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What a lot of hot air. The killer aspect of Google Maps on Android is the turn by turn navigation with traffic. That saves me hundreds of £ a year and is just b

What a lot of hot air. The killer aspect of Google Maps on Android is the turn by turn navigation with traffic. That saves me hundreds of £ a year and is just brilliant. "but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience" I'm sorry, but what a lot of bullshit.

fierarul 14y ago
Either you have a fleet of trucks or you are overestimating how much Android's navigation is saving you. When my GPS broke down, I didn't start using my phone, I just bought another GPS for 99 euro. (And funny thing is the old one has just some loose wires and could be fixed a few months later by an electrician.)
- sohn 14y ago
  We're really happy for you, you have so much money you can afford to waste it. But normal people doesn't.
- stanleydrew 14y ago
  It seems awfully strange to nit pick about the savings. So what if it's saving him only £50 per year or whatever? Can we agree that it's nonzero? Ok great. Now we can move on to addressing the meat of the comment. Which is that iOS users have been denied the luxury of excellent and free turn-by-turn navigation available on Android, and this maps update does nothing to address that.
  - fierarul 14y ago
    To me, using navigation on the phone would be more of a convenience than a matter of savings. The 99 euro GPS I was talking about was the cheapest in store and it even had Traffic Message Channel (TMC), something the older one didn't. Also, the GPS would get super hot in the windshield -- I would have never used my phone instead! Anyhow, all that out of the way, I guess you are right that turn by turn would be nice on iOS.
  - pcl 14y ago
    I've always assumed that iOS doesn't do live turn-by-turn directions in their native maps app in part because of licensing terms encumbering the routing data. Moving away from Google to their own algorithms (or to direct deals with other data providers) could free them of those terms. If so, I'd be surprised if they didn't add turn-by-turn directions to the app. Of course, they'd undercut all the paid turn-by-turn apps, but they haven't been shy about that sort of thing in the past.
- chrisrhoden 14y ago
  I think you're forgetting how much a device of similar capability to the Android navigation cost before it was free on most smartphones. And subscription costs. Your inexpensive GPS unit was put on perpetual clearance by the app you're disparaging.
  - fierarul 14y ago
    I am glad that free mobile apps are putting a cap on GPS makers' profits! But since a mobile app depends on a mobile data plan I could never use it when I need the GPS the most: when I'm abroad. Within the US I guess it would make sense to start using you phone and your data plan as a GPS, but within EU it would get really expensive really fast. That's why a dedicated GPS unit seemed to me like a better idea.
    - chrisrhoden 14y ago
      My point is that the fact that the app exists is the reason you didn't pay 250 euro plus 99 euro every year for the privilege of getting updated maps for that unit.
    - MisterBastahrd 14y ago
      Google is doing with their Android platform what Microsoft did when it decided to bundle IE with Windows. Funny how MS got blasted by every geek in existence back then, but nowadays it's so commonplace that companies are lauded for it.
      - chrisrhoden 14y ago
        I am not sure I understand - Microsoft was blasted because it destroyed the commercial browser market by offering a superior product for free? No. Microsoft was blasted because you had no choice in the matter, even if you wanted to use a different browser than IE, there was no way to make anything but IE behave well with the rest of the OS.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- nobleach 14y ago
  The genius in Android's system is not necessarily the navigation. It's the METHOD for performing the navigation. Google parses your email and texts for potential addresses that you can click to launch navigation. Every other GPS system, including the expensive Navigon package I bought for my iPhone ask you State? City? Street? Number? Oh how I'd love for someone to be able to text me their address while I'm driving and be able to click the link and be automatically routed. Google's upper hand is in integration. If I had a Tom Tom or a Garmin that could read my email or texts and then start navigating, I'd buy it.
borlak 14y ago
Google maps could definitely be improved upon. it makes mistakes all the time, and the huge feature they brag about -- being cloud based / up to date -- is never up to date enough to really matter. there has been construction going on for months on a major road in my city, and google maps still pretends it is open. so much for the cloud.
- Heliosmaster 14y ago
