21 ms·

The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

837 points by Maakuth 14y ago

Aloisius 14y ago
Since Apple doesn't have a website for their maps, just knowing what is broken is going to be a problem for them. I wonder if they will put in a map editor in their next version to crowd source fixes or at least bug reports.
- ehamberg 14y ago
  It already has that, to some extent. When you click somewhere, one of the options you get is “Report a Problem” which lets you say that something is missing or indicate where a point of interest _should_ be by placing a pin.
grey-area 14y ago
What confuses me about Apple's choice of maps here is why they didn't go with OpenStreetMap? It was the perfect opportunity to leapfrog Google and help the open source community at the same time, and they would have had more control over the data - as it is they are beholden to TomTom and other providers to try to get things fixed, or will have to try to merge future map updates with their own patches. As it is they are going to see increasing controversy as people realise just how bad the maps they have bought are, and that this was changed for political reasons, not for the good of their users, and there's very little they can do about it. They seem to have tried out OSM in the photos app (with a horrible skin), but to have used purchased data for the street maps. Perhaps they felt it wasn't good enough in some locations they tested? In my experience OSM is superior to Google maps in many locations (even in parts of central London), and it is of course continually improving.
- vondur 14y ago
  I was under the impression that Apple did make use of Open Street Maps. http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3078987/apple-tomtom-openstreemap-ios-6-maps-app http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3078987/apple-tomtom-opens...
  - grey-area 14y ago
    They're not using OSM data most of the time, I suspect it's just for a small amount of data - the OSM credit is a tiny one amongst a whole load of others on their credits page for the maps app. http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html It's not clear exactly where they get all the data, and what is used where, but simple searches like Paddington Station are not working (Paddington does, but not Paddington Station), and I'm sure they're not using the OSM vector data (in the UK at least) as it differs and is less complete than OSM in rural areas for example. It would be interesting to know just how they've put their datasets together and what they used from where, but it looks like they use tomtom map data in the UK (along with Yelp places, and perhaps Royal Mail addresses/postcodes).
- awkward 14y ago
  Open Streetmaps is a great project, but it doesn't include orthophotography. Even if they were using it, it wouldn't fix the errors with missing or blurry images, cloud cover, or rubber sheeting errors.
  - grey-area 14y ago
    Of course they'd have to get the satellite data from elsewhere (though they couldn't do much worse than the stuff they have frankly), but the vector data and POIs would have been a good start, and probably more accurate and complete than what they have, at least in some countries. They would probably always have to buy satellite imagery. I'd rather have seen more focus on getting the basics right, even if it meant they had to leave out (for example) satellite imagery in the first iteration. As it is they have broken satellite data, broken street mapping, and incomplete place names. If they had chosen to back an open project like this they could have had a team of people worldwide fixing their maps for them, rather than trying to collate and correct thousands of bug reports from around the world and push them out in revisions. I wouldn't like to be on their mapping team over the next few months :)
- rburhum 14y ago
  Openstreetmap's doesnt address any of the OP's issues. Having built maps for the past 12 years, I know exactly what of each of those issues are about. The blurry images are underlying base layers that drew first and then probably the upper layer timed out when rendering the tile. The curves are caused by elevation measurements that are incorrect (measuring elevation from a satellite involves bouncing from the ground - when there are structures below, depending on the material, it may go through or bounce differently) or precision problems when generating the elevation grid (very common). The big white thing are clouds, when you buy highly expensive imagery you get them with louds (say 30% cloud blockage) and you need to comnine several images taken a different times, color correct them, and stitch them back to remove it (try to do this for one city and then think about doing it for the entire world). The routes that don't match the pins is weird, but it could be that the snapping point for the routing engine snapped to the wrong street edge (it seems very far though) or that the geocoder and the routing engine use different geocoders (that would be bad). Creating a good mapping product is difficult, but Apple will have something much better in one year.
  - grey-area 14y ago
    The link is to a rolling blog of images, so you might not be looking at the same images I am. Here is an example of one: http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31923886066/are-you-wondering-where-stratford-upon-avon http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31923886066/are-yo... There are a lot of problems with road map and point data (at least in the UK) which are nothing to do with the points you've raised above, though those are fair criticisms too - however the satellite data is the least of their worries, I'm sure they could buy in a better cleaned up set of satelite tiles if they're willing to spend enough money, and people expect some problems with that, but basic search and mapping is not as complete as it should be.
  - smikhanov 14y ago
    Apple will have something much better in one year It certainly will be better but I'm not holding my breath about Apple maps surpassing Google Maps any time soon. Google bought a Rasmussen brothers' company (what eventually became Google Maps) in 2004. That's eight years of product development, data collection, storage and refining -- all at Google's pace. Will Apple find some shortcut to compress this time in one-two year? Unlikely. It's very easy to underestimate the amount of pure, repetitive effort required to build products of this sort and how hard it is to "disrupt" the industries with players like Google.
- VonGuard 14y ago
  "It was the perfect opportunity to leapfrog Google and help the open source community" The only time Apple helps open source is when they hire the most important people in really important projects, and then they graciously allow them to continue contributing. CUPS, LLVM, it's happened a couple times. They take good care of these guys, but I always feel like their contributions to the projects after Apple are being written with one eye watching over their shoulder to make sure they dont get sued for talking to the public about some super secret project.
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    First time I heard about CUPS! Apparently it's a kind of printing system. Thanks. http://www.cups.org/ http://www.cups.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS
    - its_so_on 14y ago
      you're not alone. apparently, for many people, occasionally hearing the word "CUPS" is the closest they ever get to printing under Linux.
      - emidln 14y ago
        I'm pretty sure that CUPS was shipping by default on some linux distros as early as 1999. I know I installed Caldera OpenLinux (2.2 or 2.3 maybe?) and Mandrake Linux (version 6 or 7 something) and both had it, detected my printers, and "just worked".
      - WiseWeasel 14y ago
        People print so rarely nowadays, it's more economical to go to the FedEx office on the occasions when you need something printed out than to buy a printer and ink or toner.
    - nobleach 14y ago
      Ha, hitting http://localhost:631 http://localhost:631 and using the CUPS interface is the easiest ways to fix a few problems on Lion/Mountain Lion.
- andrewljohnson 14y ago
  OSM is only comparable to commercial data in Europe AFAIK, and there, only in some places. It's not surprising that densely populated areas in Europe/UK are complete and accurate in OSM.
  - grey-area 14y ago
    It's actually pretty good in some quite remote places, but like all mapping the coverage does vary (see examples elsewhere in this thread of remote places). Probably some countries they'd have to either fill in with commercial data, or sponsor efforts to add data to OSM. The main advantage would be that OSM has all the adding/editing/updating stuff down - that is a major operation and if Apple are trying to do it all themselves while merging inconsistent data from several sources and taking care of customer complaints they'll find themselves falling farther and farther behind people like Google who have devoted years and years of effort and a lot of money to this just to get where they are now. Perhaps Apple considered OSM as a basis and decided it was just too limited in areas that were important to them - it would be fascinating to find out about their internal tools for this and where the data came from but I suppose we'll never know.
sidcool 14y ago
I hope this is meant as sarcasm. I cannot open the article from workplace, but I truly hope it's derision. EDIT - People are downvoting without reading it entirely. I have mentioned I CANNOT ACCESS THE ARTICLE. So the only truth available to me is the Post here.
- pdaddyo 14y ago
  Tagline is "The Apple iOS 6 Maps are amazing. Not."
  - sidcool 14y ago
    Did you even read my entire statement?
    - suprfsat 14y ago
      I CANNOT ACCESS YOUR COMMENT
    - tdfx 14y ago
      I think that's why he posted the tagline of the article for you.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        tdfx 14y ago
        When you get home from work, please read through this exchange again and see if it makes any sense to you. Grandparent poster was just trying to help you out.
        sidcool 14y ago
        Sorry guys, screwed it over. My bad.
jws 14y ago
It isn't as much fun, but the imagery of the places I care about is better than google, in some case dramatically better. Their place data needs a lot of help. e.g. If you look for the nearest hospital from me it will take you to a new retirement community built on the site of an old hospital. It is easy to report the problem, now to see how long until it is fixed.
- stephen_g 14y ago
  Yeah, it seems to really vary. In my short time of playing around, I haven't noticed much reduction in quality at all around my city (Brisbane, Australia) over Google Maps. The only thing I noticed so far was that St. Lucia Golf Course was incorrectly labelled as Indooroopilly Golf Course (which is a few kilometres away). I reported it. I'm actually fairly impressed with the number of businesses from Yelp - I wasn't aware that it was available in Australia, but it has all of even the most obscure little cafes and shops I've searched for around town.
dr_ 14y ago
To be honest, despite its flaws, it's going to be ok for most of the people, most of the time. Navigation is going to be a big boon. Using it I haven't noticed major differences personally. Some restaurants are in the wrong location, but on the flip side I like the yelp reviews. I'm sure they will improve on the areas that are flawed.
- AJ007 14y ago
