Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

#51

Post by cheald »

mattparcher wrote: post #44
cheald wrote: post #12

> Technically, they could roll such a thing out in a 6.1 or 6.2 update, but major changes — and I think everybody can agree this has been a major change, for users and app developers alike — should be delivered only in major new OS updates. Well, I personally can't wait for OS XI, since by that criteria, Apple apparently hasn't released a major OS update since OS X yet. Version numbers schmersion numbers. Ship it whe…

(I understand that you’re probably being somewhat sarcastic, but for the sake of semantics…) It’s pretty clear by the amount of change (and Apple’s marketing efforts) that each OS 10.#.0 release is a "major" OS update, on par with the relative significance of each iOS #.0 release. But Gruber may have over-generalized here. Indeed, Apple has added major new features in iOS .# updates, e.g. AirPlay and AirPrint in 4.2,…

My tongue is firmly in cheek, yes. I'm poking fun at the silliness of attaching some holy meaning to version numbers.

My point is that version numbers for end-user software are borderline meaningless; they're marketing fodder. Just look at Chrome and Firefox, for example. Firefox didn't suddenly start improving 10x faster than it was before, but they changed their versioning scheme in a marketing play to compete with Chrome's ever-inflating version, as the casual user assumes that Chrome 37 must be much better than Firefox 6 because its major version is so much bigger.

Apple could either ship a regression in a new major, or ship a less broken regression in a new minor. In either case, there's going to be a regression. Regressions are unfortunate anytime they have to happen, but the assertion that you could only replace Google Maps with an in-house solution in a major is just silly post-hoc justification. You can't avoid disappointing users except by not shipping a regression at all, but you can lessen it by shipping a less-broken product.

As an aside, I can think of at least one other major breaking change/regression in a point release - the total swap in functionality of the lock/mute switch in iOS 4.2. There are also things like dropping support for older devices in point releases (4.3 dropped support for the iPhone 3G) that make the argument look even weaker; device deprecation is generally the sort of thing that is sacredly reserved for major releases, yet Apple seems to have had no problem doing it in a point release, and we're supposed to believe that yet somehow Apple wasn't willing to replace an app in a point release just because it isn't a major?

Re: On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

#52

Post by nivloc »

arrrg wrote: post #36

Ok, can someone help me? I’m quite confused. Apple’s maps have undeniable problems. Pretty big ones in some cases. But are they really unusable? From my perspective it seems as though Apple’s maps are merely inferior, not unusable. Some aspects are even better than they were before (on iOS), some (very few) are better than Google Maps (traffic info in Germany is quite impressive). Everyone here seems to take it as se…

Apple's maps are really good. Google's maps are much better, generally, though.

There are places where Apple has an advantage over Google, but Google has been pouring resources into Maps for a long time.

Garmin, TomTom, Navteq, etc. won't be nearly as good as Apple or Google because they aggregate sources.

They aren't unusable, and are better than if you rely on a dedicated GPS. But they can still be improved. Apple doesn't seem to be weighting proximity for search as effectively as Google (unsurprisingly).

Honestly, Apple is the new #2, but they've got a mountain ahead.

Re: On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

#53

Post by ghshephard »

brianobush wrote: post #26
ghshephard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google is so far ahead on mapping that I doubt Apple will ever catch up. " We're not talking rocket science here. If Apple wants to catch up to Google on mapping, they just have to invest time, money, and attention. We're talking at most two years for Apple to get where Google is today.

Google has far more data to enhance its maps. Does Apple have the internet lying around to analyze?

I'm not making any claims about Apple catching up to "searching" - That truly is a field in which google has demonstrated they have unique, and proprietary advantages over the competition. They have deep research and superior search algorithms, and I would say only Bing can give them competition, and I don't believe Apple will ever be able to provide similar capability when it it comes to that.

But the elements of mapping that are not related to search, that is, routing, displaying tiles, walking directions, cycling directions, turn-by-turn, aerial-view, points of interests - these are all elements that internet data is less useful, and where being able to invest billions of dollars in acquiring suitable cartographic information (as Nokia did) should be sufficient to put together a world class map environment for the customer. My perspective on the challenges is mostly informed through several hours of reading historic postings here: http://blog.telemapics.com/?p=399

In all likelihood, after several billions of dollars invested, Apple 2014 will equal Google 2012 in the areas I just described (mapping sans search).

Re: On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

#55

Post by mitchty »

cma wrote: post #47
mitchty wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could, but Core Location in iOS 6 uses the backend data for things like getting your car route. If I recall correctly Google doesn't let you use their api for things like that. Basically removing the Maps app is one thing, removing new OS features that use the same frameworks is another.

Wouldn't moving from Google to Apple maps be adding the new OS features rather than removing them?

That is what I said. My point being removing/adding Apple Maps isn't the hard part, it was merely to point out that there is more to the mapping api's than an application. And if legally Apple cannot do turn by turn using Google apis, then they cannot provide one to one compatible api's with both. So they just dropped the Google api backended MapKit.

Re: On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

#56

Post by ap3 »

Yhippa wrote: post #40

Who cares about the timing? The maps experience, even with turn-by-turn, feels worse than what I had in iOS 5. I hate it when companies deliberately make things worse.

really ? I'm liking the turn by turn directions in ios6 a lot and to me the update was worth it just for that. I still have the mobile google maps on there if I need to search anything.

Apple Maps feel very snappy and I like the Yelp tie-in.

But I have never used the transit options so I can't say I'm missing it. If I had to use it I figure I could just jump over to web based google maps.

Curious to know what don't you like about the new apple maps that can't be solved by the web based google maps ?

Re: On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

#57

Post by zaphar »

Steko wrote: post #34
zaphar wrote: post #32

This still doesn't explain why they didn't ship it in iOS7 then. If it wasn't ready and they only want to ship such things in major versions then hold it till the next major version. It wasn't ready. And bug reports aren't the solution to get it ready either. They needed better expertise and better quality data to start with.

How does it not explain it? Maps deal expires 6/13; iOS 7.0 launches 9/13. What do you ship from 6/13 to 9/13?

New maps deal to get you up to 9/13.

Re: On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

#58

Post by Yhippa »

ap3 wrote: post #56
Yhippa wrote: post #40

Who cares about the timing? The maps experience, even with turn-by-turn, feels worse than what I had in iOS 5. I hate it when companies deliberately make things worse.

really ? I'm liking the turn by turn directions in ios6 a lot and to me the update was worth it just for that. I still have the mobile google maps on there if I need to search anything. Apple Maps feel very snappy and I like the Yelp tie-in. But I have never used the transit options so I can't say I'm missing it. If I had to use it I figure I could just jump over to web based google maps. Curious to know what don't y…

To be fair I've only used it for about a week-and-a-half now. If you give it a specific address it works pretty well for the most part. One thing I love compared to my Galaxy Nexus is that under the lock screen the next direction will turn the screen on.

Another thing that works better is integration with Siri. I felt that on Android there were a few more hoops to go through to do things like "drive to home" or "drive to Bob's Chicken Shack".

The things I don't like are the lack of detail on the maps currently. I don't use the satellite layer so it looks really sparse and I feel like I'm driving to big abstract blobs.

To be honest this is pretty good for a first try. Getting native turn-by-turn that works 95% of the time is pretty impressive.

Post reply on HN