Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 384 posts

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#151

Post by MartinCron »

AJ007 wrote: post #22
dr_ wrote: post #10

To be honest, despite its flaws, it's going to be ok for most of the people, most of the time. Navigation is going to be a big boon. Using it I haven't noticed major differences personally. Some restaurants are in the wrong location, but on the flip side I like the yelp reviews. I'm sure they will improve on the areas that are flawed.

Directions being ok most for most people, most of the time, is hardly acceptable. Google Maps had a tendency to drop pins for locations on the wrong spot. That meant I always had to confirm the location with street view, 100% of the time. Going to the wrong spot can be catastrophic in some instances (wrong or non existent hospital.) In others it can be really bad (missing a critical meeting, walking in during a weddi…

Directions being ok most for most people, most of the time, is hardly acceptable

Directions that are perfect for everyone, all of the time? Has that ever happened? I don't think so. I think it has always been a steadily improving mess. This may be a step backwards, but let's be realistic, here.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#152

Post by mikeash »

akoumjian wrote: post #111
misnome wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try living somewhere that isn't a big US city. Of course the major population centers are going to be highly worked on. It's elsewhere, that google maps has gotten so good on, that people are complaining about. The satellite imagery is as bad as googles was, but more than six years ago.

Actually, even in big US cities results are really bad in some cases. in Seattle, for example, searching for common well known intersections brings up results halfway across the country.

I hit a maps link for a restaurant in the Maryland suburbs of DC, which had latitude and longitude in it, and it still took me to the wrong place. Removing the restaurant name and just leaving the lat/lon showed the right place, but of course I didn't figure this out until I had already driven past the wrong place and wondered where the restaurant was.

It's just atrocious. OK, so you have some bad POI coordinates, that's bad but somewhat understandable. But how do you prefer your bad POI data to the correct coordinates that you're given? It boggles the mind.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#153

Post by boundlessdreamz »

cooldeal wrote: post #45
stephen_g wrote: post #20

I really hope that people are using the 'Report Problem' feature in the app every time they post a screenshot here. Because that is one of the biggest things everyone can do that will help the map data to improve.

As Gruber likes to remind us at every chance, Apple has more than $100 billion cash lying around. How about they use a little of that to license some half decent maps from Google or, failing that, Nokia/Navteq? Even Amazon(that Gruber sneered for making far less money than Apple [1]) managed to license Nokia maps and wrapped a nice API around it, and you think the iPhone buyers have a responsibility to work on making…

It is possible that Nokia didn't want to license the map data. That can be a selling point for windows phones now. Since Kindle is not a smartphone platform, it is not competing with Nokia.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#154

Post by adildoatemybaby »

shawnc wrote: post #133
Maascamp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Apple gets a pass here. If they are forcing users onto their product it had better be competitive, no matter how hard it is. Microsoft got so such pass with WP7 and that was an entirely new OS/platform!

Does Apple have a Maps program on the Android devices? Are there other Maps programs available on the iOS devices? Saying Apple is 'forcing' users onto their product is a bit much.

You're being obtuse, people have money invested in the Apple ecosystem, it's not easy to switch, and no other mapping app will have the iOS integration Maps does. Until a comparable app is available on the OS, yes Apple is forcing users onto their product.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#155

Post by rburhum »

rmc wrote: post #44
rburhum wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openstreetmap's doesnt address any of the OP's issues. Having built maps for the past 12 years, I know exactly what of each of those issues are about. The blurry images are underlying base layers that drew first and then probably the upper layer timed out when rendering the tile. The curves are caused by elevation measurements that are incorrect (measuring elevation from a satellite involves bouncing from the ground…

OpenStreetMap would have more accurate information about the locations of towns etc.

OSM doesn't do elevation. OSM doesn't do geocoding. OSM doesn't do routing. OSM doesn't do 3D. OSM doesn't have a cleaned up dataset of Points of Interest.

I love OSM and I use it every day - but I know what it does, what it is good for and what it is not meant to do.

Getting a list of towns for the entire world is easy. Solving the issues in the listed by the OP's tumbler requires data that OSM does not have.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#156

Post by chmars »

shawnc wrote: post #133
Maascamp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Apple gets a pass here. If they are forcing users onto their product it had better be competitive, no matter how hard it is. Microsoft got so such pass with WP7 and that was an entirely new OS/platform!

Does Apple have a Maps program on the Android devices? Are there other Maps programs available on the iOS devices? Saying Apple is 'forcing' users onto their product is a bit much.

As of today, I don't know of any Apple Maps alternatives in the iOS App Store. And switching a mobile platform is neither trivial nor a short-term perspective … I hope Google is busy worki on its own Maps app for iOS — for the time being, Google Maps in Mobile Safari has to do it for me.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#157

Post by danparsonson »

shawnc wrote: post #133
Maascamp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Apple gets a pass here. If they are forcing users onto their product it had better be competitive, no matter how hard it is. Microsoft got so such pass with WP7 and that was an entirely new OS/platform!

Does Apple have a Maps program on the Android devices? Are there other Maps programs available on the iOS devices? Saying Apple is 'forcing' users onto their product is a bit much.

Yes there are other maps programs available for iOS - the Google Maps app that comes with iOS 4 and 5 is very capable.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#158

Post by psychotik »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #62

I look at this and can't believe Apple wanted to ship with this. And I mean that literally, not incredulously. I believe Apple wants to be in carol of its mapping future, but this product isn't ready yet, and I don't think Apple is so delusional to not be able to see that. So that makes me wonder what happened in contract negotiations with Google to force it out. Did Google flat-out say "No"? Seems unlikely. Was it j…

That makes sense, but you miss one point - Google isn't the only game in town. Why not contract with Bing, which has it's own mapping app on iOS and use that for iOS 6 (either permanently, or as a stop gap while you perfect your own mapping software). I would be surprised if Microsoft would reject that offer, given that it would help them get more search share and mindshare. I wonder if they tried this at all.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#159

Post by kamechan »

shawnc wrote: post #133
Maascamp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Apple gets a pass here. If they are forcing users onto their product it had better be competitive, no matter how hard it is. Microsoft got so such pass with WP7 and that was an entirely new OS/platform!

Does Apple have a Maps program on the Android devices? Are there other Maps programs available on the iOS devices? Saying Apple is 'forcing' users onto their product is a bit much.

> does apple have a maps program on the android devices?

not that i'm aware of. i don't believe there to be a browser interface for their maps "solution". i could be wrong.

> are there other maps program available on the ios devices?

yes. google maps, or any other maps via the browser. sure, not the kind of integration one gets from an app. but there, nevertheless.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#160

Post by xbryanx »

rauljara wrote: post #19

The "roller coaster" effects in the 3-d view are my favorite. They've got some smoothing algorithm going, or it wouldn't curve the way it does, but the elevation data must not have a high enough resolution. Google has made this sort of thing look so easy for so long, but it's clearly very hard to get this stuff right. So, I guess it's not that surprising that apple messed up something incredibly hard in their first a…

That level of detail in elevation data generally requires LIDAR and that definitely doesn't exist for all municipalities, and is pretty expensive where it does.
Post reply on HN