  Directions being ok most for most people, most of the time, is hardly acceptable. Google Maps had a tendency to drop pins for locations on the wrong spot. That meant I always had to confirm the location with street view, 100% of the time. Going to the wrong spot can be catastrophic in some instances (wrong or non existent hospital.) In others it can be really bad (missing a critical meeting, walking in during a wedding.) I don't need to give more examples. Google giving not so great search results is one thing. I can look at the page and quickly tell that its wrong. When maps are wrong, it can add another 30 minutes between figuring out you went to the wrong spot and getting to the right one. If Apple's management thinks its acceptable to roll out beta products on all of their users, I'll be moving to Android.
  - liotier 14y ago
    > If Apple's management thinks its acceptable to roll out > beta products on all of their users, I'll be moving to > Android. Sure - because Google never rolls out beta products on all of their users...
    - jackson71 14y ago
      Difference is, it generally says, "Beta" right on the tin.
    - aeturnum 14y ago
      A good point for sure. I think his reasoning is that, if all the options are going to be beta-level products, he might as well use Android. I think Apple has always implicitly presented a deal where they tightly control their phone, but the experience is excellent. You don't care who makes the maps app because it "just works." If that's changing, users might be happier in an ecosystem where choice is more pervasive.
rauljara 14y ago
The "roller coaster" effects in the 3-d view are my favorite. They've got some smoothing algorithm going, or it wouldn't curve the way it does, but the elevation data must not have a high enough resolution. Google has made this sort of thing look so easy for so long, but it's clearly very hard to get this stuff right. So, I guess it's not that surprising that apple messed up something incredibly hard in their first attempt. I'm curious as to whether these issues are as widespread as they seem, or if they're more edge cases made to appear common by the internet. But the curiosity isn't enough to drive me to upgrade. I'm totally putting off that until I figure out a decent alternative app.
- Geee 14y ago
  I don't think Google has 3D view at all. Those 3D maps were created by a different company whom Apple recently acquired. You can probably find the same errors from here as well, http://maps.nokia.com/webgl/ http://maps.nokia.com/webgl/
  - rictic 14y ago
    http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/ http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/
    - Geee 14y ago
      Yes, indeed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 This is new development though and only on the Google Earth product for mobile, not in the maps app. Maps app for Android has those blocky untextured 3d buildings in select areas.
      - KirinDave 14y ago
        They actually have textures if you enable satellite imaging. They just also do the Mirror's Edge rendering of the city. It's interesting how Google does it. They both contract and scan data in, but they also let you use SketchUp to submit data as well.
stephen_g 14y ago
I really hope that people are using the 'Report Problem' feature in the app every time they post a screenshot here. Because that is one of the biggest things everyone can do that will help the map data to improve.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  As Gruber likes to remind us at every chance, Apple has more than $100 billion cash lying around. How about they use a little of that to license some half decent maps from Google or, failing that, Nokia/Navteq? Even Amazon(that Gruber sneered for making far less money than Apple [1]) managed to license Nokia maps and wrapped a nice API around it, and you think the iPhone buyers have a responsibility to work on making Apple maps better after paying for Apple's high margins so that Apple can make even more money on selling "premium" phones? Give me a break. [1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-correction http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-corr...
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    There is no possibility that this platform change was over Apple's inability to come up with the cash to license a competitor's dataset. Their move was political, strategic, or both.
    - fpgeek 14y ago
      Then they could have spent the money hiring armies like Google's to get the map data right.
  - boundlessdreamz 14y ago
    It is possible that Nokia didn't want to license the map data. That can be a selling point for windows phones now. Since Kindle is not a smartphone platform, it is not competing with Nokia.
- jianshen 14y ago
  This tumblr isn't a bad way for apple to collect "problem" spots since regular users generally wouldn't normally be motivated to click "Report Problem".
ledlauzis 14y ago
Apple made this decision just to dump Google and try to gain more control. Apple dind't want to use OpenStreetMap because its open source solution and Apple never uses open source solution. Yeah, its iOS and OS X is based on Linux (sort of) but they will never tell this to anyone. iOS 6 Maps sucks just like the App Store on the New iPad. Maybe it is just me but I found it very, very slow. It's better on iPhone
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I've said this a few times (as have others) but it seems it could do with repeating. Unless you've got inside information we have no idea who dumped who, all we know is the contract expired and it wasn't renewed. Google might have applied financial pressure, Apple might have thrown their toys out of the pram. It's unknown.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  > Apple dind't want to use OpenStreetMap because its open source solution and Apple never uses open source solution. Riiiight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
- headhuntermdk 14y ago
  OSX was based on code from FreeBSD and NetBSD and not Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X#History and Apple has used plenty of open source solutions (gcc, samba come to mind ). Not to mention putting money and resources behind opensource projects such as llvm and webkit. I do believe that dumping Google was a strategic decision and I'm perfectly O.K. with that. The world is full of products that are shaped more with business decisions that technical ones. What remains to be seen however is how quickly they will address the shortcomings of their map data.
glhaynes 14y ago
I'm clueless about mapping/geocoding/etc (it's amazing I make it to the grocery store and back) but I keep hearing that Apple needed to get this out there so that they could start getting data feeding back from the millions of iOS users, and thus (presumably rapidly) improving the quality of the maps. Is there any truth at all to that? I don't quite understand where they'd be getting that data back from - e.g. if I search for the hospital and I eventually find it 3 miles down the road from where the map took me, how would Apple/their mapping partners ever know that the POI should be moved?
- bduerst 14y ago
  They have been wanted to get Google Maps out of the picture because of the wealth of user location data it was collecting. I doubt that data is being collected to help users with "more accurate maps", but probably "more accurate advertising".
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  e.g. if I search for the hospital and I eventually find it 3 miles down the road from where the map took me, how would Apple/their mapping partners ever know that the POI should be moved? One possibility is that the phone keeps track of the fact that "you drove 3 miles past where you were 'supposed' to stop, and then stopped at some other (specific) location." As more and more people do that --- search the hospital, drive past it, and stop at the same specific location != the phone's predicted location --- then, statistically, we can infer that the "specific location" that everyone eventually stops at is, in fact, the location of the actual hospital. Interestingly, this implies that the current mapping problems will eventually sort themselves out... after annoying a sufficient number of customers!
  - rmc 14y ago
    There are lot of privacy problems with essentially having every iphone phone home with where it is all the time.
    - sillysaurus 14y ago
jguimont 14y ago
Google spend much time organizing the name of the cities and road in a particular way. Now Apple has another way of doing it, the maps at higher level show less information. Some city name are picked and some are not, but at a closer level, the cities are there. Their algo to find what to show on the map is just different from Google. I'm not saying it is better, but different. I am pretty sure the same comparison can be made between google maps and let's say bing maps.
CoachRufus87 14y ago
Why did they stop using Google Maps?
- bduerst 14y ago
  Google maps was receiving a wealth of location data from iPhone users. Apple is probably trying to get a piece of that pie.
- rmc 14y ago
  I don't think Google & Apple came to an agreement. Apple went their own way.
- acomjean 14y ago
  Probably a business decision. Apple probably decided that having core phone functionality in the hands of a competitor wasn't such a good idea. Also Apple users were helping the competition with all the information they were uploading about geographic data. When the original iphone shipped with google maps (and the Google CEO on hand), Apple and Google were partners, now not so much.
  - CoachRufus87 14y ago
    Do you think Google will eventually release a 3rd party maps app?
    - acomjean 14y ago
      Maybe. Google in the short term seem to be encouraging people install links on the phone to map/youtube services (go to youtube or maps.google.com in mobile safari and you'll be instructed on making the link). The web based google map app is decent. Google+ is a native app however, so I think they'll head that way eventually.
    - hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
      They'll have to. They make money on map advertising anyway, not being on iOS anymore is a big chunk of the market. Unless you believe the Google fanboys, who think Google should exploit this to drive Android sales. In the end it's better than the previous situation for iPhone users, because instead of a stagnant mapping application that wasn't updated for years for political reasons, we'll have competition now - as long as Apple is willing to accept Google Maps on their App Store, which I think they would, since there are many already (even a TomTom one).
lbotos 14y ago
So I've been seeing all this hatin' on HN this morning so I figured I should check it out on my device. I mapped my commute (1 hour) and the only oddity I saw was the waviness coming off of a bridge. Beyond that Philly's buildings were all rendered correctly and my route was exactly the same as Google maps. YMMV P.S. I must say It was really cool to see Cira Centre (The Amtrak Building) rendered in 3d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cira_Centre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cira_Centre
- misnome 14y ago
  Try living somewhere that isn't a big US city. Of course the major population centers are going to be highly worked on. It's elsewhere, that google maps has gotten so good on, that people are complaining about. The satellite imagery is as bad as googles was, but more than six years ago.
  - akoumjian 14y ago
