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Edit: somehow I screwed up my response, should be a response to @kjackson2012. Apple's main issues are with their location information from TomTom. If apple i
by bstar77 14y ago
Edit: somehow I screwed up my response, should be a response to @kjackson2012.
Apple's main issues are with their location information from TomTom. If apple is able to partner with a company with better data, these types of problems should not be nearly as bad.
Here's where Apple's maps product is better... The maps are vector based so there is not such a huge dependence on a data connection. I live near the pine barrens in NJ and google maps is mostly worthless when I venture into that abyss. Apple maps has worked flawlessly for me there. Locations where data connections are poor, apple maps will probably be a better solution. Plus, Apple maps look nicer, but that is hardly a critical feature.
To say apple should just give up is silly. I've used google navigation since the first day the alpha was leaked. It has only been in the last year that nav has gotten so good (used to have maddening ui problems with the zoom going crazy). Apple's initial maps release is much better and more refined than what google initially release. Fortunately for apple, I think they'll get their data issues mostly fix in 2013 and have a very nice alternative to google maps.
- lawdawg 14y agoGoogle Maps are vector based as well...
- recursive 14y agoNot on my cell phone.
- andybak 14y agoI think you're mistaken. They are on Android so it seems odd they wouldn't be. The ability to zoom to arbitrary levels with no pixellation seems to imply it most definitely is vector.
- coob 14y agoOn iOS it appears they're a mixture of bitmap tiles and vector text. I definitely see pixelation of roads at certain zoom levels.
- andybak 14y agoCan you give steps to reproduce? I was looking specifically at road outlines and they seemed like they were definitely vector. Satellite views are obviously bitmap.
- recursive 14y agoI don't have an iOS device, but here are my steps to reproduce on Android. Open a map. Turn on airplane mode. Zoom in. See pixels Here's a screenshot I took after I enabled airplane mode: http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png
- yellowbkpk 14y agoThe pixellation here is your phone waiting to download the higher-res vector tile. While it waits for the higher-res tile it draws a bitmap representation of the lower-res tile "above" it.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoThey're not infinitely vectors. They're still tiles. If they were to use the zoomed in tile, when zoomed out, even with vectors, you'd get something unrecognizable. It's the same reason that fonts and icons are brought up when people espouse the "vectors will save everything"! They do a lot of nice things but for something like Google Maps, I can't imagine how they'd implement "true vectors" in a practical phone-applicable way.
- recursive 14y agoI am using an Android device. And I do clearly see pixelation when I zoom in, before the new tiles load. Here's a screenshot I took after I enabled airplane mode: http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png
- jkn 14y agoWhich version of the Maps app are you using? I don't see these blurred pixels on my phone, but note that this kind of rendering can also happen with a vector based map: The application has to convert the vector information to a bitmap anyway, for a given zoom level. When zooming in, it is possible that the app shows a zoomed-in version of this bitmap while it is generating a new one in the background. By the way, it is not necessary to answer every single comment with a link to your screenshot. It is annoying to see the same thing repeated 5 times when reading the thread.
- recursive 14y agoI'm using 6.14.1. I answered all the relevant replies individually because I thought that would make those people more likely to see it. Sorry for annoying you.
- jkn 14y agoWell now you have five answers like mine :) Same version here though the UI looks very different. I can actually reproduce what you describe but only at low zoom levels, which makes sense: the temporary display of a bitmap at the wrong zoom level is more apparent when the phone needs more time to render a lot of vector data (there is less data to render when zoomed-in).
- jlouis 14y agoCuriously, I wonder what they do then because they definitely have the vector data in the backend. Google Maps for Android has been vector based for 1.5 to 2 years now.
- recursive 14y agoI'm using google maps for android. When I zoom in, I can clearly see the pixelation of the tiles before the new tiles load. The google play store doesn't show any updates for the app. Where are you getting your information? Here's a screenshot I took after I enabled airplane mode: http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png
- skeletonjelly 14y agoI have this on an old HTC phone. The UI is totally different, I think they have different layout controls for the "newness" of the phone. Having said that, it's possible the vector data is still being used, but renders to bitmap when zooming for some reason. I can't recall this happening on my S2 though (dead now, can't test)
- dragonwriter 14y agoBut we're talking about the new Google Maps app for iOS, which is not the same as Google Maps for Android (its a newer ground-up design with different features.)
- jonknee 14y agoPerhaps you need to install the App we're all talking about then. It's most definitely vector based.
- recursive 14y agoI thought we were talking about the Google Maps app. Because that's what I'm talking about. Here's a screenshot I took after I enabled airplane mode: http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png
- jonknee 14y agoWell, for starters, you're not using an iPhone and that's not what the Google Maps app for iOS looks like. Regardless, your screenshot shows no evidence that the maps aren't vector based. You simply don't have the high-resolution data for that area and Google's UI is showing that to you by burring it. Apple Maps doesn't blur, it just doesn't show you any details. I like knowing that there is information I am missing, the blur is handy.
- kalleboo 14y agoWhich means you must be using it in a browser, on a Java phone/blackberry, or in iOS 5. Try the new iOS app or an Android phone.
