8 ms·

Apple Botches China and Japan Maps in iOS 6

158 points by allenwlee 14y ago

xster 14y ago
Another part of Steve playing god giving each country an island of its own? Did use iOS 6 in China a month ago... pure garbage. Mapquest was better 5 years ago.
- dlundqvist 14y ago
  Do you know if you used TomTom or AutoNavi maps? In my limited testing not long ago TomTom was pretty bad here in China and AutoNavi was like a black hole out side of it.
swang 14y ago
What a disaster for Apple. But of course Apple can't admit fault and the people who are screwed are the users. Steve would have never let this application go through.
- cryptoz 14y ago
  A lot of people have been wondering when Steve's absence will really show. I think Apple's been coasting just fine this last year, but iOS 6 is the first clear signal that they risk losing their way - or already have lost their way. Personally, as a Linux/Android person, I thought Apple would be fine and had diminished Steve's influence in my head. I may have been wrong.
- tvon 14y ago
  Eh, if he was gone before the iPhone 4 people would have said the same thing about "antennagate".
  - rmc 14y ago
    Exactly. Every botch Apple makes now will be attributed to Jobs being gone/.
  - swang 14y ago
    I think this is different because it was pretty difficult to reproduce that antennae problem if you never put your hand in that spot. This Maps app is the only Maps app now and it's missing a lot of features. Steve wouldn't have let this happen because it's a poor product and it's obvious (everyone uses Maps).
    - vvhn 14y ago
      ok then -MobileMe and that was a paid service. The only person who knows what Steve Jobs would or would not have done was Steve Jobs. Stop pretending like you (or anyone else) does.
    - tvon 14y ago
      Ping?
    - taligent 14y ago
      OSX, iPad, MobileMe, Motorola iTunes, Retina MBP etc. All have had major flaws in their 1.0 release. The only people who say "Steve wouldn't have let this happen" are people who know nothing about Apple or Steve Jobs. Hint: "real artists ship"
- mun2mun 14y ago
  Do you think Steve would have tested the new map application in all countries iPhones are sold? I am sure Steve would have taken same decision as he have already took 'thermonuclear` stance against Android hence indirectly Google.
- hrktb 14y ago
  Just as Steve never allowed a Japan launch with a botched autocomplete feature, he never let the phone ship without standard emoticons support, he never let a phone application that crashes when taking calls go through, just as he never would have replaced a locally working voice control system with a half botched network based voice assistant. Apple's 1.0 products were all just so polished until now. This is the first time perhaps that the new feature has to match solid expectations, but it's still a 1.0 feature. Sorry for the tone, but why all the drama on something that isn't either a surprise nor a unfixable problem...
  - taligent 14y ago
    I don't know what it is about Apple that invokes such delusion. Apple has had plenty of unpolished 1.0 releases including a pretty big one - OSX. I am wondering if it's because of Steve Jobs death that is causing people to almost look for something/anything that show signs of Apple's impending implosion.
- lawdawg 14y ago
  The fact that Steve let "Ping" go through means we should probably stop using the "Steve would have never let XYZ go through" meme ...
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    Ping wasn't exactly a mission-critical application, was it?
- ryannielsen 14y ago
  I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you didn't personally know SJ. If that's correct, then you can't say anything about what he would or wouldn't have done. Apple made mistakes and missteps with SJ at the helm; they'll make mistakes and missteps with someone else at the helm. It really is as simple as that.
olalonde 14y ago
To be fair, Google Maps in China isn't great either. See "Map View" vs "Satellite View" here: https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.637323,114.030954&spn=0.001513,0.00284&t=m&z=19 https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.637323,114.030954&spn=0.0.... It's off by a few hundred meters (the corresponding satellite view for the previous map view is actually here: https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.640363,114.025936&spn=0.003025,0.005681&t=h&z=18 https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.640363,114.025936&spn=0.0...). I assume Google is aware of this issue since they don't overlay map data over their satellite view like they do almost everywhere else around the world. The fact that they can't drive their Street View cars in China doesn't help either.
- prewett 14y ago
  My Chinese friends tell me that there is a government requirement that maps databases have an offset. I'm guessing the Google car isn't permitted to drive around in China, because they lease maps from Mapabc [1], which presumably has the offset. If you go to ditu.google.cn you get accurate maps without the offset (but it's only in Chinese). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps (see the "Copyright" section)
  - olalonde 14y ago
    Ha, that explains it. This kind of censorship wouldn't be unheard of in China and it seems much more plausible than Google doing such a poor job.
  - dlundqvist 14y ago
    A problem I had while driving on ChongMing Island, just outside of Shanghai, less than a year ago was that although maps in Google Maps was great, unfortunately many of the roads where not built in the south part of island by then. So ended up at lots of dead ends and huge construction sites. Not saying AutoNavi is better in that regard, but will give more testing. From my limited testing though it seemed to handle searches in Chinese a tad better (hopefully).
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > there is a government requirement that maps databases have an offset. What do you mean by offset? Mapping companies are forced to make their data be inaccurate?
acuozzo 14y ago
Don't forget: release early, release often is TheRightWayToDoIt!
- olalonde 14y ago
  This doesn't seem a very good strategy for a hardware product such as the iPhone though and definitely not the modus operandi of Apple.
  - cstejerean 14y ago
    Releasing once a year and making improvements over time is definitely the modus operandi at Apple when it comes to iOS software and devices.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mun2mun 14y ago
