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

Apple's New Map

justinobeirne.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 377 posts

Re: Apple's New Map

#141

Post by gwern »

forgot-my-pw wrote: post #12
saagarjha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm left wondering how much data would be saved if they were videos rather than GIFs. They'd probably end up being better quality, too!

Most of the GIF only has 2 frames, a video won't be better and smaller.

That's even worse. He took a simple side-by-side comparison of 2 or 3 images, and invested substantial effort into making it far more annoying and harder to compare by an uncontrollable permanent headache inducing slow flicker which is inferior to our built-in saccades. I hate the GIFs on his pages, they're by far the worst thing on his site and why I don't reshare his otherwise very interesting analyses, because they're a crime against the reader.

Re: Apple's New Map

#142

Post by astrange »

thrower123 wrote: post #115
MaysonL wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And heck, it would be very easy to make this a setting: yes or no, this user wants as many street names as possible.

Member when software had lots of options how to configure it to show you the information you wanted? Peppridge Farms remembers. Also VLC and a few other weird fringe holdouts...

Less than 1% of the configurations you can make in VLC are actually tested. i.e. you can't actually configure it because it will break.

Re: Apple's New Map

#143

Post by jefftk »

logicallee wrote: post #137
fouc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whenever you zoom in enough that there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label! I mean if I zoom in so far that only the one street is visible and there's no other text on it, but Maps still leaves it blank... it just feels inexcusable. Agreed. Happens on google maps too, and that's just so irritating

someone else said that according to a Google engineer we don't "really" want it and I wanted to see if this is true. I put in a random street (mission street in San Fransciso), this how it looked for me on desktop: https://imgur.com/a/aOERdLR Then I started filling out streets with the continuous name of the street (first copy and pasting the name in small squares, then by hand adding red dots to separate them). This…

I can't tell whether you're getting serious, but I'm pretty sure most users would not prefer your change. It's so dense it's hard to read, and in a repetitive way.

Re: Apple's New Map

#144

Post by astrange »

sumedh wrote: post #70
saagarjha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's written multiple articles about maps, even before that one: https://www.justinobeirne.com . He's very good at spotting details in maps–IIRC he worked on Apple's maps team before, so this isn't particularly surprising.

> he worked on Apple's maps team before For some reason I thought he is some random guy just passionate about maps, I was actually looking for donate me buttons on the site because I love reading his articles whenever they are posted to HN.

Only a former employee could be so relentlessly negative about the product. Notice he's never ended his articles saying anything nice about it?

Nobody else would know what to look for.

Re: Apple's New Map

#146

Post by astrange »

bitcurious wrote: post #20

>In other words, TomTom’s database somehow has roads from Parkfield’s boomtown days—roads that have been gone for more than 75 years. No wonder why Apple removed them. Another possible explanation is the TomTom was using these unlikely to be visited streets as trap streets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street >In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, o…

Before Apple Maps added transit mode and hand-edited all the stops, it was displaying half the Caltrain stations as "Southern Pacific". The data sources are more than happy to give you data from 1940.

Re: Apple's New Map

#147

Post by logicallee »

jefftk wrote: post #143
logicallee wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

someone else said that according to a Google engineer we don't "really" want it and I wanted to see if this is true. I put in a random street (mission street in San Fransciso), this how it looked for me on desktop: https://imgur.com/a/aOERdLR Then I started filling out streets with the continuous name of the street (first copy and pasting the name in small squares, then by hand adding red dots to separate them). This…

I can't tell whether you're getting serious, but I'm pretty sure most users would not prefer your change. It's so dense it's hard to read, and in a repetitive way.

(Yes, totally serious.)

For me, it's not hard to read. I'd prefer it, anyway.

Still, if you wouldn't prefer it then we can see what the Google engineer meant, as this is exactly what you get if you show as much information as possible!

Re: Apple's New Map

#148

Post by jumelles »

crazygringo wrote: post #71
stevenjohns wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's your use case. I've used maps a lot to try to find hidden or secluded parks -- often with great success. I'm talking postcard-perfect views around the Sydney harbor, small beaches around various bays, isolated parks near beautiful rivers and a whole lot of other places that are really beautiful and probably only known to the locals. Lots of these places were a brisk walk away from high-traffic areas too. This…

That's great... but wouldn't satellite view be better for that anyways? Would you even trust an "interpreted" map with levels of green for what you're doing?

That's an interesting point, as all maps are (by definition) only representations, invariably leaving something out - the question is what to leave in the map.

Re: Apple's New Map

#150

Post by jjeaff »

logicallee wrote: post #147
jefftk wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell whether you're getting serious, but I'm pretty sure most users would not prefer your change. It's so dense it's hard to read, and in a repetitive way.

(Yes, totally serious.) For me, it's not hard to read. I'd prefer it, anyway. Still, if you wouldn't prefer it then we can see what the Google engineer meant, as this is exactly what you get if you show as much information as possible!

I'm confused, are you only talking about apple maps? I just checked on Google maps and I can easily see all the street names on my screen, as long as I zoom in far enough that there is enough space.
Post reply on HN