  openstreetmaps is much faster for that kind of things :) not unlike wikipedia is much faster at updating than a normal encyclopedia, or something like that.
  - tonfa 14y ago
    I've been wondering, how long does it take for a change to go from an edit in OSM, to being live in a routing app using OSM data? (If such an app exists) Editing something is usually fast, having it percolate to all users of the data is much longer (for GMaps, but I expect it's similar for OSM).
    - Heliosmaster 14y ago
      it depends: some tiles are updated very frequently for visualization. My experience is that it is no more than a hour or so to see the changes live. Therefore if somebody pulls from OSM, it will get the new version.
roc 14y ago
Yeah, I can't say I've ever had a problem with Google's maps on iOS being unreliable, slow or ... whatever problem is supposedly corrected by a 'cleaner' app. I'm sure Apple could improve those things and I may well notice and appreciate the improvements. But I'd much rather see turn by turn navigation and useful traffic data. [1] [1] By useful, I just mean something proactive and actionable. Allowing me to manually scan my route to look for yellow and red highlights doesn't really help. And by the time I know I'm in a jam, it's not a huge help to know how far the jam is. It's nice, but I'm already in the jam. It would be awesome if we could get something that takes a programmed commute and sends notifications about backups not yet encountered and offers alternate routes -- taking into account the full traffic situation. So that if the 'obvious' detour is already also backed up, it doesn't send me that way either.
- randomfool 14y ago
  Google's maps on Android kicks iOS's butt- the vector rendering makes it much much faster, turn-by-turn navigation and offline mode. In case you aren't aware, the Android version doesn't download the image tiles, rather it downloads the raw data and renders the streets and everything client side. This makes it much faster to get the data and makes a smoother zoom experience.
  - roc 14y ago
    That sounds like a better way to do it, I'm just saying that I've never found myself really waiting for map tiles unless the network connection itself was awful. I'm sure less data would mean more data connections squeak into the usable column, but I'm rarely in those places, so it's just not high on my list. The turn by turn, though, would be much more welcome. Though now that I think about it, turn by turn would increase my use dramatically and probably expose more poor network situations where the client-side rendering would make a difference.
    - willyt 14y ago
      I always seem to lose data connection just when I really need it with google maps on iOS. The whole data everywhere thing works great in big mostly flat low density cities like LA but it doesn't seem to work so well in London and barely works at all in mountainous rural areas. It would be great if the mapping data were stored on the phone.
muraiki 14y ago
I remember when my wife got her iPhone 4S. We were heading out to somewhere and, having an Android phone for work and seeing that her iPhone had a Google Maps application, figured that we could use her phone to help us get to our destination. Imagine my surprise when not only did it not have turn by turn navigation, but it didn't recalculate the route when we made a wrong turn and were clearly driving off of the calculated path. I couldn't believe that such a feature was missing on the iPhone version of Google Maps. Is there some reason that this is the case? I don't know enough about mapping and phones to know if this is due to some technical limitation or not.
- tonfa 14y ago
  > Is there some reason that this is the case? The app is made by Apple, not Google, though it is using Google's API. So it isn't really "Google" Maps.
- hej 14y ago
  I’m sure Apple would if the could. They obviously can’t, though. I can’t imagine that Google would allow them to implement those features. So Google is the holdup. Apple uses Google’s API and is completely dependent on them in what they can do. (Hey, that’s their right. No problem with that. You don’t have to allow your competitor everything.) That is exactly the reason why Apple has to do it on their own. It might be worse than Google Maps (at least in the beginning or forever), but at least it will allow for progress.
  - chrisrhoden 14y ago
    Google has made it very clear that they want to build Google Maps for iOS and provide the same experience as is available on Android. It was, for a long time, an explicit no-no to provide turn-by-turn navigation in an iOS app.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      There's no excuse now, though. A top ten app on the store is MotionX Drive, there are even apps by Navigon and TomTom out there too. Google could come along and eat all of their collective lunches if they'd just do it.

