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The author definitely enjoys compiling these amazing essays and share this knowledge.
Thank you, Justin!
I wonder if Apple is artificially shortening buildings so you can see what is behind them.
Seems like an odd conceit for Apple to make, particularly since they've been pushing the accuracy of their 3D maps, and since you can easily rotate the map in 3D to get a full view of everything. My guess is that their algorithm to calculate the height of buildings from satellite imagery messed up.
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
He's written multiple articles about maps, even before that one: https://www.justinobeirne.com . He's very good at spotting details in maps–IIRC he worked on Apple's maps team before, so this isn't particularly surprising.
Sadly he took them down, disappeared into the memory hole the way so many Apple employee's work has a way of doing. I'm glad he's out and writing in public again.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using streets from maps that predate TomTom’s maps defeats the purpose of a trap street. The plagiariser could just claim to have sourced the data from old, public domain, sources.
True, but that is assuming that those streets ever existed. As far as I can tell from the article that's just an assumption. Although I think it would actually be possible to use once-real-but-no-longer steets as trap streets, as long as your sources are improbable enough. For example, if you take a map from 1908, remove one street, then add in another single street from 1920, etc., your exact combination of streets…
It brings up an interesting issue though - ideally if you have trap streets you would never want to use them in route finding...
On a side note I can't even imagine how big that webpage was. If you like animated gifs, boy have I got the page for you! All in all, what I've learnt is how many petabytes must be involved in mapping the US and the world and the 3D aspects.
89.9MB, 48.33s load time.
I think this article illustrates a critical issue with Apple's software. The stance on privacy means little machine learning can take place. Little machine learning means that Apple has to resort to more manual techniques. This, in turn, leads to the far inferior (and often dangerously incorrect) place databases and issues with their Maps application. And then users will simply turn to an alternative which absolutely…
It's incredibly detailed in pointing out the differences between old and new Apple Maps, as well as comparing map images from Apple, Google, Tom Tom, and others.
The article demonstrates through the use of animated gifs that Apple Maps has become significantly better over time and in many cases surpasses the quality of competitors.
I could't figure out if the author was being sarcastic by stressing the vegetation detail so much. Certainly seemed like an interesting focus.
I could't figure out if the author was being sarcastic by stressing the vegetation detail so much. Certainly seemed like an interesting focus.
I think the author has a genuine passion for maps, and finds the vegetation to be a great feature.