  Problem is that it is the content that Apple have no control. Main reason of Apple's great user experience is full control over every aspect of hardware/application. Apple should have heavily tested TomTom's map data across various country before ditching Google map. Ironically Apple is getting same criticism as Microsoft got over the year for BSOD in Windows(most of the time it was for faulty driver/hardware which Microsoft didn't control).
  - hoi 14y ago
    The fault isn;t tomtom's map data, it's all the layers on top that Apple have to add to it. Tom Tom's data (they acquired Teleatlas) is one of the two best resources (the other being Navteq) for map data. How you use the map data is the problem and Apple haven't got it right this time, I would guess most of the testing was completed in the USA, so I would expect most major cities to be fairly fine. It's once you go internationally it gets bad. I used to work on these types of issue half a decade ago (2007), and one way of testing the accuracy is to stream GPS data in and test that it worked ok. We did this by - a)Test programme that could load and play GPS commutes. Connect to the phone as a bluetooth GPS device. PLay the commute (from multiple countries. b) on the phone - intercept the screen signal, using another programme, check the screen automatically to make sure the map was on the road (reading for road names and POI for more robust testing) We could run mapping/navi tests around the world without having to leave our desks. (This testing was done for the Nokia N95/N82.. I left in 2008)
mootothemax 14y ago
This is making me seriously reconsider buying an iPhone 5 when it becomes available here in Poland next week. Maps are a vital part of my smartphone activities, and Google's offering have been really impressive. If Apple can't get this right for a market as big and smartphone-friendly as Japan, I'm struggling to think how they'll do so for Poland. Edit: just to clarify, I don't care in the slightest about the 3d-image errors, but the problems with directions look incredibly painful, missing roads will be a huge hindrance, and the disappearance of points of interests, well, that's just plain annoying.
- denniedarko 14y ago
  The easy workaround for the moment would be to place a shortcut to maps.google.com on your iPhone home screen. Then you don't need to use the default maps if you feel they aren't up to scratch.
  - mootothemax 14y ago
    The easy workaround for the moment would be to place a shortcut to maps.google.com on your iPhone home screen. Not owning an iPhone at present, how well does Google Map's website work on the iPhone? Any integration with current location, direction I'm facing and all that kind of stuff?
    - 46Bit 14y ago
      The website works terribly. You can use it, but it's far slower to pan than the old Maps app and you seem to have to tap a few times for half the interface to function properly.
  - jedberg 14y ago
    People keep saying this, but it isn't anywhere close. The web interface is buggy (it doesn't respond to all the clicks) and much more importantly, if you click on an address in any other app, it will take you to Apple maps. A good chunk of my navigating is looking up addresses in other apps (like Yelp) and then clicking on them. This is now horribly broken and there is no workaround.
hoi 14y ago
They made another mistake for Hong Kong.. The maps are in English only... many Taxi drivers won't be able to take you where you want because they only know it in Chinese and pointing it out on an English only map doesn't help.
- objclxt 14y ago
  You'll have "Display English Names Only" enabled. If you go into the Settings app, select "Maps", and make sure "Always English" is set to Off you'll get non-English street names for non-English countries (Hong Kong, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, etc etc).
  - hoi 14y ago
    Yep, it works, but not easily usable because for non chinese readers, you would have to type the search in English, and then leave the app to switch it to chinese for the taxi driver (and switch it back to English to do your next search).
w1ntermute 14y ago
This is especially galling for the Japanese. Not only are they valuable customers due to their frequent cell phone purchases and rabid desire for brand-name products (including Apple, of course), but a quarter of the Japanese population (and the main target market) lives in Tokyo, where people are almost entirely dependent on public transit to get around. With iOS 6, there are no built in directions! Of course, Apple apologists will jump to say that you can just get a 3rd party app, but that simply doesn't cut it. Google Maps provided a door-to-door solution for directions, which makes a big difference when you don't know what the closest train station to an address is. Moreover, the ability to see the total door-to-door time and compare it to the cost of the trip made it easy to select the optimal route (based on a combination of price and time). And here are some of the amusing mistakes in the database[0]: * "McDonalds" and "Pachinko Gundam" train stations * A station not attached to any railway lines * No Osaka station (this is a really big station) * Place names in Chinese and Korean * Haneda Airport (busiest airport in Japan) is mislabeled as 「大王製紙」 ― "Great King Paper Manufacturer" (this one has gotten a lot of laughs) * Narita Airport (2nd busiest airport) completely missing For those who can read Japanese, there's a good 2chan thread archive[1] of Japanese netizens taking the piss out of Apple Maps. 0: http://www.japanmobiletech.com/2012/09/ios-6-maps-fail-in-japan.html http://www.japanmobiletech.com/2012/09/ios-6-maps-fail-in-ja... 1: http://gahalog.2chblog.jp/archives/52132765.html http://gahalog.2chblog.jp/archives/52132765.html
- flatline3 14y ago
  > Of course, Apple apologists will jump to say that you can just get a 3rd party app ... I don't think Apple "apologists" will be jumping in on this one. In this particular case, Apple has, objectively, significantly reduced (or outright eliminated) the usability of a core feature of their phones. Anyone in a significant population center will find this to be incredibly irksome, and by the very definition of population centers, there are a lot of people in significant population centers.
  - adgar 14y ago
    Just look around this thread. Apologists abound. HN isn't immune to worthless fanboy comments.
po 14y ago
Quite annoying. Here are some alternatives for people (like me) living in Japan: * Bookmark the normal maps.google.com page on the front page * Foursquare * Japan Map - 'Free for a limited time' https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/japan-map-itsumo-navi/id306683384 https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/japan-map-itsumo-navi/id3066...

