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Apple Maps Vehicles
- nakedrobot2 11y agoDoes anyone have a photo of one of these vehicles? I'd love to see it. Apple is certainly in the long game with their maps... One interesting thing to point out is that while google streetview started as a project to augment the maps with photos, it quickly became clear that these photos of the streets could be a primary way to gather accurate real-world data about the streets, one-way signs, street numbers, and so on. Clearly Apple is up to the same thing here.
- nav1 11y agoThis article has one: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/17/apple-maps-vehicles-england-new-orleans/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/17/apple-maps-vehicles-engl...
- arthurcolle 11y agoThey aren't very aesthetically pleasing...
- happyscrappy 11y agoWell they are not taking selfies.
- LoneWolf 11y agoSo what? Not everything apple does has to be shiny. If they do the job, why bother?
- cpmsmith 11y agoInteresting to note from the photo that Maps has its own subdomain. I'd bet on a web interface in the near-ish future.
- JoblessWonder 11y agoThat van isn't available in the US (much to the consternation of my employer who wants them to go along with their Sprinter fleet...) In the US they will be using Dodge Caravans. Here is a YouTube video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GONB3cezusI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GONB3cezusI
- shogun21 11y agoEight years behind Google. I'm interested to see how quickly they can catch up!
- mixmastamyk 11y agoGoogle refreshes their street view every so often, so if they have a comparable fleet it should take about the same amount of time (roughly 2 years or so).
- simonh 11y agoIt's unlikely to take anything like 8 years. Much of Google's effort during that time has been refreshing images of streets they had already visited. If Google has visted a street 4 times to keep the data up to date, Apple only has to visit it once to be just as up to date (and continue to visit regularly after that to stay up to date, of course). edit: mixmastamyk beat me to it by 1 minute, so +1 to you sir.
- bambax 11y agoThat's not entirely true; Google does not refresh all of its data every cycle: some "rare" locations (where few people live) have been visited only once during those 8 years. To catch up you need to cover all locations, not just the frequent ones, so that takes more than one cycle.
- simonh 11y agoGoogle doesn't cover 'all locations' so I think that's a red herring. Their best bet is to provide a service with unique distinguishing features that is competitive with Google. Similar or competitive coverage is just one measure of usefulness.
- gress 11y agoThey aren't 8 years behind.
- Navarr 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- danso 11y agoThis is impressive...while I'll be using Google Maps on iOS for a long time to come...Google has such a lead that creating one's own geospatial dataset seems tantamount to reinventing the wheel...yet, it seems dangerous to not have competition in this area, as it gives one company almost unilateral power to define the existence of geography (at least for day-to-day usage). And of course, using Google Maps means buying into their user-information-sharing system. Glad Apple is using its money to take on the challenge.
- Oletros 11y agoWhen you talk about user-information-sharing-system you mean Google having the information about maps use, so, you sharing the map use information with Google, isn't?
- danso 11y agoI'm not sure what your question is asking...but what I mean is that Google Maps are ostensibly improved by analyzing how users use the app and how they seem to utilize the information...I imagine just as Google search tracks which search results you click -- and also, if you hit the Back button, and how long it took you to do that -- in order to evaluate SERP effectiveness, there must be some kind of feedback for Google Maps...? The live traffic projections, AFAIK, are a result of collecting GPS information from Android phones on the road. Apple has been claiming that it wants to build apps that don't draw on user information, as to prioritize user privacy. Maybe they'll apply that attitude towards their Maps app.
- Oletros 11y agoAn enourmmous task to accomplish, but it improves its mapping data
- jlhonora 11y agoNext step: JavaScript API?
- vinay427 11y agoAny news on whether Apple will contribute these findings back to OpenStreetMaps, like Microsoft's apparent provision of Bing aerial imagery?
- darkstar999 11y agoHaha! No.
- weaksauce 11y agoInteresting and not something I'd have expected from apple. That actually brings up an interesting question... How many miles of roads are in the us? Europe? How many of these vans will they deploy?
- Robin_Message 11y agoIt's great that they provide this detailed what location when data. However, it demonstrates that their maps still have some way to go. E.g. They are driving around southern Hertfordshire this week, where I used to live. Dacorum is a borough, not the name of an actual place; I've never heard of Hertsmere or the three rivers; and Welwyn Hatfield are two adjacent towns. 3 out of 7 place names is not great.
- fredleblanc 11y agoNot sure that it helps, but the one local to me is Massachusetts, USA, and they describe it as "Suffolk (Boston)," where Suffolk is the county name. No one would use that in day-to-day talk… maybe they have some more or semi-official name of a "region" in your area?
- bluthru 11y agoI'm really excited to see Apple's 3d model of street view versus Google's 2d skyboxes.
- sctb 11y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691055
- pepijndevos 11y agoThis is the page to check out if you want to go maps photobombing.