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

171–180 of 384 posts

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#171

Post by blub »

jad wrote: post #96
lhnz wrote: post #56

It seems like the quality level maintained by Steve Jobs is quickly deteriorating in favour of business moves designed to wrest more control off Google. They are operating in a very similar way to other companies now. Google executives must be laughing very hard right now. If I was Google I'd avoid releasing a Google Maps application for at least a year and let the Android handset manufacturers ruthlessly exploit And…

> It seems like the quality level maintained by Steve Jobs is quickly deteriorating in favour of business moves designed to wrest more control off Google. This stuff gets so tiresome. Apple has been buying maps companies for years . Steve Jobs personally ran acquisitions at Apple. He decided which mapping companies to buy and when he did he probably had a good idea of how they would fit into the platform. Development…

Yahoo is using Nokia's API and Bing is in the process of doing the same thing.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#172

Post by taligent »

buro9 wrote: post #68
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…

Adverts. Spatial adverts are a big thing now, with a big future. I would speculate that beyond the cost of licensing the maps or the contractual stuff is that Apple did not want to deliver to Google more advertisers that would further entrench Google Maps as the dominant player. Apple need to be able to build their own POI database and knowledge of where all advertiser businesses are in order to get that revenue long…

None of this is true.

Google doesn't own their own POI database they license it from others and to date Apple hasn't approached these companies. So it isn't about the POI database.

It's more about the fact that Google was withholding data for Turn by Turn and 3D.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#173

Post by jarek »

jws wrote: post #100
jblock wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't care less about what Apple was thinking before they released this. What matters is that they pushed out a living, breathing UX fuck-up of an application to millions of people that depended on it to get around.

And if each iPhone user reports one problem, the entire POI problem will be solved. I didn't calculate that, but I'm fairly certain it works. The only reason Google knew where my businesses were was because I told them. They kept that information walled up, so I guess I need to tell apple too now that there are millions of people seeing that database. I haven't found where to add a POI, it may not be there, but marki…

> And if each iPhone user reports one problem, the entire POI problem will be solved.

When each iPhone user reports one problem, and staff at Apple take a look at them all, determine whether each report is correct, and act on it, the entire POI problem will be solved.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#174

Post by Geee »

rburhum wrote: post #134
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…

It is either the classic problem of floating point precision or just data a data collection error. See my other answer.

I'm pretty sure some (if not most) of these problems are just polygonization issues i.e. when converting the image based approximation point cloud to polygons at a low level of detail. Those weird zigzag lines are clearly sign of incorrect topology / low polygon density; polygon edges should follow the curvature of the road, not go against it.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#175

Post by zmmmmm »

chriswarren wrote: post #143
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!

It's not known if Maps was removed because of Apple or Google or both. So while there's no choice on having Google's Maps removed in iOS 6, the reason it happend isn't clear. When it came time to renew the contract one or both parties could have made unacceptable demands, leading to the current situation.

Yes, it's interesting how everyone has been assuming Apple booted Google off of iOS as an act of vindictive retribution. Everybody assumed that Apple's maps would have magical qualities that would leave Google looking second rate. Now that it seems to be the other way around you have to wonder if it was actually Google that pressed the big red button on the maps contract.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#176

Post by tesseractive »

tijs wrote: post #138
roadnottaken wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder how common these problems are. I live in San Diego and everything looks pretty-good to me. It renders my house in 3D and the turn-by-turn navigation worked great. There are obviously problems in some places, but so-far-so-good here.

I live in the Netherlands and it seems to work like a charm so far. the whole upheaval sounds like an internet pile-on to me.

After communication, maps are the second most important application on a smartphone for a lot of people. If those maps go from being reliable to being wildly wrong -- which, it seems apparent, has been the experience of a number of people -- then you can hardly expect them to not be upset.

If there were some perfectly reasonable explanation for why upgrading to the new version of iOS/Android/whatever caused text messaging to stop working reliably for a significant percentage of people, I expect we would see more or less the same reaction.

Of course, the fact that it sometimes generates utterly ridiculous visuals is no doubt helping the spread of the meme, but the underlying complaint here seems perfectly valid.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#177

Post by KirinDave »

Geee wrote: post #136
rictic wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/

Yes, indeed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Douyfa7l8 This is new development though and only on the Google Earth product for mobile, not in the maps app. Maps app for Android has those blocky untextured 3d buildings in select areas.

They actually have textures if you enable satellite imaging. They just also do the Mirror's Edge rendering of the city.

It's interesting how Google does it. They both contract and scan data in, but they also let you use SketchUp to submit data as well.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#178

Post by mavhc »

taligent wrote: post #169
adildoatemybaby wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not forced to upgrade to iOS6 nor is Apple blocking Google Maps on the browser.

Unless you want, say, security updates. You're also forced to buy a new phone/device if you want them after x years too, where x is a low number

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#179

Post by mitchty »

mootothemax wrote: post #78
karlshea wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you came to this conclusion based on one bad app? Quite the leap it seems. What's missing in all of these conversations is that Apple's contract with Google for mapping ended this year. No one knows what really happened for Apple to make this change.

And you came to this conclusion based on one bad app? Quite the leap it seems. This isn't about "one bad app," it's about a core smartphone app that everybody uses. That's why so many people are complaining and the story is kicking off all over the place.

I've been using ios 6 maps since beta1, yeah its new, but to wit I don't use transit directions and in a direct comparison with android google maps, ios 6's maps worked fine.

This is in many ways who moved my cheese. I don't care if Google or Apple (who made the google maps app pre ios6 anyway using google apis) is responsible for the old maps app not being on ios6. If google wants their app on the apple store they can submit it.

If apple denies it thats another matter and not worth arguing right now.

ios6 is so much better than 5 overall I think you're being somewhat overly dramatic about one app. Yes it feels rushed, but its likely this is a stopgap due to contractual problems.

And besides, these are just phones. People are so up in arms about this its getting to fever pitch levels. Why everyone expects perfection from the start is beyond me. Its a start, and not yet perfect for everyone. Either it gets better and all this complaining was just for pageviews (most likely), or people actually vote with their wallets and switch.

Until that switch happens, these arguments are getting tiresome and to be honest aren't very constructive.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#180

Post by untog »

taligent wrote: post #169
adildoatemybaby wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not forced to upgrade to iOS6 nor is Apple blocking Google Maps on the browser.

You're not forced to upgrade to iOS6

Oh, come on.

nor is Apple blocking Google Maps on the browser

And nor are they allowing third party apps to integrate into the OS in the way their Maps app does.

Post reply on HN