    Actually, even in big US cities results are really bad in some cases. in Seattle, for example, searching for common well known intersections brings up results halfway across the country.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      I hit a maps link for a restaurant in the Maryland suburbs of DC, which had latitude and longitude in it, and it still took me to the wrong place. Removing the restaurant name and just leaving the lat/lon showed the right place, but of course I didn't figure this out until I had already driven past the wrong place and wondered where the restaurant was. It's just atrocious. OK, so you have some bad POI coordinates, that's bad but somewhat understandable. But how do you prefer your bad POI data to the correct coordinates that you're given? It boggles the mind.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    For rural ND, it looks like Apple's maps are about 6 - 9 months closer to current.
acomjean 14y ago
I just use Waze for turn by turn (iphone 4s) available for blackberry and andriod. Plus if you go to google on mobile safari, it basically pesters you to install a google map shortcut on the "desktop". This works very well. I'm sure apple maps will get better, but seeing as they're not a search engine, I don't think they'll ever get quite as good at finding by location names.
finkin1 14y ago
Can't wait to see the consequences of this. I hope Google delays their iOS maps a while so people can get frustrated with Apple.
- ralfd 14y ago
  I don't understand your giddyness. It would be better if there would be competition instead of Google having a map monopoly.
  - finkin1 14y ago
    I'm of the opinion that many things Apple does stifle competition. This is enhanced by the "Apple can do no wrong" bandwagon.
    - v0cab 14y ago
      How do you feel about Samsung's behavior?
hnriot 14y ago
With maps.google.com (html5 version) I get some of the old functionality back, but the thing I miss most is street view. Having flyover is very pretty for demos but completely useless unless in real use. Street view, however, is actually very useful and I use it on a regular basis. As far as I know there isn't any work around to that. I will try ios6 again, but for now, I'm going to restore my backup until (if) google come out with an iPad version of maps and YouTube (instead of the iPhone only)
- shinratdr 14y ago
  TomTom vehicles with StreetView-style 360 cameras have been spotted around Toronto. I have little doubt Apple is pushing TomTom to compile that data and it will be the first billed feature in iOS 6.1.
lhnz 14y ago
It seems like the quality level maintained by Steve Jobs is quickly deteriorating in favour of business moves designed to wrest more control off Google. They are operating in a very similar way to other companies now. Google executives must be laughing very hard right now. If I was Google I'd avoid releasing a Google Maps application for at least a year and let the Android handset manufacturers ruthlessly exploit Android's superior maps.
- karlshea 14y ago
  And you came to this conclusion based on one bad app? Quite the leap it seems. What's missing in all of these conversations is that Apple's contract with Google for mapping ended this year. No one knows what really happened for Apple to make this change.
  - lhnz 14y ago
    Apologies, I wasn't trying to represent what I said as fact hence the word "seems". However, I do feel that this has been a very lacklustre update from Apple... I think it would have been worthwhile to keep the contract with Google (even if it's expensive) while investing in making a better Apple Maps app.
  - mootothemax 14y ago
    And you came to this conclusion based on one bad app? Quite the leap it seems. This isn't about "one bad app," it's about a core smartphone app that everybody uses. That's why so many people are complaining and the story is kicking off all over the place.
    - mitchty 14y ago
      I've been using ios 6 maps since beta1, yeah its new, but to wit I don't use transit directions and in a direct comparison with android google maps, ios 6's maps worked fine. This is in many ways who moved my cheese. I don't care if Google or Apple (who made the google maps app pre ios6 anyway using google apis) is responsible for the old maps app not being on ios6. If google wants their app on the apple store they can submit it. If apple denies it thats another matter and not worth arguing right now. ios6 is so much better than 5 overall I think you're being somewhat overly dramatic about one app. Yes it feels rushed, but its likely this is a stopgap due to contractual problems. And besides, these are just phones. People are so up in arms about this its getting to fever pitch levels. Why everyone expects perfection from the start is beyond me. Its a start, and not yet perfect for everyone. Either it gets better and all this complaining was just for pageviews (most likely), or people actually vote with their wallets and switch. Until that switch happens, these arguments are getting tiresome and to be honest aren't very constructive.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I look at this and can't believe Apple wanted to ship with this. And I mean that literally, not incredulously. I believe Apple wants to be in carol of its mapping future, but this product isn't ready yet, and I don't think Apple is so delusional to not be able to see that. So that makes me wonder what happened in contract negotiations with Google to force it out. Did Google flat-out say "No"? Seems unlikely. Was it just too expensive? That's possible, especially if these negotiations happened during the time Google massively raised the prices on its API (completely random speculation: maybe the price increase was only about Apple), so Apple had to invest elsewhere. Did Google just want control of their map data or want to give Android a massive competitive edge so they backed out? That seems unlikely, but may be answered if Google doesn't put out a map app for iOS.
- buro9 14y ago
  Adverts. Spatial adverts are a big thing now, with a big future. I would speculate that beyond the cost of licensing the maps or the contractual stuff is that Apple did not want to deliver to Google more advertisers that would further entrench Google Maps as the dominant player. Apple need to be able to build their own POI database and knowledge of where all advertiser businesses are in order to get that revenue long-term. Thus, Apple need control of the maps to control the method that advertisers get onto the map. I think it's just strategic rather than contractual or short-term financial.
  - rictic 14y ago
    I'm not sure whether you're saying that there weren't google ads in the old iOS maps, but I'm fairly sure I saw an ad there when I did a search for Pizza Hut a week ago in SF.
    - tharris0101 14y ago
      There were. I think they called them "Sponsored" or something. It really annoyed me because if I'd search for something common like "Home Depot" it would give me random pins at places that were definitely not Home Depot but rather sponsored businesses.
leephillips 14y ago
Note that you can still go to maps.google.com in Safari. Give Safari location permission and it works similarly to the old maps app, but a bit slower.
guilhermetk 14y ago
I'd really like to know where the data from Brazil comes from, specifically Florianopolis, SC. The first thing I did when I updated to iOS 6 was testing the maps app. The building I live is at least 5 years old, but the map shows it under construction
outside1234 14y ago
iPhone 4S with iOS 5 > iPhone 5 with iOS 6 Nice work Apple - that's going to save me a few hundred dollars!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- headShrinker 14y ago
  Your comment is relative and adds very little to the discussion here.
  - outside1234 14y ago
    Sorry - my point is that (minus sarcasm), for the first time, Apple has done something to discourage folks from upgrading both on the hardware and OS fronts. Not a great move.
    - redcircle 14y ago
      I agree: I am not installing iOS 6 until I can install a Google mapping app (besides their Google Earth).
shriphani 14y ago
And I thought I had it bad with Bing Maps on WP7. Well, goes to show that lower-bounds exist to be breached.
mtgx 14y ago
Seeing the poor state of the Apple Maps, I think Google can wait 2 years or so before even considering releasing Google Maps for iPhone. More people will want Android phones as they can't leave without it, just like some can't live without the Gmail app for Android.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
grey-area 14y ago
For those who think this is just a problem with the 3D images, or are not convinced there are serious problems even after seeing this tumblr, try looking outside of California, at both satellite and standard maps. Some example searches: "Brighton, UK", Satellite - a major UK city is so blurry you can't see streets. "Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands" - ends up in the middle of the sea, and no roads on the islands at all. "Colchester" - satellite shows clouds, in B&W "Senkaku Islands" - compare satellite with standard to see duplicates of these disputed islands. "Puno,Peru"- in lake Titicaca etc. They probably had to rush this out, but it's really not ready for widespread use in some areas; they'd have done better to cut back the features and massively extend their testing (or use a crowd-sourced alternative). Given how extensively this is used in iOS, both by apps using Mapkit and by customers every day round the world, it's vital that is it correct, and getting it wrong in such obvious ways is a massive strategic error on Apple's part.
- shinratdr 14y ago
  Arguable, but there is something to be said for pushing it out there. Maybe it would have been better as a staggered release, but it's not like they need to wait for the next update to solve these problems. These are all issues with server-side map quality, which can be updated on-the-fly. We can only hope they're aggressively removing dead POIs and adding new ones. If it has been a week and nothing has changed for anyone, I would start to worry.
brudgers 14y ago
tl;dr "iOS 6, Navigate Differently" [At least I find it amusing]
- mbel 14y ago
  "Navigate Different" -- remember the details, Apple loves details.
derfclausen 14y ago
In regards to "Where did my university’s buildings go?" (http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31928845471/where-did-my-universitys-buildings-go http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31928845471/where-...), it does bother me that so many universities have provided specific map details to Google (see http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/map-your-campus-and-win-announcing.html http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/map-your-campus-a...), but not OSM.
mullingitover 14y ago
The beauty of this: Apple is definitely going to sell record numbers of the iPhone 5, shitty maps or not. And when they eventually do claw their way back to being on par with Google's maps, people will act like they invented maps themselves and all will be forgiven.
arunoda 14y ago
ddsfdsfdfdf jjjj jj
mikeleeorg 14y ago
Are there alternate map apps on iOS that anyone could recommend?
- MaysonL 14y ago
  Apps+ - it's free Google Maps basic, with a 2.99 unlock for added features.
mapgrep 14y ago
Funny subtitle: "The Apple iOS 6 Maps are amazing. Not." People seem to think "amazing" == "cool". Not so! It just means astonishing or surprising. Which makes the word so much more interesting to use. "We charge $9 for a bottle of Corona." "That's amazing!"* So the iOS 6 maps really truly are amazing :) *True story
- josephcooney 14y ago
  Same thing goes for the word 'incredible'.
ernestipark 14y ago
I just upgraded to iOS 6 last night and just used it to get around downtown Boston. It was unusable. It had some incorrect data about some locations, it was confusing to use, and when I typed in a location, it would look in different cities instead of the one I was currently in. Unfortunately, one of the biggest apps I use regularly has taken a big step backwards.
