10 ms·

Old Maps vs. New Maps

58 points by kemayo 14y ago

snogglethorpe 14y ago
tl;dr: apple maps apologia
- arrrg 14y ago
  No, actual data for once, not just anecdotes. I want to see more of that and less of the anecdotes. I’m under no illusion that this is any sort of conclusive test, but it’s a start. (This, for example, doesn’t test for POIs or more complicated and fuzzy search queries, which for me – anecdote alarm! – are the huge issue and both often unusable – while all the rest works like a charm for me, except for some small gripes I have with how maps are displayed.)
- 37prime 14y ago
  Isn't that ironic that you formed an opinion about an article that you didn't read?
  - snogglethorpe 14y ago
    I did read it ... :) "tl;dr" is to save other people the effort.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      If someone says "tl;dr", I assume they mean "it was too long; I didn't read it." If you want to provide a summary, then perhaps just call it that. (Although I think your summary mischaracterizes an actual test.)
      - myko 14y ago
        > If someone says "tl;dr", I assume they mean "it was too long; I didn't read it." This would be correct, however 'tl;dr: <summary>' is pretty common for providing a summary.
        scott_s 14y ago
        I assume that's providing the reason they didn't read it. How's about we just say "Here's my summary:".
        catshirt 14y ago
        the way snogglethorpe used "tl;dr" is fine and pretty generally understood. can we stop arguing semantics of an internet acronym? regardless of your admitted assumption, their intent was explained, let's move on now.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
- guywithabike 14y ago
  I find it interesting that the linked article is substantiative and provides data and thought-out conclusions derived from the data, whereas you replied with a snarky 3 word response. That's much of Hacker News in a nutshell.
madrona 14y ago
"Google has discovered that an incorrect result is better than no result at all when it comes to keeping people on their Websites and continue to generate ad revenue." Big eyeroll here. Returning a probabilistic match is a nefarious plot for revenue. OK...
- drats 14y ago
  Also the author missed the point of clicks, subsequent searches and back buttons/bounces: Google sees all of these as data to be mined. So while the Apple engineer is worried about returning the wrong result supposedly (yet they return tons of wrong ones anyway), the Google engineer is saying "we are mostly confident on these ones, lets put them out there and see which ones cause the users to bounce or search again and which ones terminate at that point and then we can upgrade their scores".
aristidb 14y ago
Precise match is broken: People will spell addresses in all kinds of ways, and Maps needs to find all of them.
jordanthoms 14y ago
The biggest issue here in NZ seems to be that the POI data is horrible. I'm in Auckland, the largest city in NZ, and searched for Britomart, the main transport hub with a large train and bus station, and Apple maps had no results. That may be an anecdote, but that single data point is enough to make Apple maps utterly useless for Auckland. Also, I don't agree with the assertion that Apple maps won't return far-fetched results. I searched for "PB Tech", a technology shop chain, and it took me to Mexico.
- taligent 14y ago
  Apple relies a lot on Yelp for POI data which obviously isn't in NZ right now. But I believe they will be there soon as they just launched in Australia and bought the NZ domain name. Yelp's strategy has been to partner with the local YellowPages equivalent. So what you will see is a jump from bad data now to almost perfect data overnight.
  - untog 14y ago
    Ha. Yelp just bought a .co.nz domain name, therefore we're going to see an increase in data quality overnight? I admire your optimism. Why wasn't this present at launch?
unreal37 14y ago
If the author only limited the "success" category to a 1KM radius, that is awfully narrow for the search for an entire city name. If we say anywhere within 10KM (6 miles) is success, I wonder if iOS5 blows iOS6 out of the water even more.
jsnell 14y ago
I don't believe these results are an accurate representation of the Google Maps geocoder or map data. And it's absolutely not the case that an incorrect result is considered better than no result. I spot-checked on the Google API a few entries that the spreadsheet showed in the wrong country (Waldemar, Coldstream, Osceola, Snow Road Station, Belgrave, Winger, Heidelberg, Priceville, Vernon, Blackwater). I only got one result that was wrong (Vernon) with the default settings. With a country bias to Canada, which I hope would have been there for an API user from that country, that one is resolved to a sensible looking locality as well. There clearly are some queries in that set for which Google returns the wrong answer, but I'd be the frequency of those problems is an order of magnitude lower than this post suggests. It'd be interesting to know what the reason for this discrepancy is, but without seeing the exact queries on the wire one can only speculate.