fierarul 14y ago

Either you have a fleet of trucks or you are overestimating how much Android's navigation is saving you. When my GPS broke down, I didn't start using my phone, I just bought another GPS for 99 euro. (And funny thing is the old one has just some loose wires and could be fixed a few months later by an electrician.)

sohn 14y ago
We're really happy for you, you have so much money you can afford to waste it. But normal people doesn't.
stanleydrew 14y ago
It seems awfully strange to nit pick about the savings. So what if it's saving him only £50 per year or whatever? Can we agree that it's nonzero? Ok great. Now we can move on to addressing the meat of the comment. Which is that iOS users have been denied the luxury of excellent and free turn-by-turn navigation available on Android, and this maps update does nothing to address that.
- fierarul 14y ago
  To me, using navigation on the phone would be more of a convenience than a matter of savings. The 99 euro GPS I was talking about was the cheapest in store and it even had Traffic Message Channel (TMC), something the older one didn't. Also, the GPS would get super hot in the windshield -- I would have never used my phone instead! Anyhow, all that out of the way, I guess you are right that turn by turn would be nice on iOS.
- pcl 14y ago
  I've always assumed that iOS doesn't do live turn-by-turn directions in their native maps app in part because of licensing terms encumbering the routing data. Moving away from Google to their own algorithms (or to direct deals with other data providers) could free them of those terms. If so, I'd be surprised if they didn't add turn-by-turn directions to the app. Of course, they'd undercut all the paid turn-by-turn apps, but they haven't been shy about that sort of thing in the past.
chrisrhoden 14y ago
I think you're forgetting how much a device of similar capability to the Android navigation cost before it was free on most smartphones. And subscription costs. Your inexpensive GPS unit was put on perpetual clearance by the app you're disparaging.
- fierarul 14y ago
  I am glad that free mobile apps are putting a cap on GPS makers' profits! But since a mobile app depends on a mobile data plan I could never use it when I need the GPS the most: when I'm abroad. Within the US I guess it would make sense to start using you phone and your data plan as a GPS, but within EU it would get really expensive really fast. That's why a dedicated GPS unit seemed to me like a better idea.
  - chrisrhoden 14y ago
    My point is that the fact that the app exists is the reason you didn't pay 250 euro plus 99 euro every year for the privilege of getting updated maps for that unit.
  - MisterBastahrd 14y ago
    Google is doing with their Android platform what Microsoft did when it decided to bundle IE with Windows. Funny how MS got blasted by every geek in existence back then, but nowadays it's so commonplace that companies are lauded for it.
    - chrisrhoden 14y ago
      I am not sure I understand - Microsoft was blasted because it destroyed the commercial browser market by offering a superior product for free? No. Microsoft was blasted because you had no choice in the matter, even if you wanted to use a different browser than IE, there was no way to make anything but IE behave well with the rest of the OS.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nobleach 14y ago
The genius in Android's system is not necessarily the navigation. It's the METHOD for performing the navigation. Google parses your email and texts for potential addresses that you can click to launch navigation. Every other GPS system, including the expensive Navigon package I bought for my iPhone ask you State? City? Street? Number? Oh how I'd love for someone to be able to text me their address while I'm driving and be able to click the link and be automatically routed. Google's upper hand is in integration. If I had a Tom Tom or a Garmin that could read my email or texts and then start navigating, I'd buy it.

borlak 14y ago

Google maps could definitely be improved upon. it makes mistakes all the time, and the huge feature they brag about -- being cloud based / up to date -- is never up to date enough to really matter. there has been construction going on for months on a major road in my city, and google maps still pretends it is open. so much for the cloud.

