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Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

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Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#111

Post by programminggeek »

I think you'd have to be a fool to think Apple didn't see this coming, but in reality it a big deal for Apple, but not an earth shattering one. To truly improve things like Siri and Maps, you need real world data, user feedback, etc.

I'm sure they are keenly aware of the shortfalls of their own software, as much as they are of the hardware they make. That's the whole point of QA. What pushing out products early does is let you start getting feedback on the known unknowns - problems you'd expect to have but didn't know exactly where they might be, and the unknown unknowns - problems you didn't see coming at all.

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#112

Post by pkamb »

dastbe wrote: post #109
arrrg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You seem to be very confused. Just give it up. You are wrong.

I think you misunderstood me. While it can be purely stylistic in the modern interpretation, the element replicated must have some functional purpose in the original. I do not think that you have to reimplement the functionality, that was just the example I used. Your examples are skeumorphic because they use functional aspects of the original. "Find My Friends" is not skeumorphic because even if such a thing as "Fin…

Almost all aspects of a physical object are "functional", so this is a strange distinction to make.

For example, the rich Corinthian leather of a desk calendar functions as an arm rest and also functions as a binding mechanism for the calendar pages within. The stitching of said leather functions to hold the piece together.

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#113

Post by joshwa »

glenra wrote: post #83
voxmatt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to apologize for Apple's mess -- and it is a mess -- but your theory doesn't hold for me. Some places are genuinely fine: I'm in San Francisco and the maps really are pretty damn good (in SF, I'll actually use the word good). Of course, this is right in Apple's back yard, but the reports seem to indicate that most major U.S. cities are in good shape (mind you, I'm talking about maps & places, not flyov…

I've heard from a few sources that "Maps is great" is actually accurate in China - it's supposedly much better than before. This blog has examples http://anthonydrendel.com/ (Though I had less luck with Hong Kong. For instance, a search for "Big Buddha, Lantau Island, Hong Kong" and every likely English variant just finds the middle of Lantau Island, not the Buddha itself.)

During the beta period it was pretty terrible. Place names that I could see on the map would not show up in search, either as chinese or pinyin. It was better by the time GM was released, though.

Another example: in Saigon, the Mekong was not rendering as water. Imagine being in Manhattan and having big blank yellow spaces where the East and Hudson rivers should be.

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#115

Post by snowwrestler »

outside1234 wrote: post #93

No, Apple has a "liberal arts problem" in that they don't seem to have the hard core folks to do algorithms in the way that Google does. Apple has a lot of smart people, but can you really see them building a self driving car with tons of lasers spinning on it in order to have super accurate maps? I can't. But that's what Google did. Its also a "device centric problem": I'm always struck when talking with someone fro…

If the cloud is eating the world, why did Google buy a mobile OS company and then a mobile device company? If Apple is too device-centric, why does Siri send every query to their data center instead of processing it on the phone?

In short, I don't think you've thought deeply about what you're writing.

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#116

Post by dastbe »

pkamb wrote: post #112
dastbe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood me. While it can be purely stylistic in the modern interpretation, the element replicated must have some functional purpose in the original. I do not think that you have to reimplement the functionality, that was just the example I used. Your examples are skeumorphic because they use functional aspects of the original. "Find My Friends" is not skeumorphic because even if such a thing as "Fin…

Almost all aspects of a physical object are "functional", so this is a strange distinction to make. For example, the rich Corinthian leather of a desk calendar functions as an arm rest and also functions as a binding mechanism for the calendar pages within. The stitching of said leather functions to hold the piece together.

But is it necessary? That's an important part of the definition. For instance, the wood on Newsstand doesn't make it skeumorphic, but the bookshelf design does.

And again, where is the original product design for Find My Friends? Why did I never hear about anyone using a leather-bound location diviner before?

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#117

Post by snowwrestler »

pkamb wrote: post #112
dastbe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood me. While it can be purely stylistic in the modern interpretation, the element replicated must have some functional purpose in the original. I do not think that you have to reimplement the functionality, that was just the example I used. Your examples are skeumorphic because they use functional aspects of the original. "Find My Friends" is not skeumorphic because even if such a thing as "Fin…

Almost all aspects of a physical object are "functional", so this is a strange distinction to make. For example, the rich Corinthian leather of a desk calendar functions as an arm rest and also functions as a binding mechanism for the calendar pages within. The stitching of said leather functions to hold the piece together.