158 points by allenwlee 14y ago

xster 14y ago

Another part of Steve playing god giving each country an island of its own? Did use iOS 6 in China a month ago... pure garbage. Mapquest was better 5 years ago.

dlundqvist 14y ago
Do you know if you used TomTom or AutoNavi maps? In my limited testing not long ago TomTom was pretty bad here in China and AutoNavi was like a black hole out side of it.

swang 14y ago

What a disaster for Apple. But of course Apple can't admit fault and the people who are screwed are the users. Steve would have never let this application go through.

cryptoz 14y ago
A lot of people have been wondering when Steve's absence will really show. I think Apple's been coasting just fine this last year, but iOS 6 is the first clear signal that they risk losing their way - or already have lost their way. Personally, as a Linux/Android person, I thought Apple would be fine and had diminished Steve's influence in my head. I may have been wrong.
tvon 14y ago
Eh, if he was gone before the iPhone 4 people would have said the same thing about "antennagate".
- rmc 14y ago
  Exactly. Every botch Apple makes now will be attributed to Jobs being gone/.
- swang 14y ago
  I think this is different because it was pretty difficult to reproduce that antennae problem if you never put your hand in that spot. This Maps app is the only Maps app now and it's missing a lot of features. Steve wouldn't have let this happen because it's a poor product and it's obvious (everyone uses Maps).
  - vvhn 14y ago
    ok then -MobileMe and that was a paid service. The only person who knows what Steve Jobs would or would not have done was Steve Jobs. Stop pretending like you (or anyone else) does.
  - tvon 14y ago
    Ping?
  - taligent 14y ago
    OSX, iPad, MobileMe, Motorola iTunes, Retina MBP etc. All have had major flaws in their 1.0 release. The only people who say "Steve wouldn't have let this happen" are people who know nothing about Apple or Steve Jobs. Hint: "real artists ship"
mun2mun 14y ago
Do you think Steve would have tested the new map application in all countries iPhones are sold? I am sure Steve would have taken same decision as he have already took 'thermonuclear` stance against Android hence indirectly Google.
hrktb 14y ago
Just as Steve never allowed a Japan launch with a botched autocomplete feature, he never let the phone ship without standard emoticons support, he never let a phone application that crashes when taking calls go through, just as he never would have replaced a locally working voice control system with a half botched network based voice assistant. Apple's 1.0 products were all just so polished until now. This is the first time perhaps that the new feature has to match solid expectations, but it's still a 1.0 feature. Sorry for the tone, but why all the drama on something that isn't either a surprise nor a unfixable problem...
- taligent 14y ago
  I don't know what it is about Apple that invokes such delusion. Apple has had plenty of unpolished 1.0 releases including a pretty big one - OSX. I am wondering if it's because of Steve Jobs death that is causing people to almost look for something/anything that show signs of Apple's impending implosion.
lawdawg 14y ago
The fact that Steve let "Ping" go through means we should probably stop using the "Steve would have never let XYZ go through" meme ...
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Ping wasn't exactly a mission-critical application, was it?
ryannielsen 14y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you didn't personally know SJ. If that's correct, then you can't say anything about what he would or wouldn't have done. Apple made mistakes and missteps with SJ at the helm; they'll make mistakes and missteps with someone else at the helm. It really is as simple as that.

