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Apple's New Map

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Apple's New Map

#261

Post by degenerate »

Dobbs wrote: post #230
kingkongjaffa wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You hit the nail on the head. Same exact 2 issues for me; it SUCKS at back-roads and shortcuts, and if you make a wrong turn instead of re-adjusting the route it will often have you turn around, even if you are driving for a mile toward the destination.

My setup is to punch in my destination and let Google audibly give directions, and then open Waze for hazard/police notifications.

Re: Apple's New Map

#262

Post by TeMPOraL »

gitgud wrote: post #234
fouc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whenever you zoom in enough that there's enough room on a visible street to put a label, then put the label! I mean if I zoom in so far that only the one street is visible and there's no other text on it, but Maps still leaves it blank... it just feels inexcusable. Agreed. Happens on google maps too, and that's just so irritating

Really? Google Maps works pretty well on Android, [1] when you zoom in, street names pop up where possible... [1] https://i.imgur.com/c1Mtj57.png

Sometimes they do. I second this entire complaining thread; Google Maps really bad as a map. It only works well as a search results display and navigation frontend.

Re: Apple's New Map

#263

Post by blattimwind »

davedx wrote: post #228
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…

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…

Speed limits shown by in-car navigation are an excellent indicator how outdated the data is.

Re: Apple's New Map

#264

Post by degenerate »

toasterlovin wrote: post #183
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.

I'll be interested to see if they are unsatisfied with the way middle-America looks, and invent some way of showing corn and wheat in the maps software, further delaying the rollout.

The vegetation data is literally the last thing that matters, and I can't believe Apple is this blind.

Re: Apple's New Map

#265

Post by fouc »

logicallee wrote: post #201
tomc1985 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Readers here seriously misinterpreted what I was doing. I absolutely 100% didn't write off the idea of putting more labels. I wasn't making a point about how bad it would be. I was doing something different. I read a comment, this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18359646 - which I replied to. First I'll quote it in full then we'll break it down. >It's obviously an intentional choice to avoid too much screen…

You actually have a great idea there. I wonder if they truly tested the "null hypothesis" like you bring up.

There could even be an invented special "road" font that helps people further disambiguate it visually from all the other map labels.

Re: Apple's New Map

#266

Post by TeMPOraL »

brylie wrote: post #195
mulmen wrote: post #60

This is really neat but I don't really care about greenery when I'm using Apple Maps. Can they take a break from figuring out how to convert satellite images into green blobs and devise an algorithm to put street names on the screen ? Apple and Google maps are both worthless as maps without typing in an actual address and using navigation because they can't just show the main cross street names on the screen. It abso…

OpenStreetMap shows street names by default: https://www.openstreetmap.org/ Also, Mapbox has a powerful map styling UI that lets you choose exactly what map elements to display at a given zoom level: https://www.mapbox.com/ We can basically build or contribute to alternatives that better suit our needs.

I only wish there was a FAQ for using OSM instead of Google Maps. From what I gather after reading many HN threads, OSM is the way to go, except they don't want to use the OSM page for daily navigation, you're supposed to find some provider of some of the mapping data, etc.

Re: Apple's New Map

#267

Post by TeMPOraL »

nicbou wrote: post #207
docker_up wrote: post #61

The original Google Maps showed all the street names on all the streets, so you didn't have to guess. Later versions of Google Maps didn't do this, so on some streets, you would have no idea what the street names were, and would have to zoom out or scroll out until you saw the name. THIS is what I want fixed. I don't care about vegetation, I want to be able to see what the street names are without distracting myself…

This is fine for turn by turn navigation though. All that text would just be a distraction when you're driving or riding.

But then when you want to plan your route you can't, because street names don't show, and you have to keep typing in each potential destination you're interested in manually.

Re: Apple's New Map

#268

Post by TeMPOraL »

zongitsrinzler wrote: post #188
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?

Apparently not. See the threads about missing street names.

Re: Apple's New Map

#269

Post by dwighttk »

pat2man wrote: post #158
dwighttk wrote: post #125

I just want a mode where I can see a list of directions without starting turn by turn navigation. I grew up in a time before turn by turn, and I do find it useful the VERY few times I'm driving in completely new locations. But most of the time I just want to see an overview of how to get to a place and then maybe when it is time to get the last 2 or 3 turns read aloud to me. But no, as soon as a choose a route my pho…

Apple Maps when using CarPlay does this pretty well. You can use overview mode on the car display which gives you a map of your whole route. A list of instructions comes up on your phone.

If only I could figure out how to get that without buying a new car.

Re: Apple's New Map

#270

Post by Twisell »

Mindwipe wrote: post #251
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…

It literally boggles my mind why Apple still think using Yelp for POI data is a good idea. Yelp to all intents and purposes does not exist outside of the continental Americas. London's Yelp data is essentially the work of the odd bored American tourist. As such, it's totally wrong. I do not see how Apple improves this situation from this article. Google have an amazing advantage here.

They don’t work exclusively with yelp. Here in France they also include POI from "The Yellow Pages" which is the historical phone directory editor.

I guess they made similar local partnership for country in wich such directory is available and open to partnership.

I’m a GIS engineer and I once considered joining Apple so I’ve regularly noticed international job offers from Apple about enabling theses partnership.

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