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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 so

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.

thereallurch 14y ago
I'm sure google is sitting on a treasure chest of map related patents, too.
- brudgers 14y ago
  With TerraServer, Microsoft got into online mapping before Google was even incorporated (and when putting a terabyte of data online was so far beyond the leading edge that it was a Microsoft research project). Their strategic partner Nokia has been in the mobile mapping space for some time as well. Given the relative sizes of patent portfolios prior to Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility, I wouldn't bet on Google should the IP wars shift to mapping...of course I wouldn't bet on Apple either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer-USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer-USA
headShrinker 14y ago
It wasn't until about 3 years ago that Google Maps became the polished app that it is now, ie: vector maps, 3d building maps, tilting, etc. (Google has been in the map business for 10 years now?) Apple has a lot of catching up to do but it's very good at trudging ahead regardless of customers complaints until the product is completely polished and competitive.
- tayl0r 14y ago
  Are the features like vector maps, 3d buildings, and tilting only on Android? I've only used Google Maps on iOS.
  - headShrinker 14y ago
    Yeah. Maps for Android is really amazing, the single coolest app for Android. Even two years ago it was really very developed. I missed it.
rburhum 14y ago
I meant "much better" than what Apple already has. I don't think it will be easy for them to catch up (it would be absurd to say that they can have something better than Google Maps in such a short time). What bothers me a lot, is that most people blame the data errors to the algorithms or ability of the team to create good software. You can have the best coders in the world, and if they have data that is not good, they can only algorithmically clean it so much. Google has several vehicles that they drive around and collect all kinds of information themselves. Sure you can hire Navteq (or in Apple's case, TomTom aka TeleAtlas) to go around and do it for you. Guess what? When you license products from either of those companies that means you are relying on their editors. That means no fancy object recognition geotagged image that you can send to a support vector machine to flag an area as needed revision... the product you get from that licensing is the vector line with the attributes already attached to them. So that is what you work with. Google has an entire army in India, using Google-made custom editing tools that do these things. Unless Apple builds the same, they will always be behind. Can Apple do it? Sure! They have the cash and the talent. Will they? It is up to them to decide if investing 400 million into their mapping infrastructure is worth it. I think it is.
- tesseractive 14y ago
  Personally, I certainly never supposed that the current version of Apple's maps somehow proved that Apple had incompetent people on the problem. At the same time, Apple has a carefully cultivated history of not shipping half-baked products. They famously worked on tablets for years before they built one that they were happy enough with to ship. Now, for reasons that the end user surely does not care about, they have taken a product that was missing a key feature or two (navigation, street view) and replaced it with something that is much less reliable even for its fundamental task. Yes, making a really good mapping application is hard, and requires many people on the ground, around the world. So either you need to make the commitment to do what it takes to deliver that app, or you should outsource the whole thing, and use Nokia Maps or Bing Maps or whatever. The third alternative -- doing it yourself and shipping it to end users before it's ready and without having done all the due diligence -- is likely to be embarrassing.
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
bitcartel 14y ago
Maybe this is as good as it gets. "Sources tell The Verge that Apple began work on the iOS 6 maps system nearly five years ago" http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-ios-6-maps-phone-5-buggy-complaints http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-i...
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Hold on a minute... Apple had already started working on replacing Google Maps approximately a year before Google had launched a single Android device? Wow. Just wow. Now we see how strategically brilliant (and utterly necessary) Android actually was.

thereallurch 14y ago

I'm sure google is sitting on a treasure chest of map related patents, too.

brudgers 14y ago
With TerraServer, Microsoft got into online mapping before Google was even incorporated (and when putting a terabyte of data online was so far beyond the leading edge that it was a Microsoft research project). Their strategic partner Nokia has been in the mobile mapping space for some time as well. Given the relative sizes of patent portfolios prior to Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility, I wouldn't bet on Google should the IP wars shift to mapping...of course I wouldn't bet on Apple either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer-USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer-USA

headShrinker 14y ago

It wasn't until about 3 years ago that Google Maps became the polished app that it is now, ie: vector maps, 3d building maps, tilting, etc. (Google has been in the map business for 10 years now?) Apple has a lot of catching up to do but it's very good at trudging ahead regardless of customers complaints until the product is completely polished and competitive.

tayl0r 14y ago
Are the features like vector maps, 3d buildings, and tilting only on Android? I've only used Google Maps on iOS.
- headShrinker 14y ago
  Yeah. Maps for Android is really amazing, the single coolest app for Android. Even two years ago it was really very developed. I missed it.

rburhum 14y ago

I meant "much better" than what Apple already has. I don't think it will be easy for them to catch up (it would be absurd to say that they can have something better than Google Maps in such a short time). What bothers me a lot, is that most people blame the data errors to the algorithms or ability of the team to create good software. You can have the best coders in the world, and if they have data that is not good, they can only algorithmically clean it so much. Google has several vehicles that they drive around and collect all kinds of information themselves. Sure you can hire Navteq (or in Apple's case, TomTom aka TeleAtlas) to go around and do it for you. Guess what? When you license products from either of those companies that means you are relying on their editors. That means no fancy object recognition geotagged image that you can send to a support vector machine to flag an area as needed revision... the product you get from that licensing is the vector line with the attributes already attached to them. So that is what you work with. Google has an entire army in India, using Google-made custom editing tools that do these things. Unless Apple builds the same, they will always be behind. Can Apple do it? Sure! They have the cash and the talent. Will they? It is up to them to decide if investing 400 million into their mapping infrastructure is worth it. I think it is.

tesseractive 14y ago
Personally, I certainly never supposed that the current version of Apple's maps somehow proved that Apple had incompetent people on the problem. At the same time, Apple has a carefully cultivated history of not shipping half-baked products. They famously worked on tablets for years before they built one that they were happy enough with to ship. Now, for reasons that the end user surely does not care about, they have taken a product that was missing a key feature or two (navigation, street view) and replaced it with something that is much less reliable even for its fundamental task. Yes, making a really good mapping application is hard, and requires many people on the ground, around the world. So either you need to make the commitment to do what it takes to deliver that app, or you should outsource the whole thing, and use Nokia Maps or Bing Maps or whatever. The third alternative -- doing it yourself and shipping it to end users before it's ready and without having done all the due diligence -- is likely to be embarrassing.
snogglethorpe 14y ago

bitcartel 14y ago

Maybe this is as good as it gets. "Sources tell The Verge that Apple began work on the iOS 6 maps system nearly five years ago" http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-ios-6-maps-phone-5-buggy-complaints http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3363914/wrong-turn-apple-i...

fpgeek 14y ago
Hold on a minute... Apple had already started working on replacing Google Maps approximately a year before Google had launched a single Android device? Wow. Just wow. Now we see how strategically brilliant (and utterly necessary) Android actually was.