billjings 14y ago
The debate about iOS maps is driving me absolutely crazy, because any fool can see that this is not about the data (in the US, at least). This is about quality of search results. Apple has had search in its products for a long time. It has search in its documentation, in Spotlight, in Mail.app. All of this search technology is crap. Spotlight is fast, but it's fast crap. I was in the bay area this week, and searched for San Francisco International. The data is not lacking for this search result. The roads are there in the Maps app database. Anyone want to guess the result of my search? Apple partisans want to believe that this is a data problem. If it were a data problem, then it'd only be a matter of time before Maps.app were a solved problem. Unfortunately, it's not. It's a search problem. I know absolutely nothing about the technical details about how to implement a decent search, but I do know this: Apple has never, not once, delivered a product that gave decent search results. So good luck, Apple. Hopefully this problem can be solved by throwing money at it. Something tells me that it can't, though.
- Bud 14y ago
  1. You were searching for an airport, left out the word "airport", which is the most important word, and it's Apple's fault? 2. I just went into Maps and searched for "San Francisco International". There were two hits, and the second hit was the airport. The other hit was for a business in SF with "International" as the first word in its name. These do not seem like completely awful search results to me. 3. Why are you assuming (and yes, it's a complete assumption which is free of evidence) that "Apple partisans want to believe" (you can read minds now too?) that it's only a data problem? I'm an Apple partisan, and I worked on the Maps team, specifically on quality of search results. I can tell you that what I believe is that it is both a problem of needing to refine the database, and also a problem of needing to continue to improve the search capability. Does this change your assumptions?
  - joeyo 14y ago
    > 1. You were searching for an airport, left out the word > "airport", which is the most important word, and it's > Apple's fault? Yes, it is Apple's fault, in a sense, because the customer is always right. Moreover, a competitor (Google) is able to connect the dots and return the right results. I just searched that same phrase on Android and it gave me directions to the airport in question, along with a phone number and other useful information. Whether it is able achieve that feat because it knows that I have been to SFO within the last month, or knows that I have emails in my inbox that pertain to the airport, or because more users click through to SFO than other hits for that search phrase or because they use black magic is beside the point: Google's search results are simply better.
smithite 14y ago
Obviously the old map is better.
- guywithabike 14y ago
  Did you even read the article?
krob 14y ago
I think that @billjings hit it on the money. What this means is that if apple is capable or even able to catch up to a company like google when doing a location search, they may have a true search engine on their hands. Google makes quick / easy work of navigation because their search is context-aware (geo/account) and will help narrow the search down with a great deal of intelligence. Take for instance the new google search in JB android. This relates to maps because it's ability to acquire fuzzy data to provide you with accurate results. Apple is not going to catch up to google anytime soon on making "search" better or even close to the accuracy of google due to the infrastructure & algorithm constraints. Apple as big and cool their products are, I can almost garantee they don't have the brainpower that google does behind their largest most important products. Google products take Computer Science to a new level.
collypops 14y ago
"Had Apple set the public’s expectations better, we may be having a very different discussion at this point." This, for me, captures exactly why Apple deserve the backlash they've seen from this whole Maps thing (and why Tim Cook's apology was much needed). Their special events are always filled with the same bullshit: 'Amazing'. 'Magical'. 'Incredible'. 'Unbelievable'. Ok, Apple have very talented people working on their products, and they're extremely proud of what they do (they should be), so I get that they can't help but roll out the same marketing spin for everything they release. This of course backfires when we get these products in our hands and they're not everything we expected them to be. The biggest change that needs to happen at Apple now is that they need to breed humility into their culture, and show it more in public. The last hint of humility I saw from them in recent years was the word 'beta' slapped onto Siri at its original announcement, and yet Forstall still put on a flawless presentation that showed Siri as far more capable and responsive than it's been in the wild. The most recent of course, was Tim Cook's Maps apology. Steve Jobs would never have written that letter, and I'm glad that there is now someone running Apple that knows when an apology is due, especially one that recommends alternative products in the meantime, rather than shovelling shit on them in an Antennagate-style "we suck, but look, everyone else sucks more, na na na na na". It takes a certain kind of person to get a company like Apple to the top. It takes an entirely different kind of person to keep them there. I can only hope that this is first step in Apple forging a more honest, humble, real relationship with it's consumers, because in time that will be the only thing that can secure their future.
