Oh hell yeah, I just ditched my old Android for an iPhone and the lack of bus routes on its maps app was one of the major things I was missing. I was sort of getting along with HopStop but it was an awkward multi-step kind of thing. DOWNLOADING NOW.
Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
151–160 of 308 posts
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#152Edit: somehow I screwed up my response, should be a response to @kjackson2012. Apple's main issues are with their location information from TomTom. If apple is able to partner with a company with better data, these types of problems should not be nearly as bad. Here's where Apple's maps product is better... The maps are vector based so there is not such a huge dependence on a data connection. I live near the pine bar…
No, you're wrong. It's not with the data. It's with Apple's ability to search. Like I said below, look up "Pier 39 San Francisco". This is a dead simple query, extremely specific, and they point you to a really bad area of SF. This isn't Tom Tom data, it's how Apple resolves this query to something useful. Search is Google's domain expertise. Apple needs to basically start from scratch and figure out how to create a…
That Pier 39 San Francisco search is an Australia-desert-type disaster waiting to happen to tourists.
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#153I hope Google waits a few months and then rolls out a premium-purchase maps feature. Then, when Apple demands their 30% and Google refuses, Apple has to pull the app again and frustrate all their users again. Not saying that's what will happen, but I can dream.
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now that I've read this, I was starting to think the same thing. Apple is completely capable of creating good software. They have all the resources they need, and "polish" is what their company is all about, so why release a sub-par app? Yes it's far fetched, but not beyond possible.
Of the difficult data problems in the world, creating an online mirror map of the physical world is probably in the top three. Let's say Apple tried. They didn't know how hard it would be, so they bought all the companies they could. They realized, "shit--this still won't be good enough, but we can't give in to mountain view." Their only move? Release 98% done maps anyway and hope Google misses the iOS map spying ad…
Someday a company will buy google just for its mapping capability and toss the rest in the bitbucket.
Sounds like you're exaggerating for effect but still ...
wat?
What company is at a scale to buy Google and kill its cash cow of search advertising? And why would they?
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not on my cell phone.
The new app is vector based and has turn by turn directions. Google refused Apple access to both of those features in the original "Maps" app (in iOS <= 5), but they conveniently included them in their new Google Maps app. :)
Google refused to allow Apple access because Apple was unwilling to allow more Google branding and Latitude support. It was a breakdown in negotiations, not either side being selfish.
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#156Sort of off-topic and I've harped on this before, but when I search "google maps" in the app store, it's the fifth search result! As a developer in the App Store, I really hope they do something to fix the abysmal searches in it.
Agreed! This happens with my own app as well! Apparently the app title , even when an exact match to your search query, is no longer considered important. If there is one thing Apple truly fails at, it is search.
The Android Market had this same problem in the early days. It was frustrating but pretty amusing how terrible Google, of all companies, was at getting search right in their app store.
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we really need to rehash this again?
Well, people on this site don't seem to mind rehashing how great Apple is, ad infinitum. So no, I don't see a problem with rehashing this a few times.
Really? I submitted a story earlier about state police in Australia saying that Google maps are dangerous and it's been completely ignored. Ok, maybe it was a repeat of a story that had been previously submitted, but since not a sniff of the story has appeared, I'd suggest that the pro-Google/anti-Apple sentiment is far more pervasive here. I'd think were the opposite true, we'd have seen much more of this story.
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having played with a toy geolocation feature detector for text, I can safely say it's extremely hard to do well. My first attempt is inspired by Peter Norvig's spelling corrector using a corpus built from the places2k.txt file, but it gets confused when the words are transposed. My guess is that Google is using some sort of n-gram based approach for maps and search, where as their little sidebar map is similar to wha…
> Try searching in Google for "San Francisco" versus "Francisco San." On the other hand, that's not a mistake you can make, because "San Francisco" in the minds of people really is "Sanfrancisco", a single word. Why would anybody spell "San Francisco" as "Francisco San"? In fact Google should differentiate heavily between these 2 terms, as they aren't similar at all. Google also does a lot of other neat things, like…
That's true about San Francisco versus Francisco San but I wonder how well Apple Maps does with "4485 Belmont Portland" versus "Portland 4485 Belmont" and the like.
It gets more complicated when you realize "oh, yeah I need to add 'NE' because it's in the Northeast part of the city". So now it's "Portland 4485 Belmont NE". If you were to think about it before you started typing, it'd be "4485 NE Belmont Portland" but correcting on a phone is so painful that you want to just keep typing.
I'm using a Galaxy Nexus and have been very happy with the standard Maps app. Last weekend the family was walking on trails and it got us back to the trailhead using walking directions. Neat. I've been less than thrilled with how poorly the phone seems to do with finding and keeping a GPS signal, particularly in a car on the freeway in areas I don't know.
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#159Edit: somehow I screwed up my response, should be a response to @kjackson2012. Apple's main issues are with their location information from TomTom. If apple is able to partner with a company with better data, these types of problems should not be nearly as bad. Here's where Apple's maps product is better... The maps are vector based so there is not such a huge dependence on a data connection. I live near the pine bar…
as others have pointed out gmaps is vector based.
Also gmaps (for android at least) allows you to download map data for offline/online use. So to say theres a huge dependence on data connection is not true.
Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours
#160Edit: somehow I screwed up my response, should be a response to @kjackson2012. Apple's main issues are with their location information from TomTom. If apple is able to partner with a company with better data, these types of problems should not be nearly as bad. Here's where Apple's maps product is better... The maps are vector based so there is not such a huge dependence on a data connection. I live near the pine bar…
> I've used google navigation since the first day the alpha was leaked. It has only been in the last year that nav has gotten so good (used to have maddening ui problems with the zoom going crazy)
Really? I thought maps was better in iOS 3 than iOS 5. Maps in 3 was optimized to be quick even over EDGE and never let go of a set of directions mid trip if network was flaky. iOS 3 maps was actually faster and more reliable. (Still had my original iPhone)