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Apple's New Map

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Re: Apple's New Map

#281

Post by fs111 »

coldtea wrote: post #280
Mindwipe wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It literally boggles my mind why Apple still think using Yelp for POI data is a good idea. As opposed to what source of readily available data? They already use several sources anyway (including their own scanning), Yelp is just one of many.

Foursquare would be a better source as that is still popular in many European countries.

Re: Apple's New Map

#282

Post by macintux »

rurban wrote: post #191

Lol, he's comparing the two worst map distributors details, and comparing its various mapping mistakes. I didn't see a word about the two other better maps: Microsoft and OpenStreetMap. Why Microsoft? They collaborated very early with a very good mapping university institute, which invented creating 3d data from stereo images, from air photos and car-level photos (for the facades), and so on, and then offered the cit…

He frequently uses map details as a proxy for looking at techniques and goals. The details themselves are just an end to a means.

If you look at previous articles, he does a good job of analyzing Google’s strategy for the future of maps.

Perhaps he feels Google’s ambitions in the AV space and vast data collection capabilities in the mobile space make it a more interesting case study than Microsoft’s or OSM’s.

Re: Apple's New Map

#283

Post by fs111 »

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…

You should maybe mention why Here maps are popular for in-car navigation systems: The car makers/suppliers own the majority of Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_(company)#Current_ownersh...

If you own something you tend to use that more instead of buying something else...

Re: Apple's New Map

#284

Post by doque »

sajagi wrote: post #256

Google and Apple get all the glory - but some of you folks might find mapy.cz useful, esp when traveling abroad. Mobile app offers even offline tourist maps for the whole world, including contours -- https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka?x=-119.7422922&y=37.8326869&z=...

I just checked the Arial iamgery of my home and the data appears to be more than 6 years old.

Re: Apple's New Map

#285

Post by ethbro »

panic wrote: post #178
ethbro wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thing that confuses me and parent is that Maps ALREADY knows about road continuity. And road names. I'm sure I'm missing something, but (1) flow labels along their roads to the center of the screen, (2) separate them with predefined padding, (3) drop labels if visible label count > maximum, smallest-to-largest road, until under the threshold. If UXers want to bitch, hide it behind a layer filter. But hone…

Anything moving on a screen will call attention to itself. A bunch of road labels "flowing" around at once turns into a huge mess. The real problem here is with label conflicts. Say you have an important point of interest in the center of the screen already. If a road label happens to be placed underneath the point of interest label, it will look like the road is unlabeled. There are clever ways of moving labels arou…

The purpose of flow layouts is to resolve exactly this problem at map movement time (e.g. user zoom or pan).

Google Maps already does some flowing, it's just not very good at it once you zoom all the way in.

If you have an important point of interest center-screen, then the lower priority labels flow away, or are priority pruned if overly numerous. This allows users to resolve invisible labels simply by zooming in.

I'm absolutely in agreement on the performance challenges, which are likely the real reason precomputed labels seem to be used on Google Maps.

Re: Apple's New Map

#286

Post by sethhochberg »

repsilat wrote: post #156
bo1024 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maps and directions should be separate programs, they fulfill different needs. In a more open-access world, you could build them both on top of the same data (I assume you can with open street map).

Most of the time when I'm going to an unfamiliar restaurant in my city I don't want "directions" though -- I want to know "It's on street X between Avenue B and C." If I have to walk up 10 blocks and across 5 blocks, my route is going to depend on the traffic lights. "Directions" aren't what I want, what I want is to know where the thing is in terms of landmarks I know and can recognise, and that mostly means street…

I think this is a pretty critical difference between urban and suburban/rural use cases for maps and navigation.

I live in an urban place and mostly use maps as you've described - but when I visit my family in suburban FL, the closest major cross streets for the restaurant could be a mile away, on a highway which has the same name for hundreds of miles, and the street number for the business might be in the tens of thousands but you don't really have a concept of where "0" is. Turn-by-turn is much more useful there, if for nothing else knowing that your right-hand turn is roughly 3/4 miles from where you are right now.

Re: Apple's New Map

#287

Post by ethbro »

cooper12 wrote: post #176
ethbro wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the thing that confuses me and parent is that Maps ALREADY knows about road continuity. And road names. I'm sure I'm missing something, but (1) flow labels along their roads to the center of the screen, (2) separate them with predefined padding, (3) drop labels if visible label count > maximum, smallest-to-largest road, until under the threshold. If UXers want to bitch, hide it behind a layer filter. But hone…

> but we are talking about maps that don't show road names here That presumes that road names are an intrinsic part of a map. While they certainly were in the past, I think there's a paradigm shift happening that's become so common we don't notice it anymore. We don't tell people to meet us at "The intersection of Street X and Y" as much anymore, we tell them to meet us near a prominent landmark like a park, train st…

I hear what you're saying, but at least in the US we only have 2 pieces of well labelled and persistent navigational data in the real world: street names and numeric addresses.

In my experience, navigation with Google Maps can be terrible about interchange / exit lanes. It's much easier just to pick the road name and follow the well-labelled and up-to-date highway signs.

Re: Apple's New Map

#288

Post by tomaskafka »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #262
gitgud wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what Google maps are - they only care about places where you spend dollars (good luck finding eg. kid playgrounds).

Here's an app of a company I worked for, that cares about non-shopping use cases: https://windymaps.com/app

Re: Apple's New Map

#289

Post by tomaskafka »

logicallee wrote: post #137
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

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…

At company I worked for (czech search engine Seznam.cz), the map team made an awesome 1st April easter egg when they took this to the eleven: https://mapy.cz/textova?x=15.5603819&y=49.5896653&z=13

(it just says 'roadroadroad', 'houseshouseshouses', 'riverriverriver' ... :))

Re: Apple's New Map

#290

Post by rplnt »

sajagi wrote: post #256

Google and Apple get all the glory - but some of you folks might find mapy.cz useful, esp when traveling abroad. Mobile app offers even offline tourist maps for the whole world, including contours -- https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka?x=-119.7422922&y=37.8326869&z=...

And the rendering is oh so much better than the Google's. Google maps without aerial imagery is just a blur of grey. You can't see natural landmarks (even basic forrest/not forrest), buildings, blocks, it's all roughly the same color and the map is absolutely useless for what is map supposed to be. It's only good for search and navigation. Of course they save their crap renderer by having very good imagery.

Also, there's https://windymaps.com/app which is the same app I think, just focused on international users.

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