insickness 14y ago
While we are ragging on maps... I live in New York City. Sometimes Google doesn't put the street names on all the streets. I often have to scroll left or right or out to see what street it's on. Obviously you can't list the names on every street when it is zoomed out, but even when there aren't more than 4 or 5 streets on the map, the street names still don't appear. It's like they'd rather list local restaurants than street names. Has anyone else experienced this with Google maps?
- tayl0r 14y ago
  Happens to me all the time here in Berlin. Very frustrating. Sometimes I have to scroll 2 screens away before I find the street labelled.
edoloughlin 14y ago
This [1] made the news in Ireland today, when a city farm in Dublin called "Airfield" was labeled as an airport. It was thought that pilots in trouble might attempt to land there, but I can't see why checking maps on their iPhones would be part of emergency procedure. [1] http://searchengineland.com/irish-politician-calls-apples-new-maps-dangerously-misleading-after-farm-is-labeled-an-airport-133842 http://searchengineland.com/irish-politician-calls-apples-ne...
lucian303 14y ago
Amazing? This is old tech. Google maps. Perhaps you've heard of it?
ForrestN 14y ago
It's obvious that Google withheld or made it prohibitively expensive for Apple to pay for the liscence to google maps. It does retroactively make the case for handling these things in-house, especially when the partner is a competitor. After years of giving Google valuable data to the point where it becomes a major competitive advantage, google presumably says "go to hell."
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  I don't know why you got down-voted, because you're most likely correct. A lot of people blame Apple for making this move out of pure spite (and perhaps some grudge), but they probably did a huge cost-benefit analysis to be able to justify the switch.
white_devil 14y ago
"ZOMFG APPLE SUCKS!" There's a new huge undertaking of making a modern, competitive "Maps" product. Who'd have thought that when the first version ever is released, its data is not as accurate as a seven-year-old competitor's? This is fucking ridiculous. Let's see how long it takes for Google to replace everything it has with vector graphics. You know, to get even with the iOS 6 Maps. Who's the incumbent in two years?
- Simucal 14y ago
  I could be mistaken but I've read that Android has had vector based maps in its app for awhile.
  - white_devil 14y ago
    The Maps app on my phone is still based on tiles. But you're right, there's a new version with vector graphics.
- juliano_q 14y ago
  Android has vector graphics since 2010.
homosaur 14y ago
This thing is an AMAZING atlas, especially on the iPad. It's a horrible navigation tool though.
dakrisht 14y ago
Wow. That's all I have to say. WOW.
ilaksh 14y ago
But you're still going to buy Apple because that is what all of your rich and trendy friends use. I have never owned an Apple product. The main reason for this is related to class and/or culture and financial circumstances. My family was always very frugal and on the lower side of middle class. And honestly I'm frugal and so when I buy devices I am focused on value and bought a laptop with a good graphics card and other features that I put Linux and Windows on. Also I am not comfortable around people so I have pretty much no friends. If I had more friends in web development I might have felt an overwhelming peer pressure to buy a Mac. The point is that these decisions are not actually based on technical merit, not for me or for Apple fans, because that's not how humans make decisions. We need to be very careful to take a step back every now and again and make a conscious effort to correct trends towards a more rational basis. The Apple ecosystem is generally more polished, that is true. However, its also very much closed compared to other systems like Google's and outdated in some ways. For example, Objective-C is a ridiculous over-complex relic and it is very embarrassing that so many people waste their time with it. Its obvious that we need to focus our attention and money on more egalitarian and open businesses. And pretty soon, even the most open and inexpensive products and services are not going to be a good value as better knowledge and data sharing becomes more practical and popular. The future is open, knowledge-based (some derivative of KR) operating systems where machine code isn't even allowed. The future is knowledge-based programming language and platform development and evolution. The future is ubiquitous open cross platform applications. The future is content-oriented peer to peer web knowledgebases and applications. The future is open source phones that you print out in 3d on your desk. The future of technology is open, distributed, cohesive and yet decoupled, mature, substantive, and egalitarian. Apple is none of these things.
- bluthru 14y ago
  >And honestly I'm frugal and so when I buy devices I am focused on value The iPhone is $200. You still can't get a tablet that matches the iPad 3 for $500. Saying Apple is expensive is like making one button mice jokes. Value is a product of usefulness and longevity, plus resale value. It's ridiculous to proclaim that Apple products aren't high on value--I still use my 2007 MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion. It works out to well under a dollar a day and I didn't have to make any compromises in the process. >The future is open source phones that you print out in 3d on your desk. The future is also a Star Trek replicator, and just as relevant to the discussion. >Apple is none of these things. Because talented people want to be paid for their efforts, and I'm fine paying people for doing great work?
jarospisak 14y ago
Relevant: how Google test maps http://youtu.be/49JepTyK0NA?t=36m57s http://youtu.be/49JepTyK0NA?t=36m57s
dm8 14y ago
Looks like it works well in bay area but outside bay area it's pretty bad. Apparently, Redditors are pretty pissed off - http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/106rvw/new_ios_6_apple_maps_app_angering_users_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/106rvw/new_ios_6... Looks like AAPL tested it in Cupertino and worked well. Thought it will work well in rest of the world too. Classic mistake?
hackermani 14y ago
Umm well Google maps are waaaaay superior. Apple give us the choice to use what we want, till you get your act toghether. Spend some of thoese billions and drive a bunch of cars around or heck buy a few satellites
laacz 14y ago
What actually bothers me the most, is poor quality of iOS6. It has several bugs (excluding maps and unfortunate wifi bug), which already have affected me and users around me. Some most notable include following. * Sometimes iTunes update screen does not refresh, * You can't disable vibration for notifications per application (i love my email in notification center, still - i do not need it to vibrate; in 5.1 it worked). * Also, phone from time to time vibrates, though nothing has happened (no new notifications or alerts). * Most annoying one is that they changed keyboard input, so you can't enter special characters (common in Latvian) by holding and swiping left/right. You have to swipe up and then left/right. Makes big deal, when typing. I know it all will be fixed in 6.0.1, but still - there is visible decline in quality of provided software, which actually makes me very sad as a user.
- kalleboo 14y ago
  Apple's 1.0 release are always kind of buggy. I remember iOS 5.0 was really buggy, and OS X 10.X.0 releases are notorious.
leoedin 14y ago
I love the one of houston highrises with gas stations on each one (they're actually the corporate headquarters of oil companies). http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mantx26oqv1rhptwbo1_1280.png http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mantx26oqv1rhptwbo1_1280.p...
rabidsnail 14y ago
The mapquest app is better than this. I wonder how much it would cost to persuade AOL to part with the mapquest division.
DigitalSea 14y ago
I think my favourite image was the state park with this caption beneath it, made me laugh out loud: "Valley Forge State Park became Valley Forge National Historical Park a few years ago… in 1976" in all seriousness Apple's maps offering quite clearly isn't up to scratch in comparison to Google's maps application. While Google have made mapping look easy for a long time now, it quite clearly isn't as easy as Apple thought it was. If Jobs were still alive, maps would never have been released in the state that it currently is. Seems like Apple rushed the release of maps, I wonder what the real agenda for moving away from Google maps in the first place was here? It quite clearly wasn't because Apple had a superior maps offering than Google could offer. Way to force us iPhone users to use an inferior mapping product. Luckily Google have submitted a maps application to the maps store, but it'll probably get rejected for competing with the iPhone maps application.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
dumb_dumb 14y ago
The Amazing Parchment Maps 6 1/100 of the cost of an Apple device. Thinner. Lighter. Faster. Powered by clean, green energy. No Chinese workers exploited.
pbreit 14y ago
I was expecting much worse. I don't think the problems with the 3D are that big of a deal. And things like the Washington Monument being off by a few dozen feet are fine. What I will say is that Google for the longest time did not locate properly my home or my store in the middle of downtown San Francisco and Apple's maps have them correct on Day 1.
dude8 14y ago
I just got a Mac but this is the first time their closed source monopoly crap has bit them in ash. The more it happens the quicker they will change. It's a good day.
Jarihd 14y ago
How can someone release a product like this !!! What were the PM, team manager, technical architect, developers and QA doing !!! Didn't they observe this !!! Is this a deliberate product release ???
antirez 14y ago
I think Apple did the switch with bad timing, before having a good solution in place... but in the end maybe facing some real technological challenge can be good for them? Every time they have to do serious software / infrastructure stuff they seem to be weak, even with iMessage that is not exactly that super-hard thing to do, there are reliability problems. I hope that this map stuff will make Apple a bit more CS oriented, but not as much as Google is.
tsahyt 14y ago
This is bad.. really bad. I'm not sure whether Apple screwed this up so badly or Google really did a brilliant job on Maps.
rkrkrk21 14y ago
Its now very clear that Apple is loosing its direction after steve jobs gone. People who used to get crazy about the release of apple products will no loose the passion if apple follows this path.
visarg 14y ago
It would seem I am alone in saying that for Bucharest, Romania the iOS6 Maps is better than Google Maps was because Google Maps was not able to look up houses by number - which means it was unable to guide me to any address. It was just the satellite imagery with roads overlaid, so, if you wanted to go to say, West St. 23, it could find you West St. and put the pointer right in the middle of it, even if it was miles long. Apple can look up addresses. That's all.
albumedia 14y ago
The iOS 6 Map issue is nothing more than a PR stunt from apple. I think it's brilliant. What's the best way to get people talking about their new map feature? Release a map product that is inferior to Google maps then push a major update. Everyone will be surprise how good iOS 6 map will be in a few weeks.

