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Apple's New Map

justinobeirne.com

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Re: Apple's New Map

#361

Post by bo1024 »

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'm not sure if you meant to disagree with me (you say "though"), but that's exactly what I mean. This is a use case for maps (show a map and point to where something is), not directions (tell me what to do).

Re: Apple's New Map

#362

Post by astrange »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #337
saagarjha wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find the article to be "relentlessly negative" at all. It seemed pretty neutral, in fact.

Leave it to fanboys to see “relentless negativism” in legitimate criticism.

Indeed, his criticism might be the reason for the major revamp in the first place, according to other news stories. Quote from paywall:

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/09/07/eddy-cue-the-in...

Complaining gets results. I'm a total believer in negativity. You could say I'm positive about it.

What I mean by "relentless" is that this article in the OP covers the changes in detail for the first half, but the second is the same content as his last piece:

https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat

and quite like the one before that:

https://www.justinobeirne.com/a-year-of-google-maps-and-appl...

But while this one has a lot of specific speculation, the Google article is about how cool they are, links to PR and basically says "look at all those buildings, they must have done it with computers". I suspect someone who worked at Google wouldn't have said that.

Re: Apple's New Map

#363

Post by ryantgtg »

The CPAD dataset has a huge amount of California green space. Even grassy medians. I wonder if they started with that and then did their ground truthing? And if they didn’t - well, they should have.

Semi-related: I’ve seen instances where Google Maps in Southern California has the same street label typos as the CAMS dataset. And I don’t know why but I suspect that Google might not admit that they use such a public dataset as seed data.

Re: Apple's New Map

#364

Post by iguy »

tomaskafka wrote: post #289
logicallee wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' ... :))

Oh that's awesome.

For non-slavic speakers, I especially like how it stops at the border, so you can get half a screen of normal map and half a screen of strange words.

Re: Apple's New Map

#365

Post by dahauns »

egypturnash wrote: post #129
ryandrake wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked on mapping software, and in fact on street name placement (Not Google or Apple). The code we had for deciding where and when to draw street names has to be among the most complicated, full-of-edge-cases code I have ever encountered. Engineering is pulling one direction, data providers are pulling another direction. UX is pulling this direction, cartography is pulling that direction. Everybody in the compa…

This really really sounds like an argument for adding a “name density” slider somewhere in the corners of the main UI. Just admit that no one setting works for all people in all places and stop even trying to find it.

A professional meteorological mapping and modelling tool we use at work has exactly this: A simple "declutter" slider. And it is easily one of its most impressive features - so incredibly simple (esp. compared to all the other bells and whistles it offers) and yet constantly proving its usefulness in everyday use.

Gmaps & Co. have become even more tiresome to use since I actually have experienced how much more comfortable it could be.

Re: Apple's New Map

#366

Post by ghaff »

Thrymr wrote: post #351
bluntfang wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sometimes I fantasize about having a full-time job driving around the country fixing all of Apple Maps' faults. But somehow I suspect the pay would be terrible. I've thought about doing this too, but for hiking trails. I'm sure the pay would be abysmal, but hiking and updating online maps sounds like a blast as a job. I think it could be done fairly well with a simple GPS recorder and serialization, but the biggest…

There is a huge amount of this information maintained by land management agencies (see e.g. [0]). Presumably it is even licensed (in the US at least) in a way that commercial companies could use. But Google Maps coverage of trails and even forest roads is terrible. I presume that you're right, the return is too low, but it is sad that no one is picking up this low hanging fruit. Even OpenStreetMap is hit and miss on…

I conclude that Google has decided once you get off of "normal" roads, it just doesn't care. (One even wonders if Google considers omitting paths that aren't reliable for automobiles to be a feature rather than a bug.) As you say, OSM is better but can't really be depended on.

Re: Apple's New Map

#367

Post by eevilspock »

It has the freakin' Fire Trail we used to have to run for crew team workouts twice a week from Strawberry Canyon to the research buildings way up in the hills. That's kinda amazing.

Re: Apple's New Map

#368

Post by amonavis »

aequitas wrote: post #296
viraptor wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of which copy and paste, though the most familiar, is really one of the worst in UX. I call bullshit on this. I'm using copy/paste on the phone all the time. In using it between many different applications. The way you described it the operation would have to be implemented separately for everything. Text field to phone, text to phone with editing it, phone app (incoming number) to every-single-app-taking-text, etc…

Your right on that. I'm not trying to say copy paste doesn't have any uses. But a lot of people flock to copy paste as the first (and only) solution to every problem when more UX friendly and effective methods exist. But personally I cringe every time I have to copy and paste a address on my phone into map or the address book. The software can know its and address, phone number or any other object and provide context…

I'm afraid you're looking at it purely from a citizen/resident of a developed country. Where I'm originally from, addresses are all mostly a description of how to reach a certain location given the surrounding landmarks.

A close to reality (just changed the exact names) example is:

Firstname Lastname Second floor North John Hancock's building behind the Saint Joseph school (Church side) Neighborhood of the Priars City Country

Of course in native language it's more fluid but you get the idea.

Re: Apple's New Map

#369

Post by crazygringo »

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…

> 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 station, or restaurant.

Citation needed. As a New Yorker, intersections of streets are how we do it all the time, when you want to meet on the street to walk somewhere together. "Meet me on 23rd and 8th."

> We barely even need street names for navigation anymore; instead, our software tells us how many blocks to walk and when to turn (even automobile GPS tells us to expect turns in the next X miles).

When streets are closely spaced, the name is absolutely necessary to know which one to turn onto -- you can pass a whole street in the time it takes the GPS to start and stop speaking and have no idea which street the "next street" refers to.

And plenty of people still walk or bike, where they check their phone only occasionally and memorize the name of the next street they need to stop at or turn on.

Sure there are new use cases, but the old ones aren't going away at all.

Re: Apple's New Map

#370

Post by crazygringo »

ryandrake wrote: post #309
panic wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, you got it. Not only does it have to both look good motionless and in motion, but it has to look good at different speeds, and at smoothly changing zoom levels. Back in the olden days, there was no smooth zoom and pan, so you'd pre-compute labels at each discrete (logarithmic scale) zoom level and they'd remain fixed while panning around. And since panning happened in discrete steps, you wouldn't really notice l…

This still doesn't explain why when you zoom in enough so there are no conflicts and items are sparse, every road can't be labeled somewhere along its length.
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