11–20 of 57 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Took 3 years to turn that around > Apple Maps is now used three times as often as its “next leading competitor” on iPhone and iPad https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/
It's still inferior to Google Maps tho. It's not outright bad, but for directions/traffic Google Maps is still miles ahead (at least in random European countries).
a seemingly rare defeat for a company that has done little-to-no wrong in the last decade (save for maybe the Apple Watch depending on how you look at it). --> Google Maps vs Apple Maps?
Even if navigation took a few iterations to catch up.
Do they design beautiful products? Abso-freaking-lutely!
Can they develop complex software/systems? The evidence strongly suggests a resounding, no!
They struggle enormously at providing solid cloud services, their websites suck (particularly their developer portals), they can't write a functional USB stack, macOS has more bugs than ever, even iOS' stability seems to be going downhill.
Don't get me wrong, they have top-notch product designers and UX designers. But engineering has been second fiddle since the iPod launched. Self-driving automobiles is entirely an engineering problem, design doesn't even come into it.
I'm not sure it can be classed as a failure. Pivoted maybe, but failure? In what sense?
In the sense that they started out wanting to build a car and later on they decided not to build it anymore after having realized what it actually entails. I'd call that a failure, as in "failure to build a car which I wanted to build". Pivoting doesn't change anything, we all move on after our failures.
a seemingly rare defeat for a company that has done little-to-no wrong in the last decade (save for maybe the Apple Watch depending on how you look at it). --> Google Maps vs Apple Maps?
- For general searching and desktop use I prefer Google
- Bing and Apple have much more up to date "satellite" views than Google (for the areas I am interested in) - Apple maps have a spectacularly good 3d version of the city that I live (Edinburgh) in which I love looking at - Google 3D version had a huge error near to where I live
- Bing has UK Ordnance Survey maps, which is brilliant for outdoor activities
- OpenStreetMap is great for paths/cycle-paths in some areas
Edit: For one area I've been looking at (in Fife) the Google Earth view is about 12 years old - which is actually quite handy as we are looking at buying a house there that was built ~10 years ago so it is interesting to be able to see what was there before the houses were built!
This is what happens when you're a design company masquerading as a tech company. Do they design beautiful products? Abso-freaking-lutely! Can they develop complex software/systems? The evidence strongly suggests a resounding, no! They struggle enormously at providing solid cloud services, their websites suck (particularly their developer portals), they can't write a functional USB stack, macOS has more bugs than eve…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the sense that they started out wanting to build a car and later on they decided not to build it anymore after having realized what it actually entails. I'd call that a failure, as in "failure to build a car which I wanted to build". Pivoting doesn't change anything, we all move on after our failures.
How can a company with literally mountains of cash plus the engineer power Apple has, fail to make a self driving car? I'm not saying at all that is something easy, but Apple is a beast in terms of resources. I confess that I don't get it.
(Point is, the project might have been doing well and following the plans -- but Apple might have found that the target market niche was too small. Or the margins might have been too low for Apple.)
a seemingly rare defeat for a company that has done little-to-no wrong in the last decade (save for maybe the Apple Watch depending on how you look at it). --> Google Maps vs Apple Maps?
Took 3 years to turn that around > Apple Maps is now used three times as often as its “next leading competitor” on iPhone and iPad https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/
a seemingly rare defeat for a company that has done little-to-no wrong in the last decade (save for maybe the Apple Watch depending on how you look at it). --> Google Maps vs Apple Maps?
Took 3 years to turn that around > Apple Maps is now used three times as often as its “next leading competitor” on iPhone and iPad https://9to5mac.com/2015/12/07/apple-maps-usage-numbers/