837 points by Maakuth 14y ago

Since Apple doesn't have a website for their maps, just knowing what is broken is going to be a problem for them. I wonder if they will put in a map editor in their next version to crowd source fixes or at least bug reports.

ehamberg 14y ago
It already has that, to some extent. When you click somewhere, one of the options you get is “Report a Problem” which lets you say that something is missing or indicate where a point of interest _should_ be by placing a pin.

grey-area 14y ago

What confuses me about Apple's choice of maps here is why they didn't go with OpenStreetMap? It was the perfect opportunity to leapfrog Google and help the open source community at the same time, and they would have had more control over the data - as it is they are beholden to TomTom and other providers to try to get things fixed, or will have to try to merge future map updates with their own patches. As it is they are going to see increasing controversy as people realise just how bad the maps they have bought are, and that this was changed for political reasons, not for the good of their users, and there's very little they can do about it. They seem to have tried out OSM in the photos app (with a horrible skin), but to have used purchased data for the street maps. Perhaps they felt it wasn't good enough in some locations they tested? In my experience OSM is superior to Google maps in many locations (even in parts of central London), and it is of course continually improving.

vondur 14y ago
I was under the impression that Apple did make use of Open Street Maps. http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3078987/apple-tomtom-openstreemap-ios-6-maps-app http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3078987/apple-tomtom-opens...
- grey-area 14y ago
  They're not using OSM data most of the time, I suspect it's just for a small amount of data - the OSM credit is a tiny one amongst a whole load of others on their credits page for the maps app. http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html http://gspa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html It's not clear exactly where they get all the data, and what is used where, but simple searches like Paddington Station are not working (Paddington does, but not Paddington Station), and I'm sure they're not using the OSM vector data (in the UK at least) as it differs and is less complete than OSM in rural areas for example. It would be interesting to know just how they've put their datasets together and what they used from where, but it looks like they use tomtom map data in the UK (along with Yelp places, and perhaps Royal Mail addresses/postcodes).
awkward 14y ago
Open Streetmaps is a great project, but it doesn't include orthophotography. Even if they were using it, it wouldn't fix the errors with missing or blurry images, cloud cover, or rubber sheeting errors.
- grey-area 14y ago
  Of course they'd have to get the satellite data from elsewhere (though they couldn't do much worse than the stuff they have frankly), but the vector data and POIs would have been a good start, and probably more accurate and complete than what they have, at least in some countries. They would probably always have to buy satellite imagery. I'd rather have seen more focus on getting the basics right, even if it meant they had to leave out (for example) satellite imagery in the first iteration. As it is they have broken satellite data, broken street mapping, and incomplete place names. If they had chosen to back an open project like this they could have had a team of people worldwide fixing their maps for them, rather than trying to collate and correct thousands of bug reports from around the world and push them out in revisions. I wouldn't like to be on their mapping team over the next few months :)
rburhum 14y ago
Openstreetmap's doesnt address any of the OP's issues. Having built maps for the past 12 years, I know exactly what of each of those issues are about. The blurry images are underlying base layers that drew first and then probably the upper layer timed out when rendering the tile. The curves are caused by elevation measurements that are incorrect (measuring elevation from a satellite involves bouncing from the ground - when there are structures below, depending on the material, it may go through or bounce differently) or precision problems when generating the elevation grid (very common). The big white thing are clouds, when you buy highly expensive imagery you get them with louds (say 30% cloud blockage) and you need to comnine several images taken a different times, color correct them, and stitch them back to remove it (try to do this for one city and then think about doing it for the entire world). The routes that don't match the pins is weird, but it could be that the snapping point for the routing engine snapped to the wrong street edge (it seems very far though) or that the geocoder and the routing engine use different geocoders (that would be bad). Creating a good mapping product is difficult, but Apple will have something much better in one year.
- grey-area 14y ago
  The link is to a rolling blog of images, so you might not be looking at the same images I am. Here is an example of one: http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31923886066/are-you-wondering-where-stratford-upon-avon http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31923886066/are-yo... There are a lot of problems with road map and point data (at least in the UK) which are nothing to do with the points you've raised above, though those are fair criticisms too - however the satellite data is the least of their worries, I'm sure they could buy in a better cleaned up set of satelite tiles if they're willing to spend enough money, and people expect some problems with that, but basic search and mapping is not as complete as it should be.
- smikhanov 14y ago
  Apple will have something much better in one year It certainly will be better but I'm not holding my breath about Apple maps surpassing Google Maps any time soon. Google bought a Rasmussen brothers' company (what eventually became Google Maps) in 2004. That's eight years of product development, data collection, storage and refining -- all at Google's pace. Will Apple find some shortcut to compress this time in one-two year? Unlikely. It's very easy to underestimate the amount of pure, repetitive effort required to build products of this sort and how hard it is to "disrupt" the industries with players like Google.
VonGuard 14y ago
"It was the perfect opportunity to leapfrog Google and help the open source community" The only time Apple helps open source is when they hire the most important people in really important projects, and then they graciously allow them to continue contributing. CUPS, LLVM, it's happened a couple times. They take good care of these guys, but I always feel like their contributions to the projects after Apple are being written with one eye watching over their shoulder to make sure they dont get sued for talking to the public about some super secret project.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  First time I heard about CUPS! Apparently it's a kind of printing system. Thanks. http://www.cups.org/ http://www.cups.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS
  - its_so_on 14y ago
    you're not alone. apparently, for many people, occasionally hearing the word "CUPS" is the closest they ever get to printing under Linux.
    - emidln 14y ago
      I'm pretty sure that CUPS was shipping by default on some linux distros as early as 1999. I know I installed Caldera OpenLinux (2.2 or 2.3 maybe?) and Mandrake Linux (version 6 or 7 something) and both had it, detected my printers, and "just worked".
    - WiseWeasel 14y ago
      People print so rarely nowadays, it's more economical to go to the FedEx office on the occasions when you need something printed out than to buy a printer and ink or toner.
  - nobleach 14y ago
    Ha, hitting http://localhost:631 http://localhost:631 and using the CUPS interface is the easiest ways to fix a few problems on Lion/Mountain Lion.
andrewljohnson 14y ago
OSM is only comparable to commercial data in Europe AFAIK, and there, only in some places. It's not surprising that densely populated areas in Europe/UK are complete and accurate in OSM.
- grey-area 14y ago
  It's actually pretty good in some quite remote places, but like all mapping the coverage does vary (see examples elsewhere in this thread of remote places). Probably some countries they'd have to either fill in with commercial data, or sponsor efforts to add data to OSM. The main advantage would be that OSM has all the adding/editing/updating stuff down - that is a major operation and if Apple are trying to do it all themselves while merging inconsistent data from several sources and taking care of customer complaints they'll find themselves falling farther and farther behind people like Google who have devoted years and years of effort and a lot of money to this just to get where they are now. Perhaps Apple considered OSM as a basis and decided it was just too limited in areas that were important to them - it would be fascinating to find out about their internal tools for this and where the data came from but I suppose we'll never know.

sidcool 14y ago

I hope this is meant as sarcasm. I cannot open the article from workplace, but I truly hope it's derision. EDIT - People are downvoting without reading it entirely. I have mentioned I CANNOT ACCESS THE ARTICLE. So the only truth available to me is the Post here.

pdaddyo 14y ago
Tagline is "The Apple iOS 6 Maps are amazing. Not."
- sidcool 14y ago
  Did you even read my entire statement?
  - suprfsat 14y ago
    I CANNOT ACCESS YOUR COMMENT
  - tdfx 14y ago
    I think that's why he posted the tagline of the article for you.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
      - tdfx 14y ago
        When you get home from work, please read through this exchange again and see if it makes any sense to you. Grandparent poster was just trying to help you out.
        sidcool 14y ago
        Sorry guys, screwed it over. My bad.

jws 14y ago

It isn't as much fun, but the imagery of the places I care about is better than google, in some case dramatically better. Their place data needs a lot of help. e.g. If you look for the nearest hospital from me it will take you to a new retirement community built on the site of an old hospital. It is easy to report the problem, now to see how long until it is fixed.

stephen_g 14y ago
Yeah, it seems to really vary. In my short time of playing around, I haven't noticed much reduction in quality at all around my city (Brisbane, Australia) over Google Maps. The only thing I noticed so far was that St. Lucia Golf Course was incorrectly labelled as Indooroopilly Golf Course (which is a few kilometres away). I reported it. I'm actually fairly impressed with the number of businesses from Yelp - I wasn't aware that it was available in Australia, but it has all of even the most obscure little cafes and shops I've searched for around town.

dr_ 14y ago

To be honest, despite its flaws, it's going to be ok for most of the people, most of the time. Navigation is going to be a big boon. Using it I haven't noticed major differences personally. Some restaurants are in the wrong location, but on the flip side I like the yelp reviews. I'm sure they will improve on the areas that are flawed.

