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I suspect it may be california-centrism. Bikes are a vital mode in Europe and many other parts of the road. In california car is king, bikes are either recreati
by graeme 7y ago
I suspect it may be california-centrism. Bikes are a vital mode in Europe and many other parts of the road. In california car is king, bikes are either recreational or for hardcore commutes.
You can see similar assumptions in how Siri is designed. (“Users only speak one language at a time”) or the effectiveness of multilanguage support in autocorrect. Most people outside north america use their own language + english fairly frequently. At least those in apple’s customer demographic.
- toasterlovin 7y agoOr maybe they’re busy rolling this massive update out (they’ve barely completed the US and have yet to finish Europe).
- robin_reala 7y agoYet to start with Europe.
- klodolph 7y agoSure, there’s plenty of California-centrism, but from where I’m sitting, a multilingual Siri sounds like a massive technical challenge. I also remember how long it took Google to roll out bike directions, and just how awful it was at first, when it was rolling out. Bicycle directions are more challenging than directions for cars, public transit, and walking. I’m just speaking from my own personal experience, here. In every city I’ve lived in, I’ve had to test out different bicycle commuting routes until I found one which I liked. Walking and driving I will just take the fastest route and be done with it. Everyone has different preferences for bicycling for how much elevation climb they can handle, how much traffic they tolerate, etc.
- chapium 7y agoCounterpoint: google has bike directions and exists in California.
- PascLeRasc 7y agoGoogle Maps' icon is also a location pin, while Apple Maps' is a highway. Google also has 21% of its local staff bike to work [1]. Apple's campus is so far that you can't realistically live in SF proper, you mostly have to drive. These kind of different motivations and cultures bleed through to their products. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/this-heat-map-shows-a-fundamental-problem-of-working-at-google-2015-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/this-heat-map-shows-a-fundam...
- advisedwang 7y agoGoogle has much more of a non-CA and non-US engineering presence than Apple.
- karmelapple 7y agoBicycles are very popular in many places in California; UC Santa Barbara has an amazing bike culture.