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Apple's New Map

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Apple's New Map

#181

Post by yen223 »

gwern wrote: post #141
forgot-my-pw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

His use of gifs make differences much easier to see, vs putting them side by side.

Re: Apple's New Map

#182

Post by toasterlovin »

ehsankia wrote: post #160
nazca wrote: post #133

I think the author missed that the old version, and Google Maps currently, typically use green to denote certain types of public land (parks, national forest, etc.) not vegetation per se. Apple is solving a different use case by color coding by vegetation. And It's one that I think is less useful. KNowing that there is vegetation on someone else's private land isn't really that useful to me. But knowing the boundarie…

Indeed. Having hyper accurate greenery mapping may make for a cool tech demo, but has very little utility. Maps are about information density and color utility. Having 10 different shades of green doesn't really convey anything that's useful for my normal usecase.

Disagree, FWIW. Knowing how the land is shaped and what’s on it helps me navigate much better. Green things on the map that don’t correspond to green things in the environment are not super useful to me.

Re: Apple's New Map

#183

Post by toasterlovin »

heavymark wrote: post #97

This 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…

I’m pretty sure the plan is to roll out the rest of the US in the next year. Not sure about the rest of the world, though.

Re: Apple's New Map

#184

Post by tmd83 »

blueski wrote: post #163
logicallee wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shou…

What I think would be ideal is that for a visible stretch of road in the middle of it there should be the street name. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it not and I haven't found any logical reason why it appears and goes (in my to be fair limited use).

Re: Apple's New Map

#185

Post by toasterlovin »

xvector wrote: post #21

I think this article illustrates a critical issue with Apple's software. The stance on privacy means little machine learning can take place. Little machine learning means that Apple has to resort to more manual techniques. This, in turn, leads to the far inferior (and often dangerously incorrect) place databases and issues with their Maps application. And then users will simply turn to an alternative which absolutely…

The balance they are striking is that they are collecting trip information, but anonymizing it by only sending segments of a given trip and not the whole thing (as well as by not associating trip data with the user).

Re: Apple's New Map

#186

Post by tomc1985 »

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!

There are so many other ways to present what you are presenting that writing the idea off seems silly. With some tweaking I think that idea could work -- if the text were in a faint gray, for example, so that it wasn't so contrasting. Probably want to do away with the bright red dots, too. Subtlety...

Re: Apple's New Map

#187

Post by kaikai »

saagarjha wrote: post #43
cronix wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the new map makes it seem as though California is some lush, green, tropical land. I think the green is way over-emphasized on the new map compared to the old, which is a bit more realistic looking to my eyes.

Have you seen California in satellite view? It's mostly green.

In the spring maybe. For much of the year it's brown because it's desert, nonnative grassland, or city. Big chunks are forest, especially in the north, but brown is still dominant.

Re: Apple's New Map

#188

Post by zongitsrinzler »

nazca wrote: post #133

I think the author missed that the old version, and Google Maps currently, typically use green to denote certain types of public land (parks, national forest, etc.) not vegetation per se. Apple is solving a different use case by color coding by vegetation. And It's one that I think is less useful. KNowing that there is vegetation on someone else's private land isn't really that useful to me. But knowing the boundarie…

I would argue that seeing vegetation on a map makes navigation easier. Which is the purpose of Apple Maps, right?

Re: Apple's New Map

#189

Post by kristofferR »

kaikai wrote: post #187
saagarjha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen California in satellite view? It's mostly green.

In the spring maybe. For much of the year it's brown because it's desert, nonnative grassland, or city. Big chunks are forest, especially in the north, but brown is still dominant.

Sure, but brown areas on the map marks different types of areas, so they obviously can't use brown. Imagine how much of the world would look in the winter, it would just be a completely white map.

The colors of the map obviously can't be based on the season.

Re: Apple's New Map

#190

Post by kristofferR »

xvector wrote: post #21

I think this article illustrates a critical issue with Apple's software. The stance on privacy means little machine learning can take place. Little machine learning means that Apple has to resort to more manual techniques. This, in turn, leads to the far inferior (and often dangerously incorrect) place databases and issues with their Maps application. And then users will simply turn to an alternative which absolutely…

The workaround will probably be that they end up buying the data from a provider who doesn't care much about privacy.

How they don't yet have a web presence boggles my mind though. I send in small corrections to Google Maps all the time when I notice errors, Apple Maps won't let me do that.

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