AJ007 14y ago
Directions being ok most for most people, most of the time, is hardly acceptable. Google Maps had a tendency to drop pins for locations on the wrong spot. That meant I always had to confirm the location with street view, 100% of the time. Going to the wrong spot can be catastrophic in some instances (wrong or non existent hospital.) In others it can be really bad (missing a critical meeting, walking in during a wedding.) I don't need to give more examples. Google giving not so great search results is one thing. I can look at the page and quickly tell that its wrong. When maps are wrong, it can add another 30 minutes between figuring out you went to the wrong spot and getting to the right one. If Apple's management thinks its acceptable to roll out beta products on all of their users, I'll be moving to Android.
- liotier 14y ago
  > If Apple's management thinks its acceptable to roll out > beta products on all of their users, I'll be moving to > Android. Sure - because Google never rolls out beta products on all of their users...
  - jackson71 14y ago
    Difference is, it generally says, "Beta" right on the tin.
  - aeturnum 14y ago
    A good point for sure. I think his reasoning is that, if all the options are going to be beta-level products, he might as well use Android. I think Apple has always implicitly presented a deal where they tightly control their phone, but the experience is excellent. You don't care who makes the maps app because it "just works." If that's changing, users might be happier in an ecosystem where choice is more pervasive.

rauljara 14y ago

The "roller coaster" effects in the 3-d view are my favorite. They've got some smoothing algorithm going, or it wouldn't curve the way it does, but the elevation data must not have a high enough resolution. Google has made this sort of thing look so easy for so long, but it's clearly very hard to get this stuff right. So, I guess it's not that surprising that apple messed up something incredibly hard in their first attempt. I'm curious as to whether these issues are as widespread as they seem, or if they're more edge cases made to appear common by the internet. But the curiosity isn't enough to drive me to upgrade. I'm totally putting off that until I figure out a decent alternative app.

Geee 14y ago
I don't think Google has 3D view at all. Those 3D maps were created by a different company whom Apple recently acquired. You can probably find the same errors from here as well, http://maps.nokia.com/webgl/ http://maps.nokia.com/webgl/
- rictic 14y ago
  http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/ http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/
  - Geee 14y ago
    Yes, indeed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 This is new development though and only on the Google Earth product for mobile, not in the maps app. Maps app for Android has those blocky untextured 3d buildings in select areas.
    - KirinDave 14y ago
      They actually have textures if you enable satellite imaging. They just also do the Mirror's Edge rendering of the city. It's interesting how Google does it. They both contract and scan data in, but they also let you use SketchUp to submit data as well.

stephen_g 14y ago

I really hope that people are using the 'Report Problem' feature in the app every time they post a screenshot here. Because that is one of the biggest things everyone can do that will help the map data to improve.

cooldeal 14y ago
As Gruber likes to remind us at every chance, Apple has more than $100 billion cash lying around. How about they use a little of that to license some half decent maps from Google or, failing that, Nokia/Navteq? Even Amazon(that Gruber sneered for making far less money than Apple [1]) managed to license Nokia maps and wrapped a nice API around it, and you think the iPhone buyers have a responsibility to work on making Apple maps better after paying for Apple's high margins so that Apple can make even more money on selling "premium" phones? Give me a break. [1] http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-correction http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-corr...
- jpxxx 14y ago
  There is no possibility that this platform change was over Apple's inability to come up with the cash to license a competitor's dataset. Their move was political, strategic, or both.
  - fpgeek 14y ago
    Then they could have spent the money hiring armies like Google's to get the map data right.
- boundlessdreamz 14y ago
  It is possible that Nokia didn't want to license the map data. That can be a selling point for windows phones now. Since Kindle is not a smartphone platform, it is not competing with Nokia.
jianshen 14y ago
This tumblr isn't a bad way for apple to collect "problem" spots since regular users generally wouldn't normally be motivated to click "Report Problem".

ledlauzis 14y ago

Apple made this decision just to dump Google and try to gain more control. Apple dind't want to use OpenStreetMap because its open source solution and Apple never uses open source solution. Yeah, its iOS and OS X is based on Linux (sort of) but they will never tell this to anyone. iOS 6 Maps sucks just like the App Store on the New iPad. Maybe it is just me but I found it very, very slow. It's better on iPhone

nicholassmith 14y ago
I've said this a few times (as have others) but it seems it could do with repeating. Unless you've got inside information we have no idea who dumped who, all we know is the contract expired and it wasn't renewed. Google might have applied financial pressure, Apple might have thrown their toys out of the pram. It's unknown.
ceejayoz 14y ago
> Apple dind't want to use OpenStreetMap because its open source solution and Apple never uses open source solution. Riiiight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
headhuntermdk 14y ago
OSX was based on code from FreeBSD and NetBSD and not Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X#History and Apple has used plenty of open source solutions (gcc, samba come to mind ). Not to mention putting money and resources behind opensource projects such as llvm and webkit. I do believe that dumping Google was a strategic decision and I'm perfectly O.K. with that. The world is full of products that are shaped more with business decisions that technical ones. What remains to be seen however is how quickly they will address the shortcomings of their map data.

glhaynes 14y ago

I'm clueless about mapping/geocoding/etc (it's amazing I make it to the grocery store and back) but I keep hearing that Apple needed to get this out there so that they could start getting data feeding back from the millions of iOS users, and thus (presumably rapidly) improving the quality of the maps. Is there any truth at all to that? I don't quite understand where they'd be getting that data back from - e.g. if I search for the hospital and I eventually find it 3 miles down the road from where the map took me, how would Apple/their mapping partners ever know that the POI should be moved?

bduerst 14y ago
They have been wanted to get Google Maps out of the picture because of the wealth of user location data it was collecting. I doubt that data is being collected to help users with "more accurate maps", but probably "more accurate advertising".
sillysaurus 14y ago
e.g. if I search for the hospital and I eventually find it 3 miles down the road from where the map took me, how would Apple/their mapping partners ever know that the POI should be moved? One possibility is that the phone keeps track of the fact that "you drove 3 miles past where you were 'supposed' to stop, and then stopped at some other (specific) location." As more and more people do that --- search the hospital, drive past it, and stop at the same specific location != the phone's predicted location --- then, statistically, we can infer that the "specific location" that everyone eventually stops at is, in fact, the location of the actual hospital. Interestingly, this implies that the current mapping problems will eventually sort themselves out... after annoying a sufficient number of customers!
- rmc 14y ago
  There are lot of privacy problems with essentially having every iphone phone home with where it is all the time.
  - sillysaurus 14y ago

jguimont 14y ago

Google spend much time organizing the name of the cities and road in a particular way. Now Apple has another way of doing it, the maps at higher level show less information. Some city name are picked and some are not, but at a closer level, the cities are there. Their algo to find what to show on the map is just different from Google. I'm not saying it is better, but different. I am pretty sure the same comparison can be made between google maps and let's say bing maps.

CoachRufus87 14y ago

Why did they stop using Google Maps?

bduerst 14y ago
Google maps was receiving a wealth of location data from iPhone users. Apple is probably trying to get a piece of that pie.
rmc 14y ago
I don't think Google & Apple came to an agreement. Apple went their own way.
acomjean 14y ago
Probably a business decision. Apple probably decided that having core phone functionality in the hands of a competitor wasn't such a good idea. Also Apple users were helping the competition with all the information they were uploading about geographic data. When the original iphone shipped with google maps (and the Google CEO on hand), Apple and Google were partners, now not so much.
- CoachRufus87 14y ago
  Do you think Google will eventually release a 3rd party maps app?
  - acomjean 14y ago
    Maybe. Google in the short term seem to be encouraging people install links on the phone to map/youtube services (go to youtube or maps.google.com in mobile safari and you'll be instructed on making the link). The web based google map app is decent. Google+ is a native app however, so I think they'll head that way eventually.
  - hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
    They'll have to. They make money on map advertising anyway, not being on iOS anymore is a big chunk of the market. Unless you believe the Google fanboys, who think Google should exploit this to drive Android sales. In the end it's better than the previous situation for iPhone users, because instead of a stagnant mapping application that wasn't updated for years for political reasons, we'll have competition now - as long as Apple is willing to accept Google Maps on their App Store, which I think they would, since there are many already (even a TomTom one).

lbotos 14y ago

So I've been seeing all this hatin' on HN this morning so I figured I should check it out on my device. I mapped my commute (1 hour) and the only oddity I saw was the waviness coming off of a bridge. Beyond that Philly's buildings were all rendered correctly and my route was exactly the same as Google maps. YMMV P.S. I must say It was really cool to see Cira Centre (The Amtrak Building) rendered in 3d. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cira_Centre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cira_Centre

misnome 14y ago
Try living somewhere that isn't a big US city. Of course the major population centers are going to be highly worked on. It's elsewhere, that google maps has gotten so good on, that people are complaining about. The satellite imagery is as bad as googles was, but more than six years ago.
- akoumjian 14y ago
  Actually, even in big US cities results are really bad in some cases. in Seattle, for example, searching for common well known intersections brings up results halfway across the country.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I hit a maps link for a restaurant in the Maryland suburbs of DC, which had latitude and longitude in it, and it still took me to the wrong place. Removing the restaurant name and just leaving the lat/lon showed the right place, but of course I didn't figure this out until I had already driven past the wrong place and wondered where the restaurant was. It's just atrocious. OK, so you have some bad POI coordinates, that's bad but somewhat understandable. But how do you prefer your bad POI data to the correct coordinates that you're given? It boggles the mind.
- protomyth 14y ago
  For rural ND, it looks like Apple's maps are about 6 - 9 months closer to current.