jarjoura 14y ago
This experiment is flawed. iOS 5's forward/reverse geocoders are using Apple's servers, just like iOS 6. The only way to use Google's forward geocoder data is to make a REST request with your own API key using NSURLConnection yourself. In iOS 4.x you can use MKReverseGeocoder which would return results from Google, but this class was rewritten in iOS 5 to be a thin layer on top of CLReverseGeocoder (using Apple's servers).
- ralfd 14y ago
  What does Maps in iOS 5 use? This is just a comparison between old and new Maps.
josteink 14y ago
I think a good summary of the situation is that Apple attempted to out-Google Google. Microsoft has tried that in the past, just as they've tried to out-Apple Apple. It's bound to fail. What's interesting about this is that it beyond a doubt confirms that Apple is now playing catch up to Google (and Android).
ehosca 14y ago
oh i get it... its my fault when a mapping does not display anything when i type in Tim Horton's instead of Tim Hortons...
TallboyOne 14y ago
I'm honestly getting tired of this debate. I haven't mentioned anything until now, but the new maps is incredible. I saw FIRST hand how it worked. I can't speak for someone living in the boonies but, I ordered my iphone 5 online, and had to pick it up an hour away in Miami beach. My iphone 4 had google maps on it as I drove to Miami beach, I actually missed my turn twice and I am not a bad driver, it's just that you need to merge very quickly in one particular spot twice (basically stay left or stay right). Google maps wasn't keeping up and even after using maps for a year or more or three, it still happened. It just was unfamiliar and the app didn't provide any additional help other than trying to flip through the directions very fast while driving which isn't safe as it is. I finally got there, got my iphone 5 and was BLOWN AWAY at the maps app. At first I was annoyed coming out of the parking garage because I thought "you cant skip forward ahead in the directions??". It must be what everyone is annoyed at. Suddenly, I pulled out of the garage and magically it has 3d view, which rotates as you drive, and talks to you. It was an INCREDIBLE comparison because not 45 mins before I was missing turns, and on my way out of miami i could see every turn PERFECTLY, and not only that I didnt have to hold my phone not keeping my eyes on the road. I understand the data/search is what most people are referring to but the point above is massive. It blows google maps away x10000. I played with the GPS the entire way home, especially the part where you go around the cloverleaf loops on the highway merge junctions, and watching the maps follow around with it. As far as search, I have tried searching 'sushi' while somewhat zoomed in. whereas google would search a given radius if it had low results, apple maps stays with the low results unless you manually zoom out. I have also seen it be somewhat picky if you don't specify a road correctly (in the jungle where my parents live it didn't recognize "CR" as county road, so I typed that manually). These problems are hardly more than just an annoyance, and the benefits far outweigh the gains imo
- untog 14y ago
  Honestly, if you are that blown away by turn by turn directions, then you've been held back by Apple for the last few years. Android has had it, Windows Phone had it, and numerous third party apps on iOS provided it. None of this blows away Google Maps. It blows away Apple's implementation of Google Maps, which was subpar. So, now Apple's implementation is on par with everyone else, but with subpar data.
podperson 14y ago
My iOS6 maps experience comes down to the new Maps has a far better UI but sucks at figuring out where you want to go unless you provide the street address. (It's not like the old Maps app was flawless. It's just that it usually worked and the new one usually doesn't. I'm in greater Washington DC, I'm sure your mileage will vary.) The same can be said for Waze -- I often would convert a descriptive location (such as "San Francisco International" per another post) to a street address then copy and paste it into Waze. I use the conditional tense because I consider the new iOS Maps app to be superior to Waze for navigation, once you've found an address. It seems to me Apple could easily cut a deal with a third-party-search-engine-that-isn't-Google to improve this simple flaw. http://loewald.com/blog/?p=4918 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=4918