Heliosmaster 14y ago
openstreetmaps is much faster for that kind of things :) not unlike wikipedia is much faster at updating than a normal encyclopedia, or something like that.
- tonfa 14y ago
  I've been wondering, how long does it take for a change to go from an edit in OSM, to being live in a routing app using OSM data? (If such an app exists) Editing something is usually fast, having it percolate to all users of the data is much longer (for GMaps, but I expect it's similar for OSM).
  - Heliosmaster 14y ago
    it depends: some tiles are updated very frequently for visualization. My experience is that it is no more than a hour or so to see the changes live. Therefore if somebody pulls from OSM, it will get the new version.

roc 14y ago

Yeah, I can't say I've ever had a problem with Google's maps on iOS being unreliable, slow or ... whatever problem is supposedly corrected by a 'cleaner' app. I'm sure Apple could improve those things and I may well notice and appreciate the improvements. But I'd much rather see turn by turn navigation and useful traffic data. [1] [1] By useful, I just mean something proactive and actionable. Allowing me to manually scan my route to look for yellow and red highlights doesn't really help. And by the time I know I'm in a jam, it's not a huge help to know how far the jam is. It's nice, but I'm already in the jam. It would be awesome if we could get something that takes a programmed commute and sends notifications about backups not yet encountered and offers alternate routes -- taking into account the full traffic situation. So that if the 'obvious' detour is already also backed up, it doesn't send me that way either.

randomfool 14y ago
Google's maps on Android kicks iOS's butt- the vector rendering makes it much much faster, turn-by-turn navigation and offline mode. In case you aren't aware, the Android version doesn't download the image tiles, rather it downloads the raw data and renders the streets and everything client side. This makes it much faster to get the data and makes a smoother zoom experience.
- roc 14y ago
  That sounds like a better way to do it, I'm just saying that I've never found myself really waiting for map tiles unless the network connection itself was awful. I'm sure less data would mean more data connections squeak into the usable column, but I'm rarely in those places, so it's just not high on my list. The turn by turn, though, would be much more welcome. Though now that I think about it, turn by turn would increase my use dramatically and probably expose more poor network situations where the client-side rendering would make a difference.
  - willyt 14y ago
    I always seem to lose data connection just when I really need it with google maps on iOS. The whole data everywhere thing works great in big mostly flat low density cities like LA but it doesn't seem to work so well in London and barely works at all in mountainous rural areas. It would be great if the mapping data were stored on the phone.

muraiki 14y ago

I remember when my wife got her iPhone 4S. We were heading out to somewhere and, having an Android phone for work and seeing that her iPhone had a Google Maps application, figured that we could use her phone to help us get to our destination. Imagine my surprise when not only did it not have turn by turn navigation, but it didn't recalculate the route when we made a wrong turn and were clearly driving off of the calculated path. I couldn't believe that such a feature was missing on the iPhone version of Google Maps. Is there some reason that this is the case? I don't know enough about mapping and phones to know if this is due to some technical limitation or not.

tonfa 14y ago
> Is there some reason that this is the case? The app is made by Apple, not Google, though it is using Google's API. So it isn't really "Google" Maps.
hej 14y ago
I’m sure Apple would if the could. They obviously can’t, though. I can’t imagine that Google would allow them to implement those features. So Google is the holdup. Apple uses Google’s API and is completely dependent on them in what they can do. (Hey, that’s their right. No problem with that. You don’t have to allow your competitor everything.) That is exactly the reason why Apple has to do it on their own. It might be worse than Google Maps (at least in the beginning or forever), but at least it will allow for progress.
- chrisrhoden 14y ago
  Google has made it very clear that they want to build Google Maps for iOS and provide the same experience as is available on Android. It was, for a long time, an explicit no-no to provide turn-by-turn navigation in an iOS app.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    There's no excuse now, though. A top ten app on the store is MotionX Drive, there are even apps by Navigon and TomTom out there too. Google could come along and eat all of their collective lunches if they'd just do it.