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The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

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Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#241
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia acquired Navteq, which was already a top player in the mapping space. For about a year, their horrible S60-based models were selling well because they all had free high-quality mapping apps with turn-by-turn navigation and TomTom directors were shitting their pants. Then Apple and Google "divorced" while the iPhone was exploding, Google basically stopped improving Maps on iOS (all features went to Android), and…

>Google basically stopped improving Maps on iOS incorrect: maps was an apple app that use google maps service. So it was apple that stopped improving maps on Ios

Depends on what the terms of the Apple-Google agreement were. It's possible it did not include the additional features.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#242
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31923428912/walkin... http://www.techinasia.com/apple-ios-6-maps-china-japan/ Pretty common.

Tourists and expats are going to have issues in some countries, take for example Thailand. http://imgur.com/7gkgx Google Maps has street names in both Thai and English, whereas Apple Maps only has Thai.

You can turn off this feature in Settings -> Maps. Just turn on "Always English" nob.

Edit: Just tested. This does not work for street names. Sorry.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#243
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have completely missed the big picture here.

Google charges 'volume' users of their maps API, that is part of the way they pay for it. The map "application" on iOS was a client that called Google Maps APIs and displayed the results. It generates a lot of volume, and Apple was going to have to start paying for that this year.

you wrote: "For example if you show a map on your homepage with all the locations of your stores."

If you did that enough times Google would start charging you. They also reserve the right to show ads for somebody else's store on your map. (not that they would just yet, but they keep that right in reserve if you want to use their content.)

Google and Apple sell Ads. Google is much better at it than Apple is, but the great untapped market is effectively advertising to mobile users. A common theme for desktop users is they use web search a lot, a common theme for mobile users is that they use map search a lot.

Apple wants you to sell ads through their network, so they get a huge chunk of the ad revenue that you are getting for your content. They do this because you're showing your ad on an Apple device. When you use Google maps through a browser you get ads from Google's ad network on the page. If you use an Application (usually a better UX) the platform provider has more control over you (they have to approve your App after all) So the fight here is who sells the advertisement into the Maps data stream.

Google has the best mapping product on the planet at the moment. They can use that to demand concessions like "we get all the ad revenue" in exchange for you being able to use our data/api. They don't care if the local restaurant shows a map to their location, the do care if you're an application that millions of people might use.

Its pretty clear that Google and Apple agreed to disagree and end their relationship with respect to Maps. That the Apple product is so horrible suggests that this relationship ended earlier than Apple planned, or their Maps technology has matured more slowly than they anticipated. Either way, the result is that Apple now has a grossly inferior maps application on their most successful products. This is going to cost them both in sales to people who are on the fence with regard to mobile, and in customer goodwill (this is already evident). That is a calculated risk they took. The alternative was to meet Google's requirements, whatever they were, to continue to use their map data in their application.

The part I think you are missing is this. Apple had to know how crappy their Map application was, customer experience is what they do, they don't just forget about it all of a sudden. Given that they are shipping that pile of crap means that they and Google are at odds on this issue. Is there any scenario where Apple would 'approve' an application by Google that would be instantly significantly better than their native App? Or conversely, given that they couldn't reach an agreement on the native App, do you think Google would agree to constraints in a published App that they would not agree to in a native App?

No, the only explanation that is credible is that they walked away and Apple has dug in their heels and bet that they can build out a better map experience faster than Google can take market share away with Android's map experience. From where I am sitting, given the significance of the risk involved in taking that path (some of which we're seeing being actualized as rampant ridicule) I can only imagine how distasteful Google must have made it for Apple to stick with them. And that suggests to me that you will never see another native Google maps product on iOS until Apple capitulates and cedes the space to Google or Apple moves so far ahead of Google that they no longer feel it is a threat to their advertising base.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSM doesn't do 3D For most people the 3D is an amusing toy, not really useful. I'd be happy without it frankly. OSM doesn't do elevation See 3D above OSM doesn't do geocoding They have data for searching on street addresses and towns, and the data is available separately for postcodes etc (TomTom for example will have sold a solution for this to Apple, so they could have gone down that route). Google has this down, a…

>For most people the 3D is an amusing toy, not really useful. I'd be happy without it frankly. The complaints about the "zigzagging" are about the 3D viewer, hence, my comment about 3D. >They have data for searching on street addresses and towns, and the data is available separately for postcodes etc (TomTom for example will have sold a solution for this to Apple, so they could have gone down that route). Google has…

The post I replied to claim "Apple just pick OSM", and my answer remains... it would not have solved any of the issues that people are complaining about.