58 points by kemayo 14y ago

snogglethorpe 14y ago

tl;dr: apple maps apologia

arrrg 14y ago
No, actual data for once, not just anecdotes. I want to see more of that and less of the anecdotes. I’m under no illusion that this is any sort of conclusive test, but it’s a start. (This, for example, doesn’t test for POIs or more complicated and fuzzy search queries, which for me – anecdote alarm! – are the huge issue and both often unusable – while all the rest works like a charm for me, except for some small gripes I have with how maps are displayed.)
37prime 14y ago
Isn't that ironic that you formed an opinion about an article that you didn't read?
- snogglethorpe 14y ago
  I did read it ... :) "tl;dr" is to save other people the effort.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    If someone says "tl;dr", I assume they mean "it was too long; I didn't read it." If you want to provide a summary, then perhaps just call it that. (Although I think your summary mischaracterizes an actual test.)
    - myko 14y ago
      > If someone says "tl;dr", I assume they mean "it was too long; I didn't read it." This would be correct, however 'tl;dr: <summary>' is pretty common for providing a summary.
      - scott_s 14y ago
        I assume that's providing the reason they didn't read it. How's about we just say "Here's my summary:".
        catshirt 14y ago
        the way snogglethorpe used "tl;dr" is fine and pretty generally understood. can we stop arguing semantics of an internet acronym? regardless of your admitted assumption, their intent was explained, let's move on now.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
guywithabike 14y ago
I find it interesting that the linked article is substantiative and provides data and thought-out conclusions derived from the data, whereas you replied with a snarky 3 word response. That's much of Hacker News in a nutshell.

madrona 14y ago

"Google has discovered that an incorrect result is better than no result at all when it comes to keeping people on their Websites and continue to generate ad revenue." Big eyeroll here. Returning a probabilistic match is a nefarious plot for revenue. OK...

drats 14y ago
Also the author missed the point of clicks, subsequent searches and back buttons/bounces: Google sees all of these as data to be mined. So while the Apple engineer is worried about returning the wrong result supposedly (yet they return tons of wrong ones anyway), the Google engineer is saying "we are mostly confident on these ones, lets put them out there and see which ones cause the users to bounce or search again and which ones terminate at that point and then we can upgrade their scores".

aristidb 14y ago

Precise match is broken: People will spell addresses in all kinds of ways, and Maps needs to find all of them.

jordanthoms 14y ago

The biggest issue here in NZ seems to be that the POI data is horrible. I'm in Auckland, the largest city in NZ, and searched for Britomart, the main transport hub with a large train and bus station, and Apple maps had no results. That may be an anecdote, but that single data point is enough to make Apple maps utterly useless for Auckland. Also, I don't agree with the assertion that Apple maps won't return far-fetched results. I searched for "PB Tech", a technology shop chain, and it took me to Mexico.

taligent 14y ago
Apple relies a lot on Yelp for POI data which obviously isn't in NZ right now. But I believe they will be there soon as they just launched in Australia and bought the NZ domain name. Yelp's strategy has been to partner with the local YellowPages equivalent. So what you will see is a jump from bad data now to almost perfect data overnight.
- untog 14y ago
  Ha. Yelp just bought a .co.nz domain name, therefore we're going to see an increase in data quality overnight? I admire your optimism. Why wasn't this present at launch?

unreal37 14y ago

If the author only limited the "success" category to a 1KM radius, that is awfully narrow for the search for an entire city name. If we say anywhere within 10KM (6 miles) is success, I wonder if iOS5 blows iOS6 out of the water even more.

jsnell 14y ago

I don't believe these results are an accurate representation of the Google Maps geocoder or map data. And it's absolutely not the case that an incorrect result is considered better than no result. I spot-checked on the Google API a few entries that the spreadsheet showed in the wrong country (Waldemar, Coldstream, Osceola, Snow Road Station, Belgrave, Winger, Heidelberg, Priceville, Vernon, Blackwater). I only got one result that was wrong (Vernon) with the default settings. With a country bias to Canada, which I hope would have been there for an API user from that country, that one is resolved to a sensible looking locality as well. There clearly are some queries in that set for which Google returns the wrong answer, but I'd be the frequency of those problems is an order of magnitude lower than this post suggests. It'd be interesting to know what the reason for this discrepancy is, but without seeing the exact queries on the wire one can only speculate.