acomjean 14y ago

I just use Waze for turn by turn (iphone 4s) available for blackberry and andriod. Plus if you go to google on mobile safari, it basically pesters you to install a google map shortcut on the "desktop". This works very well. I'm sure apple maps will get better, but seeing as they're not a search engine, I don't think they'll ever get quite as good at finding by location names.

finkin1 14y ago

Can't wait to see the consequences of this. I hope Google delays their iOS maps a while so people can get frustrated with Apple.

ralfd 14y ago
I don't understand your giddyness. It would be better if there would be competition instead of Google having a map monopoly.
- finkin1 14y ago
  I'm of the opinion that many things Apple does stifle competition. This is enhanced by the "Apple can do no wrong" bandwagon.
  - v0cab 14y ago
    How do you feel about Samsung's behavior?

hnriot 14y ago

With maps.google.com (html5 version) I get some of the old functionality back, but the thing I miss most is street view. Having flyover is very pretty for demos but completely useless unless in real use. Street view, however, is actually very useful and I use it on a regular basis. As far as I know there isn't any work around to that. I will try ios6 again, but for now, I'm going to restore my backup until (if) google come out with an iPad version of maps and YouTube (instead of the iPhone only)

shinratdr 14y ago
TomTom vehicles with StreetView-style 360 cameras have been spotted around Toronto. I have little doubt Apple is pushing TomTom to compile that data and it will be the first billed feature in iOS 6.1.

lhnz 14y ago

It seems like the quality level maintained by Steve Jobs is quickly deteriorating in favour of business moves designed to wrest more control off Google. They are operating in a very similar way to other companies now. Google executives must be laughing very hard right now. If I was Google I'd avoid releasing a Google Maps application for at least a year and let the Android handset manufacturers ruthlessly exploit Android's superior maps.

karlshea 14y ago
And you came to this conclusion based on one bad app? Quite the leap it seems. What's missing in all of these conversations is that Apple's contract with Google for mapping ended this year. No one knows what really happened for Apple to make this change.
- lhnz 14y ago
  Apologies, I wasn't trying to represent what I said as fact hence the word "seems". However, I do feel that this has been a very lacklustre update from Apple... I think it would have been worthwhile to keep the contract with Google (even if it's expensive) while investing in making a better Apple Maps app.
- mootothemax 14y ago
  And you came to this conclusion based on one bad app? Quite the leap it seems. This isn't about "one bad app," it's about a core smartphone app that everybody uses. That's why so many people are complaining and the story is kicking off all over the place.
  - mitchty 14y ago
    I've been using ios 6 maps since beta1, yeah its new, but to wit I don't use transit directions and in a direct comparison with android google maps, ios 6's maps worked fine. This is in many ways who moved my cheese. I don't care if Google or Apple (who made the google maps app pre ios6 anyway using google apis) is responsible for the old maps app not being on ios6. If google wants their app on the apple store they can submit it. If apple denies it thats another matter and not worth arguing right now. ios6 is so much better than 5 overall I think you're being somewhat overly dramatic about one app. Yes it feels rushed, but its likely this is a stopgap due to contractual problems. And besides, these are just phones. People are so up in arms about this its getting to fever pitch levels. Why everyone expects perfection from the start is beyond me. Its a start, and not yet perfect for everyone. Either it gets better and all this complaining was just for pageviews (most likely), or people actually vote with their wallets and switch. Until that switch happens, these arguments are getting tiresome and to be honest aren't very constructive.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

I look at this and can't believe Apple wanted to ship with this. And I mean that literally, not incredulously. I believe Apple wants to be in carol of its mapping future, but this product isn't ready yet, and I don't think Apple is so delusional to not be able to see that. So that makes me wonder what happened in contract negotiations with Google to force it out. Did Google flat-out say "No"? Seems unlikely. Was it just too expensive? That's possible, especially if these negotiations happened during the time Google massively raised the prices on its API (completely random speculation: maybe the price increase was only about Apple), so Apple had to invest elsewhere. Did Google just want control of their map data or want to give Android a massive competitive edge so they backed out? That seems unlikely, but may be answered if Google doesn't put out a map app for iOS.

buro9 14y ago
Adverts. Spatial adverts are a big thing now, with a big future. I would speculate that beyond the cost of licensing the maps or the contractual stuff is that Apple did not want to deliver to Google more advertisers that would further entrench Google Maps as the dominant player. Apple need to be able to build their own POI database and knowledge of where all advertiser businesses are in order to get that revenue long-term. Thus, Apple need control of the maps to control the method that advertisers get onto the map. I think it's just strategic rather than contractual or short-term financial.
- rictic 14y ago
  I'm not sure whether you're saying that there weren't google ads in the old iOS maps, but I'm fairly sure I saw an ad there when I did a search for Pizza Hut a week ago in SF.
  - tharris0101 14y ago
    There were. I think they called them "Sponsored" or something. It really annoyed me because if I'd search for something common like "Home Depot" it would give me random pins at places that were definitely not Home Depot but rather sponsored businesses.

leephillips 14y ago

Note that you can still go to maps.google.com in Safari. Give Safari location permission and it works similarly to the old maps app, but a bit slower.

guilhermetk 14y ago

I'd really like to know where the data from Brazil comes from, specifically Florianopolis, SC. The first thing I did when I updated to iOS 6 was testing the maps app. The building I live is at least 5 years old, but the map shows it under construction

outside1234 14y ago

iPhone 4S with iOS 5 > iPhone 5 with iOS 6 Nice work Apple - that's going to save me a few hundred dollars!

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
headShrinker 14y ago
Your comment is relative and adds very little to the discussion here.
- outside1234 14y ago
  Sorry - my point is that (minus sarcasm), for the first time, Apple has done something to discourage folks from upgrading both on the hardware and OS fronts. Not a great move.
  - redcircle 14y ago
    I agree: I am not installing iOS 6 until I can install a Google mapping app (besides their Google Earth).

shriphani 14y ago

And I thought I had it bad with Bing Maps on WP7. Well, goes to show that lower-bounds exist to be breached.

mtgx 14y ago

Seeing the poor state of the Apple Maps, I think Google can wait 2 years or so before even considering releasing Google Maps for iPhone. More people will want Android phones as they can't leave without it, just like some can't live without the Gmail app for Android.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

grey-area 14y ago

For those who think this is just a problem with the 3D images, or are not convinced there are serious problems even after seeing this tumblr, try looking outside of California, at both satellite and standard maps. Some example searches: "Brighton, UK", Satellite - a major UK city is so blurry you can't see streets. "Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands" - ends up in the middle of the sea, and no roads on the islands at all. "Colchester" - satellite shows clouds, in B&W "Senkaku Islands" - compare satellite with standard to see duplicates of these disputed islands. "Puno,Peru"- in lake Titicaca etc. They probably had to rush this out, but it's really not ready for widespread use in some areas; they'd have done better to cut back the features and massively extend their testing (or use a crowd-sourced alternative). Given how extensively this is used in iOS, both by apps using Mapkit and by customers every day round the world, it's vital that is it correct, and getting it wrong in such obvious ways is a massive strategic error on Apple's part.

shinratdr 14y ago
Arguable, but there is something to be said for pushing it out there. Maybe it would have been better as a staggered release, but it's not like they need to wait for the next update to solve these problems. These are all issues with server-side map quality, which can be updated on-the-fly. We can only hope they're aggressively removing dead POIs and adding new ones. If it has been a week and nothing has changed for anyone, I would start to worry.

brudgers 14y ago

tl;dr "iOS 6, Navigate Differently" [At least I find it amusing]

mbel 14y ago
"Navigate Different" -- remember the details, Apple loves details.

derfclausen 14y ago

In regards to "Where did my university’s buildings go?" (http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31928845471/where-did-my-universitys-buildings-go http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31928845471/where-...), it does bother me that so many universities have provided specific map details to Google (see http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/map-your-campus-and-win-announcing.html http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/map-your-campus-a...), but not OSM.

mullingitover 14y ago

The beauty of this: Apple is definitely going to sell record numbers of the iPhone 5, shitty maps or not. And when they eventually do claw their way back to being on par with Google's maps, people will act like they invented maps themselves and all will be forgiven.

arunoda 14y ago

ddsfdsfdfdf jjjj jj

mikeleeorg 14y ago

Are there alternate map apps on iOS that anyone could recommend?

MaysonL 14y ago
Apps+ - it's free Google Maps basic, with a 2.99 unlock for added features.

mapgrep 14y ago

Funny subtitle: "The Apple iOS 6 Maps are amazing. Not." People seem to think "amazing" == "cool". Not so! It just means astonishing or surprising. Which makes the word so much more interesting to use. "We charge $9 for a bottle of Corona." "That's amazing!"* So the iOS 6 maps really truly are amazing :) *True story

josephcooney 14y ago
Same thing goes for the word 'incredible'.

ernestipark 14y ago

I just upgraded to iOS 6 last night and just used it to get around downtown Boston. It was unusable. It had some incorrect data about some locations, it was confusing to use, and when I typed in a location, it would look in different cities instead of the one I was currently in. Unfortunately, one of the biggest apps I use regularly has taken a big step backwards.

insickness 14y ago

While we are ragging on maps... I live in New York City. Sometimes Google doesn't put the street names on all the streets. I often have to scroll left or right or out to see what street it's on. Obviously you can't list the names on every street when it is zoomed out, but even when there aren't more than 4 or 5 streets on the map, the street names still don't appear. It's like they'd rather list local restaurants than street names. Has anyone else experienced this with Google maps?

tayl0r 14y ago
Happens to me all the time here in Berlin. Very frustrating. Sometimes I have to scroll 2 screens away before I find the street labelled.

edoloughlin 14y ago

This [1] made the news in Ireland today, when a city farm in Dublin called "Airfield" was labeled as an airport. It was thought that pilots in trouble might attempt to land there, but I can't see why checking maps on their iPhones would be part of emergency procedure. [1] http://searchengineland.com/irish-politician-calls-apples-new-maps-dangerously-misleading-after-farm-is-labeled-an-airport-133842 http://searchengineland.com/irish-politician-calls-apples-ne...

lucian303 14y ago

Amazing? This is old tech. Google maps. Perhaps you've heard of it?

