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The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

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Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#111

Post by akoumjian »

misnome wrote: post #89
lbotos wrote: post #28

So I've been seeing all this hatin' on HN this morning so I figured I should check it out on my device. I mapped my commute (1 hour) and the only oddity I saw was the waviness coming off of a bridge. Beyond that Philly's buildings were all rendered correctly and my route was exactly the same as Google maps. YMMV P.S. I must say It was really cool to see Cira Centre (The Amtrak Building) rendered in 3d. http://en.wiki…

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.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#112

Post by emidln »

its_so_on wrote: post #38
pooriaazimi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I heard about CUPS! Apparently it's a kind of printing system. Thanks. http://www.cups.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS

you're not alone. apparently, for many people, occasionally hearing the word "CUPS" is the closest they ever get to printing under Linux.

I'm pretty sure that CUPS was shipping by default on some linux distros as early as 1999. I know I installed Caldera OpenLinux (2.2 or 2.3 maybe?) and Mandrake Linux (version 6 or 7 something) and both had it, detected my printers, and "just worked".

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#113

Post by jonknee »

Geee wrote: post #64
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…

I don't think Google has 3D view at all. Those 3D maps were created by a different company whom Apple recently acquired. You can probably find the same errors from here as well, http://maps.nokia.com/webgl/

Google certainly has 3D view. It's on my iPad with Google Earth. They also have the more useful non-textured 3D maps in Google Maps for Android which is a lot more smooth (way less data transfer and being vector it's scalable) and you can even use them offline.

http://www.google.com/mobile/maps/3d/

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#114

Post by Maascamp »

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…

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!

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#115

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

You are probably correct. However if you look at Google's moves in the maps API with respect to charging money the simplest explanation is that Apple and Google could not come to terms on the price for access and so Apple went with 'plan B'.

Given the pain Apple is causing Google in its patent assault I don't doubt for a minute that the senior management at Google would have any regrets about 'losing' the Apple map business vs 'gaining' a poorly executed maps product on their premier devices.

I also don't expect Apple to approve any Google "maps" application any time soon either given how strategic it is for their mobile business.

My best guess is that Apple did the math and said "Well its going to suck rocks but we have to dominate this space, this moves our time table up but doesn't change what we need to do, ship what you have and put your best team on making it excellent."

EDIT: Reminds me of Intel's response to AMD's multi-core where Intel literally glued two separate CPU chips into the same package and shipped it as a 'multi-core' CPU. That sucked too but they had an answer in the market, and they invested in making that answer competitive over the next 3 years to get a more real multi-core out the door.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_D

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#116

Post by lhnz »

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…

>> It only becomes a strategic problem if the quality doesn't improve noticeably with time.

The negative PR and reduction in the quality of the core experience might cause a reduction in sales or consumer opinion of Apple.

>> What do you think happened? Jobs died and the executive team was like, "Alright everyone, we've got 6 months until the iOS 6 beta is out. Let's cancel our contract with Google and get this shit maps app in there pronto!"

Your assertion that Apple had a choice between owning strategic maps technology or licensing from others is incorrect as they are not mutually exclusive.

I have to say I don't think it's a smart strategic move -- somebody has acted on a false dilemma and as a result reduced product quality. As you pointed out yourself, Apple could have gone to Microsoft or Yahoo to retain quality or they could have fought harder with Google to keep the contract for a while longer. It was not a bad strategic decision to buy maps companies and to put R&D into creating their own maps solution, however it is a bad decision to release Apple maps in this state.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#117

Post by obeattie »

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…

> Was it just too expensive? That's possible, especially if these negotiations happened during the time Google massively raised the prices on its API

I think the figure was that Apple had $117bn or so IN CASH at the end of Q2. Whatever it was, money cannot have been the issue here. (Also, consider the cost of developing the new Maps.app in-house. Huge.)

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#118

Post by shinratdr »

hnriot wrote: post #46

With maps.google.com (html5 version) I get some of the old functionality back, but the thing I miss most is street view. Having flyover is very pretty for demos but completely useless unless in real use. Street view, however, is actually very useful and I use it on a regular basis. As far as I know there isn't any work around to that. I will try ios6 again, but for now, I'm going to restore my backup until (if) googl…

TomTom vehicles with StreetView-style 360 cameras have been spotted around Toronto. I have little doubt Apple is pushing TomTom to compile that data and it will be the first billed feature in iOS 6.1.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#119

Post by zerostar07 »

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…

But you can't give them a pass here, the premium value that Apple sells is the amazing experience out of the box. How many years has it been since they got something wrong just out of the box?

[No apple-hater, but postponing upgrading iOS indefinitely]

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#120

Post by Mythbusters »

Maascamp wrote: post #114
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…

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!

talking of pass, you should checkout the new nokia maps on the lumia. It's f awesome!!!
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