billjings 14y ago

The debate about iOS maps is driving me absolutely crazy, because any fool can see that this is not about the data (in the US, at least). This is about quality of search results. Apple has had search in its products for a long time. It has search in its documentation, in Spotlight, in Mail.app. All of this search technology is crap. Spotlight is fast, but it's fast crap. I was in the bay area this week, and searched for San Francisco International. The data is not lacking for this search result. The roads are there in the Maps app database. Anyone want to guess the result of my search? Apple partisans want to believe that this is a data problem. If it were a data problem, then it'd only be a matter of time before Maps.app were a solved problem. Unfortunately, it's not. It's a search problem. I know absolutely nothing about the technical details about how to implement a decent search, but I do know this: Apple has never, not once, delivered a product that gave decent search results. So good luck, Apple. Hopefully this problem can be solved by throwing money at it. Something tells me that it can't, though.

Bud 14y ago
1. You were searching for an airport, left out the word "airport", which is the most important word, and it's Apple's fault? 2. I just went into Maps and searched for "San Francisco International". There were two hits, and the second hit was the airport. The other hit was for a business in SF with "International" as the first word in its name. These do not seem like completely awful search results to me. 3. Why are you assuming (and yes, it's a complete assumption which is free of evidence) that "Apple partisans want to believe" (you can read minds now too?) that it's only a data problem? I'm an Apple partisan, and I worked on the Maps team, specifically on quality of search results. I can tell you that what I believe is that it is both a problem of needing to refine the database, and also a problem of needing to continue to improve the search capability. Does this change your assumptions?
- joeyo 14y ago
  > 1. You were searching for an airport, left out the word > "airport", which is the most important word, and it's > Apple's fault? Yes, it is Apple's fault, in a sense, because the customer is always right. Moreover, a competitor (Google) is able to connect the dots and return the right results. I just searched that same phrase on Android and it gave me directions to the airport in question, along with a phone number and other useful information. Whether it is able achieve that feat because it knows that I have been to SFO within the last month, or knows that I have emails in my inbox that pertain to the airport, or because more users click through to SFO than other hits for that search phrase or because they use black magic is beside the point: Google's search results are simply better.

smithite 14y ago

Obviously the old map is better.

guywithabike 14y ago
Did you even read the article?

krob 14y ago

I think that @billjings hit it on the money. What this means is that if apple is capable or even able to catch up to a company like google when doing a location search, they may have a true search engine on their hands. Google makes quick / easy work of navigation because their search is context-aware (geo/account) and will help narrow the search down with a great deal of intelligence. Take for instance the new google search in JB android. This relates to maps because it's ability to acquire fuzzy data to provide you with accurate results. Apple is not going to catch up to google anytime soon on making "search" better or even close to the accuracy of google due to the infrastructure & algorithm constraints. Apple as big and cool their products are, I can almost garantee they don't have the brainpower that google does behind their largest most important products. Google products take Computer Science to a new level.

collypops 14y ago

"Had Apple set the public’s expectations better, we may be having a very different discussion at this point." This, for me, captures exactly why Apple deserve the backlash they've seen from this whole Maps thing (and why Tim Cook's apology was much needed). Their special events are always filled with the same bullshit: 'Amazing'. 'Magical'. 'Incredible'. 'Unbelievable'. Ok, Apple have very talented people working on their products, and they're extremely proud of what they do (they should be), so I get that they can't help but roll out the same marketing spin for everything they release. This of course backfires when we get these products in our hands and they're not everything we expected them to be. The biggest change that needs to happen at Apple now is that they need to breed humility into their culture, and show it more in public. The last hint of humility I saw from them in recent years was the word 'beta' slapped onto Siri at its original announcement, and yet Forstall still put on a flawless presentation that showed Siri as far more capable and responsive than it's been in the wild. The most recent of course, was Tim Cook's Maps apology. Steve Jobs would never have written that letter, and I'm glad that there is now someone running Apple that knows when an apology is due, especially one that recommends alternative products in the meantime, rather than shovelling shit on them in an Antennagate-style "we suck, but look, everyone else sucks more, na na na na na". It takes a certain kind of person to get a company like Apple to the top. It takes an entirely different kind of person to keep them there. I can only hope that this is first step in Apple forging a more honest, humble, real relationship with it's consumers, because in time that will be the only thing that can secure their future.