- recursive 14y agoI'm using the maps app on and Android phone. When I zoom in, I see the pixelation before the new tileset loads. Here's a screenshot I took after I enabled airplane mode: http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png
- codeka 14y agoIt's definitely vector-based. What you're seeing is that the vector tile gets rendered to a bitmap for display. If you zoom in quickly, rather than re-render the bitmap over and over, it just scales the pre-rendered bitmap. When the new zoomed-in tile loads, then it re-renders that tile. Also, even though it's vector-based, there's still different tiles for different zoom levels. For example, with different levels of detail.
- dunham 14y agoThe new app is vector based and has turn by turn directions. Google refused Apple access to both of those features in the original "Maps" app (in iOS <= 5), but they conveniently included them in their new Google Maps app. :)
- eco 14y agoGoogle refused to allow Apple access because Apple was unwilling to allow more Google branding and Latitude support. It was a breakdown in negotiations, not either side being selfish.
- Terretta 14y agoThis comment is clearly unbiased (and correct), which makes it all the more annoying that your comment (elsewhere in this thread) about Google's early troubles with search in their own app store has been being voted down.
- recycleme 14y ago> Google Maps are vector based as well... src: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-maps-is-now-available-for-iphone.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-maps-is-now-av...
- kjackson2012 14y agoNo, you're wrong. It's not with the data. It's with Apple's ability to search. Like I said below, look up "Pier 39 San Francisco". This is a dead simple query, extremely specific, and they point you to a really bad area of SF. This isn't Tom Tom data, it's how Apple resolves this query to something useful. Search is Google's domain expertise. Apple needs to basically start from scratch and figure out how to create a search engine that will return relevant data based on queries. It's the same thing with Apple's App store search, it's also terrible. But because we have no choice, we are forced to use it, and hopefully it will improve. But because Google's is so nearly perfect and getting better all the time, why would someone go ahead and use Apple's terrible search engine to help them improve their search?
- sharth 14y agoApple Maps also doesn't handle small spelling mistakes (transposed letters) well. That's been one of the most annoying things.
- sudont 14y agoHaving played with a toy geolocation feature detector for text, I can safely say it's extremely hard to do well. My first attempt is inspired by Peter Norvig's spelling corrector using a corpus built from the places2k.txt file, but it gets confused when the words are transposed. My guess is that Google is using some sort of n-gram based approach for maps and search, where as their little sidebar map is similar to what I built. (Or only applied to the most clear-cut n-gram—a little while ago there was a search for the movie "The end of the world" that would return a definitive date, which went slightly viral.) Try searching in Google for "San Francisco" versus "Francisco San." Maps is fine, the search is fine, but only the first version brings up the little related info sidebar on the search page. I'm surprised that Apple had such a hard time dealing with search, since they have some experience with Siri. I should have trusted this guy's opinion more: http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2011/10/siri-technology.html http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2011/10/siri-techn...
- bad_user 14y ago
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ececconi 14y agoThe new google maps on iOS uses vectors From the blog post: "The app shows more map on screen and turns mobile mapping into one intuitive experience. It’s a sharper looking, vector-based map that loads quickly and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views. " http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-maps-is-now-available-for-iphone.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/google-maps-is-now-av...
- Rovanion 14y agoIf you want to try out some other vector based map system there's Open StreetMap. I have no idea about how functional the iPhone apps are but OsmAnd for Android is able to cache all map data for Sweden in 200MB. It is then able to do routing on that data for both walking and going by car, both from search and random positions pointed at on the map. Not to mention that it has information about resturants so that you can plan where to stop for lunch when going on longer trips, all of which without a data connection.
- numbchuckskills 14y agofrom the google blog : "The app shows more map on screen and turns mobile mapping into one intuitive experience. It’s a sharper looking, vector-based map..."
- acchow 14y agoGoogle Maps is vector based. Are you perhaps talking about the original "Maps" app on iOS 5 (and below) which relied on Google data? On Android, you can select regions of the map to save for offline use and the file sizes for entire cities are only a few MB. I don't believe a "save for offline use" option is available for Google Maps for iOS yet.
- ma2rten 14y ago> If apple is able to partner with a company with better data, these types of problems should not be nearly as bad. There is none. As far as I know, there are two major providers for map data. One is TeleAtlas, which is now owned by TomTom. The other one is Navtec from the US. TeleAtlas is considered slightly better in terms of quality, as far as I know. Google Maps used to use a combination of both providers. However, now they also have their own data from street view cars in many places.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- warfangle 14y agoGoogle Maps have been vector based for a while. At least, on Android.
- Florin_Andrei 14y agoThe new Google Maps app for iOS is also vector-based.
- danielweber 14y agoI'ved used Android's "Navigation" app on different older phones without a data plan (only WiFi) and they've been surprisingly good about setting up a route and letting me follow it. (I can't change my route mid-trip, which was maybe what you were saying.)
- angryasian 14y agoas others have pointed out gmaps is vector based. Also gmaps (for android at least) allows you to download map data for offline/online use. So to say theres a huge dependence on data connection is not true.
- stcredzero 14y ago> I've used google navigation since the first day the alpha was leaked. It has only been in the last year that nav has gotten so good (used to have maddening ui problems with the zoom going crazy) Really? I thought maps was better in iOS 3 than iOS 5. Maps in 3 was optimized to be quick even over EDGE and never let go of a set of directions mid trip if network was flaky. iOS 3 maps was actually faster and more reliable. (Still had my original iPhone)
- Tycho 14y agoFor me the main issue is StreetView integration. Apple wont have that any time soon.