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Apple's New Map

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Apple's New Map

#221

Post by viraptor »

nicbou wrote: post #206
ianleighton wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s also not forget that there are regions/countries where it’s either culturally not always the norm to use street names while giving directions (especially when driving), where in the real world a street name is hard/impossible to find on a sign (try to find and read a small low-contrast stone inlay somewhere up on a building while you drive luckily slowly), or where street names don’t even exist! When driving in…

This becomes especially apparent when you're in a country with a different language and alphabet (Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc). Even if the device successfully pronounces it, you can't look for it on street signs.

I think car navigation and looking at the map are different ux activities though. When you're navigating a car, the street names may not be useful, but when you're walking with a map you can certainly compare what's on your display and what's on the sign (whether it's Latin, Greek, or in hieroglyphs) without knowing how to pronounce it.

Re: Apple's New Map

#222

Post by wsgeorge »

mastazi wrote: post #11

Another great article from this blog! Last year's article from the same author [1] about Goggle Maps' use of photogrammetry and other building scanning techiques was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting HN submissions ever (its comment section[2] is also worth a read). [1] https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653

Yes, I was thinking about this blog post yesterday, wondering how I could find it. Perhaps my favourite read of the year.

Re: Apple's New Map

#223

Post by bambax »

Fantastic article (the gifs could be slower).

In general the article is very critical of Apple new maps, but at one point it seems to commend them for removing roads that are no longer there:

> Notice how many of Parkfield’s roads disappear on Apple’s new map. When Apple’s vans visited, they likely saw nothing but empty fields here those roads were supposed to be (...) 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.

I've never been to Parkfield but I don't think removing old roads is a good idea.

In the forests near Paris where I live, there are roads that were built 350 years ago and that ceased to be real "roads" about 150 years ago. Yet they are still passable by foot or on a mountain bike.

Some maps have them (usually, Google maps have them all) and that helps a lot when planning a bike trip for example. Some maps don't, and once you're in the middle of the forest those maps tell you there's literally no way out, which is ridiculous.

Re: Apple's New Map

#224

Post by saiya-jin »

gambiting wrote: post #218
jillesvangurp wrote: post #211

Hilarious that they consider the job done after covering the Bay area. They are years away from doing this world wide. Most of their iphone revenue is from outside of California. I used to work in Nokia in the maps division that later became Here. I still remember when Nokia disrupted a market then dominated by the likes Tom Tom and a few others by giving away the maps for free along with every phone. Initially this…

I would say map quality for someone living outside of the "bubble", map quality goes as follows: TomTom then Google Maps then literally anything else, then Apple Maps at the very end. It's hilarious how empty Apple Maps are, and considering that until very recently they were the only option for Apple CarPlay for navigation, that was extremely bad. Seriously, it was so bad that I would consider my car's built-in, shit…

Hmm, for google maps not knowing which streets are one-way - that is not true for Switzerland. Sending you to streets that you can't enter (and have to suddenly find ways around in heavy traffic) would render any city navigation effectively useless for me, and outright dangerous too.

It definitely works, at least I can confirm for bigger cities. Hopefully your (and other) areas will get updated soon with something as crucial.

Re: Apple's New Map

#225

Post by kingkongjaffa »

gambiting wrote: post #218
jillesvangurp wrote: post #211

Hilarious that they consider the job done after covering the Bay area. They are years away from doing this world wide. Most of their iphone revenue is from outside of California. I used to work in Nokia in the maps division that later became Here. I still remember when Nokia disrupted a market then dominated by the likes Tom Tom and a few others by giving away the maps for free along with every phone. Initially this…

I would say map quality for someone living outside of the "bubble", map quality goes as follows: TomTom then Google Maps then literally anything else, then Apple Maps at the very end. It's hilarious how empty Apple Maps are, and considering that until very recently they were the only option for Apple CarPlay for navigation, that was extremely bad. Seriously, it was so bad that I would consider my car's built-in, shit…

for driving Waze is number 1 for me

Re: Apple's New Map

#226

Post by Natanael_L »

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.

IMHO it could be useful if the repetition was greyed out. It would allow you to either read it directly (if your eyesight allows), or quickly trace the line to the text in black and read the name while being able to easily see what direction the street goes

Re: Apple's New Map

#228

Post by davedx »

gambiting wrote: post #218
jillesvangurp wrote: post #211

Hilarious that they consider the job done after covering the Bay area. They are years away from doing this world wide. Most of their iphone revenue is from outside of California. I used to work in Nokia in the maps division that later became Here. I still remember when Nokia disrupted a market then dominated by the likes Tom Tom and a few others by giving away the maps for free along with every phone. Initially this…

I would say map quality for someone living outside of the "bubble", map quality goes as follows: TomTom then Google Maps then literally anything else, then Apple Maps at the very end. It's hilarious how empty Apple Maps are, and considering that until very recently they were the only option for Apple CarPlay for navigation, that was extremely bad. Seriously, it was so bad that I would consider my car's built-in, shit…

Not in the Netherlands.

Here any in-car navigation - even in my wife's 1 year old Seat Leon - is never as up-to-date as either of the major native Maps apps (Google or Apple). I exclusively use Apple Maps for navigating in the Netherlands (and elsewhere in Europe). I can count on one hand the number of times it's led us astray.

In fact, I think more like two fingers. The one time that stands out is navigating through back country in Croatia this summer. Both Apple Maps and Google Maps seemed to think a road existed that simply wasn't there, causing a massive detour to get home.

Otherwise, my experience of Apple Maps is completely the opposite to yours. Where have you been using it?

Edit: Also, OpenStreetMap is the best Maps data for anything off major roads here in Europe - it beats Apple and Google by a country mile. If you're going hiking or mountain climbing, OSM is much better.

Re: Apple's New Map

#229

Post by alphakappa »

logicallee wrote: post #205
tokyodude wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you choose the easiest case, large city blocks in a grid. Try a European or Asian city with lots of twisty roads and alleys and it gets much harder. The maps here are already covered with the names of buildings, stations, parks, hospitals etc... I often want road names in Tokyo but they are also competing for space of transit lines as well as places with double or triple decker differently named things like there's a…

> Try a European or Asian city with lots of twisty roads and alleys and it gets much harder. I showed what would happen if you literally follow the rule "whenever [...] there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label". That's the specification. If you show me a twisty road with no room for a label, then according to this specification it doesn't get the label. The specification (for what we…

That’s a misunderstanding of the spec. The ask is to put in at least one label if there is space (when previously there were none). Filling all available space with redundant labels is not the ask.

Re: Apple's New Map

#230

Post by Dobbs »

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #225
gambiting wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say map quality for someone living outside of the "bubble", map quality goes as follows: TomTom then Google Maps then literally anything else, then Apple Maps at the very end. It's hilarious how empty Apple Maps are, and considering that until very recently they were the only option for Apple CarPlay for navigation, that was extremely bad. Seriously, it was so bad that I would consider my car's built-in, shit…

for driving Waze is number 1 for me

I mostly agree. The biggest problems with Waze are when it puts a three mile detour to turn around, and that it struggles to find a whole host of places compared to Apple/Google. Particularly small out of the way places. It just doesn’t have the granularity of smaller back roads.
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