olalonde 14y ago

To be fair, Google Maps in China isn't great either. See "Map View" vs "Satellite View" here: https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.637323,114.030954&spn=0.001513,0.00284&t=m&z=19 https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.637323,114.030954&spn=0.0.... It's off by a few hundred meters (the corresponding satellite view for the previous map view is actually here: https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.640363,114.025936&spn=0.003025,0.005681&t=h&z=18 https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.640363,114.025936&spn=0.0...). I assume Google is aware of this issue since they don't overlay map data over their satellite view like they do almost everywhere else around the world. The fact that they can't drive their Street View cars in China doesn't help either.

prewett 14y ago
My Chinese friends tell me that there is a government requirement that maps databases have an offset. I'm guessing the Google car isn't permitted to drive around in China, because they lease maps from Mapabc [1], which presumably has the offset. If you go to ditu.google.cn you get accurate maps without the offset (but it's only in Chinese). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps (see the "Copyright" section)
- olalonde 14y ago
  Ha, that explains it. This kind of censorship wouldn't be unheard of in China and it seems much more plausible than Google doing such a poor job.
- dlundqvist 14y ago
  A problem I had while driving on ChongMing Island, just outside of Shanghai, less than a year ago was that although maps in Google Maps was great, unfortunately many of the roads where not built in the south part of island by then. So ended up at lots of dead ends and huge construction sites. Not saying AutoNavi is better in that regard, but will give more testing. From my limited testing though it seemed to handle searches in Chinese a tad better (hopefully).
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > there is a government requirement that maps databases have an offset. What do you mean by offset? Mapping companies are forced to make their data be inaccurate?

acuozzo 14y ago

Don't forget: release early, release often is TheRightWayToDoIt!

olalonde 14y ago
This doesn't seem a very good strategy for a hardware product such as the iPhone though and definitely not the modus operandi of Apple.
- cstejerean 14y ago
  Releasing once a year and making improvements over time is definitely the modus operandi at Apple when it comes to iOS software and devices.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mun2mun 14y ago
Problem is that it is the content that Apple have no control. Main reason of Apple's great user experience is full control over every aspect of hardware/application. Apple should have heavily tested TomTom's map data across various country before ditching Google map. Ironically Apple is getting same criticism as Microsoft got over the year for BSOD in Windows(most of the time it was for faulty driver/hardware which Microsoft didn't control).
- hoi 14y ago
  The fault isn;t tomtom's map data, it's all the layers on top that Apple have to add to it. Tom Tom's data (they acquired Teleatlas) is one of the two best resources (the other being Navteq) for map data. How you use the map data is the problem and Apple haven't got it right this time, I would guess most of the testing was completed in the USA, so I would expect most major cities to be fairly fine. It's once you go internationally it gets bad. I used to work on these types of issue half a decade ago (2007), and one way of testing the accuracy is to stream GPS data in and test that it worked ok. We did this by - a)Test programme that could load and play GPS commutes. Connect to the phone as a bluetooth GPS device. PLay the commute (from multiple countries. b) on the phone - intercept the screen signal, using another programme, check the screen automatically to make sure the map was on the road (reading for road names and POI for more robust testing) We could run mapping/navi tests around the world without having to leave our desks. (This testing was done for the Nokia N95/N82.. I left in 2008)

mootothemax 14y ago

This is making me seriously reconsider buying an iPhone 5 when it becomes available here in Poland next week. Maps are a vital part of my smartphone activities, and Google's offering have been really impressive. If Apple can't get this right for a market as big and smartphone-friendly as Japan, I'm struggling to think how they'll do so for Poland. Edit: just to clarify, I don't care in the slightest about the 3d-image errors, but the problems with directions look incredibly painful, missing roads will be a huge hindrance, and the disappearance of points of interests, well, that's just plain annoying.

