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Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

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Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#231

Post by jkn »

recursive wrote: post #205
andybak wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're mistaken. They are on Android so it seems odd they wouldn't be. The ability to zoom to arbitrary levels with no pixellation seems to imply it most definitely is vector.

I am using an Android device. And I do clearly see pixelation when I zoom in, before the new tiles load. Here's a screenshot I took after I enabled airplane mode: http://i.imgur.com/wc5Ie.png

Which version of the Maps app are you using?

I don't see these blurred pixels on my phone, but note that this kind of rendering can also happen with a vector based map: The application has to convert the vector information to a bitmap anyway, for a given zoom level. When zooming in, it is possible that the app shows a zoomed-in version of this bitmap while it is generating a new one in the background.

By the way, it is not necessary to answer every single comment with a link to your screenshot. It is annoying to see the same thing repeated 5 times when reading the thread.

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#232

Post by [deleted] »

bad_user wrote: post #145
sudont wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having played with a toy geolocation feature detector for text, I can safely say it's extremely hard to do well. My first attempt is inspired by Peter Norvig's spelling corrector using a corpus built from the places2k.txt file, but it gets confused when the words are transposed. My guess is that Google is using some sort of n-gram based approach for maps and search, where as their little sidebar map is similar to wha…

> Try searching in Google for "San Francisco" versus "Francisco San." On the other hand, that's not a mistake you can make, because "San Francisco" in the minds of people really is "Sanfrancisco", a single word. Why would anybody spell "San Francisco" as "Francisco San"? In fact Google should differentiate heavily between these 2 terms, as they aren't similar at all. Google also does a lot of other neat things, like…

[deleted]

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#233

Post by cbs »

takeda64 wrote: post #117

How come Apple allowed this app? Isn't it duplicate functionality of the iPhone? I guess everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others...

I've heard they've axed that rule, but generically speaking in business nothing is set in stone. Most app developers just aren't in a position to negotiate.

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#234

Post by BryantD »

tolmasky wrote: post #133
BryantD wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"why would someone go ahead and use Apple's terrible search engine to help them improve their search?" Because at the end of the day I want to make choices that result in more flexibility down the line. I do not want to live in a world where Apple is the only OS provider for mobile devices. Likewise, I don't want to live in a world in which Google is the only reasonable choice for map searches.

So is your strategy to always use the worse of two services to ensure competition for the future?

Nope. Apple Maps isn't particularly worse for me. The directions have been fine, and I like turn-by-turn. I miss transit directions quite a bit. I thought about what I was missing and I thought about how dominant Google is in search, and I decided the tradeoff was worth it for me.

I wouldn't make fun of someone for making the other choice either.

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#235

Post by rmc »

kyrra wrote: post #24
hpagey wrote: post #13

Actually I think Apple won here. Google was refusing to release a turn by turn direction update to their apps. By developing an Apple Map App with turn by turn, they kind of forced GooG to provide it on iOS platform. Also, it is very difficult for google to ignore ios users.

How is that a win? Apple got egg on their face from all the bad press. They had to shell out a ton of money for 2 map companies they bought, money for all the map data they are buying, plus all the engineering resources to create the product. Google Maps lets google have full branding on the iphone and can gather all the data they want from users. And they can have all the branding on the Maps that they want. If I re…

Apple got egg on their face from all the bad press.

Do you think it'll hurt them? After all the released an iPhone that didn't work if you held it wrong. Did that hurt them?

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#237

Post by evandena »

criley wrote: post #58
Gigablah wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Google, yes.

How is going from having your app presinstalled on every device and being maintained, for free, by Apple developers to having to write and maintain your own app and put it in the app store a "win"?? There is no win here for Google! Less users (not everyone is going to install it), less data coming in, more money spent, having to hire more dedicated iOS coders inhouse at Google... People have a weird definition of "wi…

I think you're missing some of the major pros for Google... With this new app, they control all of the branding, all of the upstream data gathering, and paid ads.

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#238

Post by esolyt »

criley wrote: post #105
mdc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between not having a smart phone and having a smart phone that actively misleads you.

No, there's not as big a difference as you're implying -- because ALL mapping data is imperfect, therefore ALL smartphones are capable of actively misleading you. And paper maps can mislead, as well! (I'm trying to think how many "this place is closed/moved/never here" notices I sent Google Maps myself, because of the number of times I've been misled by Google Maps!) A smartphone is not a replacement for common sense…

All maps are imperfect. But some map services are better than others. Why isn't iPhone, which is a great phone, is not shipping with one of them?

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#239

Post by flxmglrb »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #186

I guess I'm still stuck in the same mentality that I'm surprised at but I'm always surprised to see what gets iOS users excited these days or what problems it has: fundamental search issues the AppStore, the amazement of Google Maps being "fluid" (ironic given the tech powering it [based on koush's speculation]), lusting for the simplicity of the Google theme versus the plasticy-clear-bubbled iOS. Then again I'm also…

I think there is some "vocal minority" stuff going on here, particularly with regard to the look and feel of Google's app.

For starters, far from being "fluid", Google's app consistently has a much lower framerate when scrolling or adjusting zoom level than Apple's maps app. It never even approaches 60fps even when running on the latest hardware, whereas Apple's old (and new) map application has always been really good about this, even on old & low-end hardware. So I'm really confused as to what people are talking about when they say it's "fluid". Compared to what?

As for the UI, the way Google's search input bar is positioned actually results in more of the screen being wasted than Apple's standard search bar UI. Those little slivers of the map which stick out above and on the sides are too small to be useful, so what's the point? Just pin it to the top of the screen and make it standard height like all the other apps do, thus giving the maximum amount of contiguous real estate to the actual map itself. There is a reason why Apple does it the way they do, and it's not just for looks.

I have mixed feelings about the detail view being at the bottom. I understand the idea of one-handed operation and I appreciate what they're trying to do here -- optimize for the case of browsing search results with your thumb via a combination of horizontal and vertical swipes, however I'm dubious of the value of it since you still sometimes have to reach awkwardly across the screen for certain things. Not to mention the detail view takes up more real estate than necessary, much like the search bar. It also feels somewhat disconnected from the currently selected pin due to being at the bottom, which is a problem Apple doesn't have since they put the details directly on the annotation.

Oh and of course you cannot blink without this app bugging you to log in.

Re: Google Maps becomes the App Store’s most popular free app in 7 hours

#240

Post by rieter »

megablast wrote: post #144
darrenkopp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their search on the Google Play store isn't that great, though they now have a feature where what they auto-suggest when typing your query is usually what you want (for larger apps like netflix, ebay, etc)

The search of Google Play store is atrocious, much worse than this.

I never had any serious issues with it.
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