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Apple Maps was trying to replace a service that had almost a decade of engineering and data powering it. It's kind of a miracle they were able to ship anything
by gfodor 13y ago
Apple Maps was trying to replace a service that had almost a decade of engineering and data powering it. It's kind of a miracle they were able to ship anything at all, IMHO, when you consider the weight of what they were trying to accomplish.
Now, some time later, it's disappointing to see that Apple Maps fails to work well in a lot of places. I'm not so sure this says anything about Apple per se, or is more of a testament to just how advanced Google's technology is.
- shock-value 13y agoTrue, but even the look and feel of Apple Maps (the map display content specifically) was shoddy in my opinion. It's actually improved in this current beta, but really that's a testament that Maps should have been worked on for another update cycle, and I think the same is true of this UI refresh. Hopefully they can make the needed changes before release later this year (assuming that is when they plan to release). Edit: Also just a comment along the lines of your second paragraph... it's crazy that Apple Maps still can't find the News Corp. building in Manhattan (at least by that well-known name). It's a building that I noticed it couldn't find at launch and continually checked for over the months just to take the temperature of Apple's data updates. Still nothing.
- gfodor 13y agoI think there were external factors that forced a hard deadline for Apple Maps: the Google contract expiring, and the fact that for a service like mapping, not releasing the app into the wild serves as a blocker on a lot of engineering work that cannot begin until there is real-world usage data to work with.