It didn't say 'Apple just pick OSM' (which implies picking OSM would solve all their problems), and as I've pointed out, there are problems with data which it would solve. Here are some examples:

Puna, Peru, roads in the water http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-15.8559322357178&lon=...

Cayman Islands, no road data http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=19.2949&lon=-81.343&#3...

These are serious problems with data which Apple will have a nightmare fixing as there are just so many holes in their data outside the US, and they're now waiting for mapping companies like tomtom for updates, or they'll have to fork and then try to merge with tomtom/etc data later again.

For many (I'd say most) users of the maps app, the order of priorities are something like:

1. Accuracy of map data

2. Coverage of map data

3. Accuracy of map searches (streets, postcodes, POIs)

4. Routing (this is hard problem though)

5. Satellite imagery (for some this would be above routing)

6. Streetview (for some this would be higher)

7. 3D stuff

OSM would help with the first three points (along with other sources of course, just as say tomtom needs supplemented), and would also help in future as other people would do the hard mapping and updating work for apple, which will otherwise prove to be a mammoth task.

Everything else is far less important than getting the basic mapping data right first, including 3D renders of major cities, and even satellite data (nice to have, but less important than basic search and display of accurate mapping).

If they used OSM data and imported (say) every month, they could just tell people to visit OSM to make corrections, and problem areas would gradually get better. As it is they're going to have to sift through hundreds of thousands of reports of missing roads etc which just say 'this is broken, fix it', and they're likely to just be submerged under that workload. Anyway, I don't think we're saying such different things - I'm not saying OSM would cure all Apple's problems or even most of them, just that I thought it would be the best choice for them for the most important facet of their map product, the basic vector data, which is sorely lacking at present and unlikely to rapidly improve.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSM doesn't do 3D For most people the 3D is an amusing toy, not really useful. I'd be happy without it frankly. OSM doesn't do elevation See 3D above OSM doesn't do geocoding They have data for searching on street addresses and towns, and the data is available separately for postcodes etc (TomTom for example will have sold a solution for this to Apple, so they could have gone down that route). Google has this down, a…

>For most people the 3D is an amusing toy, not really useful. I'd be happy without it frankly. The complaints about the "zigzagging" are about the 3D viewer, hence, my comment about 3D. >They have data for searching on street addresses and towns, and the data is available separately for postcodes etc (TomTom for example will have sold a solution for this to Apple, so they could have gone down that route). Google has…

Your arguments all sound perfectly logical and valid to me. Love of the "spirit" of open source projects and other things have no place in making decisions that can have such a gigantic effect on all manner of people / outcomes of project/ etc. Not if you're going to actually be responsible for dealing with bad decisions personally. Geocoding I know is definitely a giant furrball of fuck I've learned in the past year. Thinking of building a map app and associated services like this is mind boggling to imagine.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#247
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't until about 3 years ago that Google Maps became the polished app that it is now, ie: vector maps, 3d building maps, tilting, etc. (Google has been in the map business for 10 years now?) Apple has a lot of catching up to do but it's very good at trudging ahead regardless of customers complaints until the product is completely polished and competitive.

Are the features like vector maps, 3d buildings, and tilting only on Android? I've only used Google Maps on iOS.

Yeah. Maps for Android is really amazing, the single coolest app for Android. Even two years ago it was really very developed. I missed it.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#248

The "roller coaster" effects in the 3-d view are my favorite. They've got some smoothing algorithm going, or it wouldn't curve the way it does, but the elevation data must not have a high enough resolution. Google has made this sort of thing look so easy for so long, but it's clearly very hard to get this stuff right. So, I guess it's not that surprising that apple messed up something incredibly hard in their first a…

I don't think Apple gets a pass here. If they are forcing users onto their product it had better be competitive, no matter how hard it is. Microsoft got so such pass with WP7 and that was an entirely new OS/platform!

Jobs would have fired the whole Maps team, en masse.

Furiousness is a skill. Tim Cook falls short here.

Re: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

#250
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia acquired Navteq, which was already a top player in the mapping space. For about a year, their horrible S60-based models were selling well because they all had free high-quality mapping apps with turn-by-turn navigation and TomTom directors were shitting their pants. Then Apple and Google "divorced" while the iPhone was exploding, Google basically stopped improving Maps on iOS (all features went to Android), and…

>Google basically stopped improving Maps on iOS incorrect: maps was an apple app that use google maps service. So it was apple that stopped improving maps on Ios

It's fair to say Apple couldn't improve it without help from Google. It's not like they could just switch to the officially-published API and hope Google would let through all the traffic.
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