denniedarko 14y ago
The easy workaround for the moment would be to place a shortcut to maps.google.com on your iPhone home screen. Then you don't need to use the default maps if you feel they aren't up to scratch.
- mootothemax 14y ago
  The easy workaround for the moment would be to place a shortcut to maps.google.com on your iPhone home screen. Not owning an iPhone at present, how well does Google Map's website work on the iPhone? Any integration with current location, direction I'm facing and all that kind of stuff?
  - 46Bit 14y ago
    The website works terribly. You can use it, but it's far slower to pan than the old Maps app and you seem to have to tap a few times for half the interface to function properly.
- jedberg 14y ago
  People keep saying this, but it isn't anywhere close. The web interface is buggy (it doesn't respond to all the clicks) and much more importantly, if you click on an address in any other app, it will take you to Apple maps. A good chunk of my navigating is looking up addresses in other apps (like Yelp) and then clicking on them. This is now horribly broken and there is no workaround.

hoi 14y ago

They made another mistake for Hong Kong.. The maps are in English only... many Taxi drivers won't be able to take you where you want because they only know it in Chinese and pointing it out on an English only map doesn't help.

objclxt 14y ago
You'll have "Display English Names Only" enabled. If you go into the Settings app, select "Maps", and make sure "Always English" is set to Off you'll get non-English street names for non-English countries (Hong Kong, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, etc etc).
- hoi 14y ago
  Yep, it works, but not easily usable because for non chinese readers, you would have to type the search in English, and then leave the app to switch it to chinese for the taxi driver (and switch it back to English to do your next search).

w1ntermute 14y ago

This is especially galling for the Japanese. Not only are they valuable customers due to their frequent cell phone purchases and rabid desire for brand-name products (including Apple, of course), but a quarter of the Japanese population (and the main target market) lives in Tokyo, where people are almost entirely dependent on public transit to get around. With iOS 6, there are no built in directions! Of course, Apple apologists will jump to say that you can just get a 3rd party app, but that simply doesn't cut it. Google Maps provided a door-to-door solution for directions, which makes a big difference when you don't know what the closest train station to an address is. Moreover, the ability to see the total door-to-door time and compare it to the cost of the trip made it easy to select the optimal route (based on a combination of price and time). And here are some of the amusing mistakes in the database[0]: * "McDonalds" and "Pachinko Gundam" train stations * A station not attached to any railway lines * No Osaka station (this is a really big station) * Place names in Chinese and Korean * Haneda Airport (busiest airport in Japan) is mislabeled as 「大王製紙」 ― "Great King Paper Manufacturer" (this one has gotten a lot of laughs) * Narita Airport (2nd busiest airport) completely missing For those who can read Japanese, there's a good 2chan thread archive[1] of Japanese netizens taking the piss out of Apple Maps. 0: http://www.japanmobiletech.com/2012/09/ios-6-maps-fail-in-japan.html http://www.japanmobiletech.com/2012/09/ios-6-maps-fail-in-ja... 1: http://gahalog.2chblog.jp/archives/52132765.html http://gahalog.2chblog.jp/archives/52132765.html

flatline3 14y ago
> Of course, Apple apologists will jump to say that you can just get a 3rd party app ... I don't think Apple "apologists" will be jumping in on this one. In this particular case, Apple has, objectively, significantly reduced (or outright eliminated) the usability of a core feature of their phones. Anyone in a significant population center will find this to be incredibly irksome, and by the very definition of population centers, there are a lot of people in significant population centers.
- adgar 14y ago
  Just look around this thread. Apologists abound. HN isn't immune to worthless fanboy comments.

po 14y ago

Quite annoying. Here are some alternatives for people (like me) living in Japan: * Bookmark the normal maps.google.com page on the front page * Foursquare * Japan Map - 'Free for a limited time' https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/japan-map-itsumo-navi/id306683384 https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/japan-map-itsumo-navi/id3066...