jarjoura 14y ago

This experiment is flawed. iOS 5's forward/reverse geocoders are using Apple's servers, just like iOS 6. The only way to use Google's forward geocoder data is to make a REST request with your own API key using NSURLConnection yourself. In iOS 4.x you can use MKReverseGeocoder which would return results from Google, but this class was rewritten in iOS 5 to be a thin layer on top of CLReverseGeocoder (using Apple's servers).

ralfd 14y ago
What does Maps in iOS 5 use? This is just a comparison between old and new Maps.

josteink 14y ago

I think a good summary of the situation is that Apple attempted to out-Google Google. Microsoft has tried that in the past, just as they've tried to out-Apple Apple. It's bound to fail. What's interesting about this is that it beyond a doubt confirms that Apple is now playing catch up to Google (and Android).

ehosca 14y ago

oh i get it... its my fault when a mapping does not display anything when i type in Tim Horton's instead of Tim Hortons...

TallboyOne 14y ago

I'm honestly getting tired of this debate. I haven't mentioned anything until now, but the new maps is incredible. I saw FIRST hand how it worked. I can't speak for someone living in the boonies but, I ordered my iphone 5 online, and had to pick it up an hour away in Miami beach. My iphone 4 had google maps on it as I drove to Miami beach, I actually missed my turn twice and I am not a bad driver, it's just that you need to merge very quickly in one particular spot twice (basically stay left or stay right). Google maps wasn't keeping up and even after using maps for a year or more or three, it still happened. It just was unfamiliar and the app didn't provide any additional help other than trying to flip through the directions very fast while driving which isn't safe as it is. I finally got there, got my iphone 5 and was BLOWN AWAY at the maps app. At first I was annoyed coming out of the parking garage because I thought "you cant skip forward ahead in the directions??". It must be what everyone is annoyed at. Suddenly, I pulled out of the garage and magically it has 3d view, which rotates as you drive, and talks to you. It was an INCREDIBLE comparison because not 45 mins before I was missing turns, and on my way out of miami i could see every turn PERFECTLY, and not only that I didnt have to hold my phone not keeping my eyes on the road. I understand the data/search is what most people are referring to but the point above is massive. It blows google maps away x10000. I played with the GPS the entire way home, especially the part where you go around the cloverleaf loops on the highway merge junctions, and watching the maps follow around with it. As far as search, I have tried searching 'sushi' while somewhat zoomed in. whereas google would search a given radius if it had low results, apple maps stays with the low results unless you manually zoom out. I have also seen it be somewhat picky if you don't specify a road correctly (in the jungle where my parents live it didn't recognize "CR" as county road, so I typed that manually). These problems are hardly more than just an annoyance, and the benefits far outweigh the gains imo

untog 14y ago
Honestly, if you are that blown away by turn by turn directions, then you've been held back by Apple for the last few years. Android has had it, Windows Phone had it, and numerous third party apps on iOS provided it. None of this blows away Google Maps. It blows away Apple's implementation of Google Maps, which was subpar. So, now Apple's implementation is on par with everyone else, but with subpar data.

podperson 14y ago

My iOS6 maps experience comes down to the new Maps has a far better UI but sucks at figuring out where you want to go unless you provide the street address. (It's not like the old Maps app was flawless. It's just that it usually worked and the new one usually doesn't. I'm in greater Washington DC, I'm sure your mileage will vary.) The same can be said for Waze -- I often would convert a descriptive location (such as "San Francisco International" per another post) to a street address then copy and paste it into Waze. I use the conditional tense because I consider the new iOS Maps app to be superior to Waze for navigation, once you've found an address. It seems to me Apple could easily cut a deal with a third-party-search-engine-that-isn't-Google to improve this simple flaw. http://loewald.com/blog/?p=4918 http://loewald.com/blog/?p=4918