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

The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 384 posts

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#211

Post by at-fates-hands »

tesseractive wrote: post #176
tijs wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Netherlands and it seems to work like a charm so far. the whole upheaval sounds like an internet pile-on to me.

After communication, maps are the second most important application on a smartphone for a lot of people. If those maps go from being reliable to being wildly wrong -- which, it seems apparent, has been the experience of a number of people -- then you can hardly expect them to not be upset. If there were some perfectly reasonable explanation for why upgrading to the new version of iOS/Android/whatever caused text mess…

" If those maps go from being reliable to being wildly wrong -- which, it seems apparent, has been the experience of a number of people -- then you can hardly expect them to not be upset."

Agreed and I would add when you're buying a $199 "next-gen" phone, I'd expect things to work properly out of the box.

If it isn't ready, then don't release it.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#213

Post by juliano_q »

white_devil wrote: post #206

"ZOMFG APPLE SUCKS!" There's a new huge undertaking of making a modern, competitive "Maps" product. Who'd have thought that when the first version ever is released, its data is not as accurate as a seven-year-old competitor's ? This is fucking ridiculous. Let's see how long it takes for Google to replace everything it has with vector graphics. You know, to get even with the iOS 6 Maps . Who's the incumbent in two yea…

Android has vector graphics since 2010.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#214

Post by striglia »

glhaynes wrote: post #23

I'm clueless about mapping/geocoding/etc (it's amazing I make it to the grocery store and back) but I keep hearing that Apple needed to get this out there so that they could start getting data feeding back from the millions of iOS users, and thus (presumably rapidly) improving the quality of the maps. Is there any truth at all to that? I don't quite understand where they'd be getting that data back from - e.g. if I s…

Most of the locations here are probably sourced directly from their data providers they list, including Acxiom and Factual. At this scale, they probably haven't geocoded each place themselves.

What experience I've had with those data sources makes me unsurprised that there are misplaced businesses.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#216

Post by Tichy »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #202
Tichy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt that they charge Apple for shipping Google Maps on their phone. They want as many people as possible to use the app.

They don't charge to ship the app, they only charge Apple when people use it : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2122151/Google-Maps-API...

As I said, I don't think that kind of thing would apply to a Maps app by Google. It is for businesses who use maps for something else. For example if you show a map on your homepage with all the locations of your stores.

The browser makers (Mozilla & Co) don't pay either if somebody opens the Google maps web site.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#217

Post by ilaksh »

But you're still going to buy Apple because that is what all of your rich and trendy friends use.

I have never owned an Apple product. The main reason for this is related to class and/or culture and financial circumstances. My family was always very frugal and on the lower side of middle class.

And honestly I'm frugal and so when I buy devices I am focused on value and bought a laptop with a good graphics card and other features that I put Linux and Windows on. Also I am not comfortable around people so I have pretty much no friends. If I had more friends in web development I might have felt an overwhelming peer pressure to buy a Mac.

The point is that these decisions are not actually based on technical merit, not for me or for Apple fans, because that's not how humans make decisions. We need to be very careful to take a step back every now and again and make a conscious effort to correct trends towards a more rational basis.

The Apple ecosystem is generally more polished, that is true. However, its also very much closed compared to other systems like Google's and outdated in some ways. For example, Objective-C is a ridiculous over-complex relic and it is very embarrassing that so many people waste their time with it.

Its obvious that we need to focus our attention and money on more egalitarian and open businesses. And pretty soon, even the most open and inexpensive products and services are not going to be a good value as better knowledge and data sharing becomes more practical and popular.

The future is open, knowledge-based (some derivative of KR) operating systems where machine code isn't even allowed. The future is knowledge-based programming language and platform development and evolution. The future is ubiquitous open cross platform applications. The future is content-oriented peer to peer web knowledgebases and applications. The future is open source phones that you print out in 3d on your desk.

The future of technology is open, distributed, cohesive and yet decoupled, mature, substantive, and egalitarian. Apple is none of these things.

Post reply on HN