I read this article in a very sarcastic tone. Wondering if that was intentional.
Apple's New Map
161–170 of 377 posts
Re: Apple's New Map
#162Earlier 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?
I have a knack for finding good driving roads with Google Maps.
It doesn’t really work in satellite view because the trees make for a ton of visual noise at the relatively low resolutions shown.
A good indicator for me is green in the map, and no street view (street view tends to cover busier routes, I drive roads street view wouldn’t bother with)
Re: Apple's New Map
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I was specifically exploring this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18359646 I wanted to see how it would look if "whenever you zoom in enough that there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label!" I think my render looks absolutely fine. I don't see why I wouldn't always use it if I had a toggle switch. Yes it's cluttered if you just glance at it, but we don't use maps as piece…
I dislike it because it slows my consumption of the map; annoying while walking, possibly dangerous while driving. We're all accustomed to reading lines of text in their entirety, which results in endless repetition here. Training the eye to look only between one set of red dots may be possible, but I doubt it would ever be as effortless as reading a discrete word with whitespace around it. I do agree every road should be labeled when there's space - perhaps even at regular intervals when there's space, but making the labeling continuous is counterproductive.
Apart from being easy to consume, the map tiles must also be in sync with the company's brand and design ethos. Its hard to imagine Apple's minimalist aesthetic delivering these tiles.
Re: Apple's New Map
#164that looks like 2GIS maps
EDIT: check out this map of Dubai: https://2gis.ae/dubai?queryState=center%2F55.274674%2C25.197...
Also check out its search UX. Try searching for "grocery"
Re: Apple's New Map
#165This is really neat but I don't really care about greenery when I'm using Apple Maps. Can they take a break from figuring out how to convert satellite images into green blobs and devise an algorithm to put street names on the screen ? Apple and Google maps are both worthless as maps without typing in an actual address and using navigation because they can't just show the main cross street names on the screen. It abso…
As an expat this is by far my biggest gripe.
Sometimes I just can't type name in local language correctly but I know the street name where it is and yet I can't find it by looking at the map without extreme zoom in. Searching the street name seems to give a completely random point. I end up zooming to random streets where I think mine should be over and over until I find my street - what a ridiculous process.
There's so much empty space - this obsession with form over function has to stop.
I've switched to one of openstreetmaps clients for this reason alone. They're not afraid of showing actual information.
Re: Apple's New Map
#166There's really just too much map detail on this phone app... Like how much do you really need?
Re: Apple's New Map
#167Wow. They're now even less useful than an old paper map.
Re: Apple's New Map
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve worked on mapping software, and in fact on street name placement (Not Google or Apple). The code we had for deciding where and when to draw street names has to be among the most complicated, full-of-edge-cases code I have ever encountered. Engineering is pulling one direction, data providers are pulling another direction. UX is pulling this direction, cartography is pulling that direction. Everybody in the compa…
Seems like this is the type of thing that should be ultimately built out as an algorithm rather than hardcoded exceptions etc.
Or -- gasp -- give the user the ability to control the name density.
Re: Apple's New Map
#169This is a great write up but aweful news for us Apple users who finally thought Apple would be able to catch up with Google Maps. That is the only have part of one state and will be many years until the whole country but the promise that the new data would be near perfect made it worth the wait. Apple continues to favor manual vs automated such as news and music and in each case googles automated approach wins out. Y…
> That is the only have part of one state and will be many years until the whole country [...]
*whole world. Apple maps users are not just in the US.
I think your concerns might be overstated though. Hopefully they've just decided to heavily focus on this area up to now to tune their algorithms etc. and will be able to roll it out much more quickly from here on out.
POIs definitely need to be much improved but there seems to be some very solid street data updates with this.
Re: Apple's New Map
#170You know what I really never use the map on my phone for? Figuring out how many trees there are. Do the directions work?
I find vegetation massively helpful, because I have a pretty good idea of the shape of the forest areas around my city (both from driving around and also from looking at satellite/aerial photos). I can actually find a lot of places faster looking at the shape of the forest, parks, etc. than by either looking at the streets or even searching!
It's just making the map data match the real world better, and making it useful for more than just driving.