ForrestN 14y ago

It's obvious that Google withheld or made it prohibitively expensive for Apple to pay for the liscence to google maps. It does retroactively make the case for handling these things in-house, especially when the partner is a competitor. After years of giving Google valuable data to the point where it becomes a major competitive advantage, google presumably says "go to hell."

enraged_camel 14y ago
I don't know why you got down-voted, because you're most likely correct. A lot of people blame Apple for making this move out of pure spite (and perhaps some grudge), but they probably did a huge cost-benefit analysis to be able to justify the switch.

white_devil 14y ago

"ZOMFG APPLE SUCKS!" There's a new huge undertaking of making a modern, competitive "Maps" product. Who'd have thought that when the first version ever is released, its data is not as accurate as a seven-year-old competitor's? This is fucking ridiculous. Let's see how long it takes for Google to replace everything it has with vector graphics. You know, to get even with the iOS 6 Maps. Who's the incumbent in two years?

Simucal 14y ago
I could be mistaken but I've read that Android has had vector based maps in its app for awhile.
- white_devil 14y ago
  The Maps app on my phone is still based on tiles. But you're right, there's a new version with vector graphics.
juliano_q 14y ago
Android has vector graphics since 2010.

homosaur 14y ago

This thing is an AMAZING atlas, especially on the iPad. It's a horrible navigation tool though.

dakrisht 14y ago

Wow. That's all I have to say. WOW.

ilaksh 14y ago

But you're still going to buy Apple because that is what all of your rich and trendy friends use. I have never owned an Apple product. The main reason for this is related to class and/or culture and financial circumstances. My family was always very frugal and on the lower side of middle class. And honestly I'm frugal and so when I buy devices I am focused on value and bought a laptop with a good graphics card and other features that I put Linux and Windows on. Also I am not comfortable around people so I have pretty much no friends. If I had more friends in web development I might have felt an overwhelming peer pressure to buy a Mac. The point is that these decisions are not actually based on technical merit, not for me or for Apple fans, because that's not how humans make decisions. We need to be very careful to take a step back every now and again and make a conscious effort to correct trends towards a more rational basis. The Apple ecosystem is generally more polished, that is true. However, its also very much closed compared to other systems like Google's and outdated in some ways. For example, Objective-C is a ridiculous over-complex relic and it is very embarrassing that so many people waste their time with it. Its obvious that we need to focus our attention and money on more egalitarian and open businesses. And pretty soon, even the most open and inexpensive products and services are not going to be a good value as better knowledge and data sharing becomes more practical and popular. The future is open, knowledge-based (some derivative of KR) operating systems where machine code isn't even allowed. The future is knowledge-based programming language and platform development and evolution. The future is ubiquitous open cross platform applications. The future is content-oriented peer to peer web knowledgebases and applications. The future is open source phones that you print out in 3d on your desk. The future of technology is open, distributed, cohesive and yet decoupled, mature, substantive, and egalitarian. Apple is none of these things.

bluthru 14y ago
>And honestly I'm frugal and so when I buy devices I am focused on value The iPhone is $200. You still can't get a tablet that matches the iPad 3 for $500. Saying Apple is expensive is like making one button mice jokes. Value is a product of usefulness and longevity, plus resale value. It's ridiculous to proclaim that Apple products aren't high on value--I still use my 2007 MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion. It works out to well under a dollar a day and I didn't have to make any compromises in the process. >The future is open source phones that you print out in 3d on your desk. The future is also a Star Trek replicator, and just as relevant to the discussion. >Apple is none of these things. Because talented people want to be paid for their efforts, and I'm fine paying people for doing great work?

jarospisak 14y ago

Relevant: how Google test maps http://youtu.be/49JepTyK0NA?t=36m57s http://youtu.be/49JepTyK0NA?t=36m57s

dm8 14y ago

Looks like it works well in bay area but outside bay area it's pretty bad. Apparently, Redditors are pretty pissed off - http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/106rvw/new_ios_6_apple_maps_app_angering_users_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/106rvw/new_ios_6... Looks like AAPL tested it in Cupertino and worked well. Thought it will work well in rest of the world too. Classic mistake?

hackermani 14y ago

Umm well Google maps are waaaaay superior. Apple give us the choice to use what we want, till you get your act toghether. Spend some of thoese billions and drive a bunch of cars around or heck buy a few satellites

laacz 14y ago

What actually bothers me the most, is poor quality of iOS6. It has several bugs (excluding maps and unfortunate wifi bug), which already have affected me and users around me. Some most notable include following. * Sometimes iTunes update screen does not refresh, * You can't disable vibration for notifications per application (i love my email in notification center, still - i do not need it to vibrate; in 5.1 it worked). * Also, phone from time to time vibrates, though nothing has happened (no new notifications or alerts). * Most annoying one is that they changed keyboard input, so you can't enter special characters (common in Latvian) by holding and swiping left/right. You have to swipe up and then left/right. Makes big deal, when typing. I know it all will be fixed in 6.0.1, but still - there is visible decline in quality of provided software, which actually makes me very sad as a user.

kalleboo 14y ago
Apple's 1.0 release are always kind of buggy. I remember iOS 5.0 was really buggy, and OS X 10.X.0 releases are notorious.

leoedin 14y ago

I love the one of houston highrises with gas stations on each one (they're actually the corporate headquarters of oil companies). http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mantx26oqv1rhptwbo1_1280.png http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mantx26oqv1rhptwbo1_1280.p...

rabidsnail 14y ago

The mapquest app is better than this. I wonder how much it would cost to persuade AOL to part with the mapquest division.

DigitalSea 14y ago

I think my favourite image was the state park with this caption beneath it, made me laugh out loud: "Valley Forge State Park became Valley Forge National Historical Park a few years ago… in 1976" in all seriousness Apple's maps offering quite clearly isn't up to scratch in comparison to Google's maps application. While Google have made mapping look easy for a long time now, it quite clearly isn't as easy as Apple thought it was. If Jobs were still alive, maps would never have been released in the state that it currently is. Seems like Apple rushed the release of maps, I wonder what the real agenda for moving away from Google maps in the first place was here? It quite clearly wasn't because Apple had a superior maps offering than Google could offer. Way to force us iPhone users to use an inferior mapping product. Luckily Google have submitted a maps application to the maps store, but it'll probably get rejected for competing with the iPhone maps application.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

dumb_dumb 14y ago

The Amazing Parchment Maps 6 1/100 of the cost of an Apple device. Thinner. Lighter. Faster. Powered by clean, green energy. No Chinese workers exploited.

pbreit 14y ago

I was expecting much worse. I don't think the problems with the 3D are that big of a deal. And things like the Washington Monument being off by a few dozen feet are fine. What I will say is that Google for the longest time did not locate properly my home or my store in the middle of downtown San Francisco and Apple's maps have them correct on Day 1.

dude8 14y ago

I just got a Mac but this is the first time their closed source monopoly crap has bit them in ash. The more it happens the quicker they will change. It's a good day.

Jarihd 14y ago

How can someone release a product like this !!! What were the PM, team manager, technical architect, developers and QA doing !!! Didn't they observe this !!! Is this a deliberate product release ???

antirez 14y ago

I think Apple did the switch with bad timing, before having a good solution in place... but in the end maybe facing some real technological challenge can be good for them? Every time they have to do serious software / infrastructure stuff they seem to be weak, even with iMessage that is not exactly that super-hard thing to do, there are reliability problems. I hope that this map stuff will make Apple a bit more CS oriented, but not as much as Google is.

tsahyt 14y ago

This is bad.. really bad. I'm not sure whether Apple screwed this up so badly or Google really did a brilliant job on Maps.

rkrkrk21 14y ago

Its now very clear that Apple is loosing its direction after steve jobs gone. People who used to get crazy about the release of apple products will no loose the passion if apple follows this path.

visarg 14y ago

It would seem I am alone in saying that for Bucharest, Romania the iOS6 Maps is better than Google Maps was because Google Maps was not able to look up houses by number - which means it was unable to guide me to any address. It was just the satellite imagery with roads overlaid, so, if you wanted to go to say, West St. 23, it could find you West St. and put the pointer right in the middle of it, even if it was miles long. Apple can look up addresses. That's all.

albumedia 14y ago

The iOS 6 Map issue is nothing more than a PR stunt from apple. I think it's brilliant. What's the best way to get people talking about their new map feature? Release a map product that is inferior to Google maps then push a major update. Everyone will be surprise how good iOS 6 map will be in a few weeks.