The point is that you do not need rich Corinthian leather to make a desk calendar; in fact the vast majority of desk calendars in the world do not have any leather on them at all. Even on the real-world object, the choice to use leather serves a decorative purpose--it is not a functional necessity. Yet I've never heard someone call a leather desk calendar "skeuomorphic."

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#118

Post by glenra »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #96
voxmatt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to apologize for Apple's mess -- and it is a mess -- but your theory doesn't hold for me. Some places are genuinely fine: I'm in San Francisco and the maps really are pretty damn good (in SF, I'll actually use the word good). Of course, this is right in Apple's back yard, but the reports seem to indicate that most major U.S. cities are in good shape (mind you, I'm talking about maps & places, not flyov…

I don't have an iPhone, but isn't the new maps missing public transit data? Does that mean it won't route me through subways, etc, or doesn't even show bus stops and subway stations? And what about bike paths, Google has fantastic labeling of bike routes. As a city dweller, it's good to know they are "accurate", but, from what I've heard, they are missing many key components that would actually help tons in a city. N…

Bus stops and subway stations show up, but you need to launch a third-party app to navigate through them. And some of the third-party apps designated to do this don't work very well.

In New York, the situation is fairly dire. Before, subway stops showed up on the map with the names of the subway lines so you could see that the nearest stop to you was an "R" or a "4/6" or whatever; now that information does not appear on the map at all.

If you use the map and ask for transit directions, that used to just work. Now you get presented with a list of apps it can launch for this purpose, but some of them are terrible and the ratings don't reflect this - you just have to try them at random and see. For instance, there's an app called "Transit" which tells you which stations you want to go between but it doesn't give the names of the subway lines so you don't know which platform to stand on to get the right train. Meanwhile, one of the very best apps for doing New York subway navigation and planning - KICKMap - doesn't even show up as one of the available options from Maps.

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#119

Post by thirdsun »

ralfd wrote: post #85
tlogan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it work for you? I stil have to meet a single person which actually can ask Siri something and Siri understands it and gives reasonable answer... I was under impression that it did not work because I'm ESL speaker: but it also does not work for people who speak english very well. Aha and there is class action lawsuit: http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/class-action-lawsuit-file... Here is the quote: Ryan asked S…

I am German and we didn't get all Siri features before iOS 6 (wolfram Alpha is still missing). But I tried it more in the last days and am really impressed! Even when I thought "oh, I mumbled the word, Siri won't get it" it was correctly recognized. I most use it as text to speech for SMS. And checking Fußball Bundesliga works good. (But only first league, no info available for second league.) Since iOS 6 (or at east…

I'm from germany too - I mentioned this before, but did you notice that you can't speak to Siri in english at all when its set to german? This is problematic when telling Siri to play music by any artist whose name, band or album is pronounced in english - a native german name would work though.

This, I guess, would apply to every non-english country and seems like a quite an oversight rendering music controls via Siri useless. Since english words and expressions became natural parts of every language, and are also pretty common in artist, movies, brands, places, etc, Siri should always check back with its english dictionary regardless of language settings.

Re: Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?

#120

Post by glenra »

robomartin wrote: post #50

Nah. I don't agree with the premise of this article. This was not one person's decision. Many actors had to be involved in the decision making process. For some reason Apple decided that kicking Google off the platform was worth the abuse they'd have to endure with Maps. Those who keep saying "Maps is great" need to leave an egocentric view and realize that there are millions of users all around the world with differ…

> According to this either 60% of the locations either incorrect or missing altogether.

According to a followup article ( http://vore.cc/post/32503374905/old-maps-vs-new-maps ) the old Maps app fails this exact test at least as badly. It just fails a bit differently. Whereas the new Maps app often says it can't find anything, the old one would for a similarly sized group of searches silently err on the side of finding a match that was wrong.

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