best (?) part is they’ll notify you on your device when the issue is fixed, typically in a day or two. Nowadays the only time I’ve submitted a fix is in a really small town no one goes to.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps Which is? If I say "Hey Siri, how do I report an error with your navigation?" I get search results for how to report problems with Google Maps. And I definitely don't see any UI widgets that suggest that they're for reporting problems.
    - dizzydot 7y ago
      Click the information button "i" and then "Report an Issue".
      - inferiorhuman 7y ago
        Click the information button "i" and then "Report an Issue". There is no "i" button from the navigation screen and there's no "i" button from the search results either if you want to report entirely irrelevant results.
jamessb 7y ago
> that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps Is it? It was widely reported at the time (e.g., [1, 2]) that they were getting rid of Google Maps and creating Apple Maps because Google wanted to keep spoken turn-by-turn directions an Android-only feature. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair [2]: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verbal-turn-by-turn-directions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verb...

Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation.

inferiorhuman 7y ago

Apple have shown times and times again that they wouldn't let 3rd party do shady things into their own Maps app, that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps. That's a baseless accusation. You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Edit: Also this: https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-against-yelp-advances/ https://www.courthousenews.com/data-mining-privacy-suit-agai...

duskwuff 7y ago
> You're right, if you click around in the Maps app (desktop or mobile) it takes you straight to the shady source (yelp.com). Apple Maps doesn't use Yelp as a primary data source. It's used to add extra information (like reviews and photos) to existing points of interest, but the points of interest themselves are catalogued by Apple or their data providers. If you click around in Apple Maps a bit, you'll find that not all POIs have Yelp data. > Edit: Also this: [a lawsuit about social features in the Yelp app] I'm not sure how this is relevant.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  I'm not sure how this is relevant. Apple Maps steers you pretty hard towards the Yelp app if you want any business info.

metildaa 7y ago

Apple has taken good stances on most privacy issues, but Apple Maps is poorly run. The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. Apple instead hires a ton of contractors in Austin (and now India) to manually trace roads and guess business hours based on anonymized GPS traces. Apple lacks the scale of Google's army of unpaid Google Scouts (though they could easily fix this) and is wasting time on minutia rather than task their staff/contractors with sourcing & importing higher quality data regularly. One example would be importing county shapefiles, Apple could easily vault ahead of Google Maps if they diffed their map against each of the thousands of county maps in the USA, and they would be the only one regularly doing this (OSM does this occasionally, but not often). They could also scrape business data from each state and use that to produce more accurate & detailed business listings than Google, among many other low hanging fruit.

jdminhbg 7y ago
> The main failure is not having something akin to a Google Scout, whereby iOS users could submit info about businesses and streets that lack data. They weren't able to do this while they were still reliant on third-party data, because the contracts required them to submit those changes to the third-party providers first and then once they were accepted, get them in downstream updates. This is one of the main reasons they invested in building out their own data; they'll be able to accept user-sourced fixes much more quickly.
givinguflac 7y ago
There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps, I used to do it all the time. The best (?) part is they’ll notify you on your device when the issue is fixed, typically in a day or two. Nowadays the only time I’ve submitted a fix is in a really small town no one goes to.
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  There’s an easy way for users to submit feedback/fixes to Apple maps Which is? If I say "Hey Siri, how do I report an error with your navigation?" I get search results for how to report problems with Google Maps. And I definitely don't see any UI widgets that suggest that they're for reporting problems.
  - dizzydot 7y ago
    Click the information button "i" and then "Report an Issue".
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      Click the information button "i" and then "Report an Issue". There is no "i" button from the navigation screen and there's no "i" button from the search results either if you want to report entirely irrelevant results.

jamessb 7y ago

> that's the whole reason they got rid of Google Maps Is it? It was widely reported at the time (e.g., [1, 2]) that they were getting rid of Google Maps and creating Apple Maps because Google wanted to keep spoken turn-by-turn directions an Android-only feature. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair [2]: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verbal-turn-by-turn-directions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-jilted-google-maps-over-verb...