It's really boring reading tech bloggers comment on hugely complex and expensive operations like mapping the entire earth. It takes a really long time, and Apple can't just throw money at it either.
Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
61–70 of 157 posts
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#62Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) Many other companies have succeeded at getting social to work: Ping did not; do you use Ping? I explicitly go into the story with regards to Ping. I know of no one who considers Ping a success. http://www.powayiliad.com/2011/01/itunes-ping-an-apple-failu... http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/ping-fail-5-reasons-to-avoid-j... Even Apple considers Ping a failure, so I'm really not certain where you are trying to go with…
I don't know what you've used for search and replace, but in some cases you have obscured the "saurik names" and left the "non-saurik names" as clear text. :)
? "xxx" and "lmrpq" (my failed attempt at "lmnop") are not the users' actual names. I know the names of the two users involved, and neither of them are present in the text. (I have also been sitting here re-reading the block over and over again, as I tend to do after I post any comment on HN for about ten minutes, looking for typos or other mistakes, and have not found any with respect to the name changes in that giant block of transcript.)
Maybe the format of a message is confusing? Each line is "timestamp message", with the convention that people use a colon to do a targeted address; were I talking to you, the message might be "12:00:00 blub: this is my message". HN then collapsed it to a single massive line, and I figured that the contents was sufficiently unimportant that that was better not to expand into an equally-massive vertical wall of text.
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#64The article has no mention of why this is a 400 year advantage - or how long it will take for Apple to get over this. He lays out very well that a human element is required to bring these streams of data together. And Apple is not a company with the DNA of big data. Just algorithmic manipulation of the data is not possible or sufficient - they will need an army to integrate these streams and bring them up to par. And…
I believe the 400 years is referring to Apple failing on basic principles of map making which have been around for a long time. Possibly a reference to "Nova totius Terrarum Orbis", a famous atlas from 1630?
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple actually makes this kind of mistake often: they positively excel at some things (retail relationships, hardware supply chains, physical design, software integration) but really suck at other things (social experiences, data harvesting and search, data synchronization and security, dealing with developers): even "within" the Apple community this leads to a number of well-known failures, from Ping (a similar situ…
There's plenty worth criticizing about Apple, but you didn't even mention radar:// 1) "Social Experiences" - Ping failed where... who succeeded? 2) "Data Harvesting and Search" - These are two terms that are either exactly the same, or extremely different. Neither points at a clear criticism. You realize Apple pioneered desktop search, right? 3) "Data synchronization" - Where's the problem, exactly? Is there any comp…
5) I'm terribly sorry you had a software failure and only had a single solitary backup of 8GB of your vital that was difficult to retrieve when Apple was clearly spiking 8 petabytes of traffic in one day.
Let me give another example where iCloud fails: iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match. I'm regularly unable to download or stream certain songs for days. I can play the rest of the album fine, but one or two songs, you cannot play nor download.
Sometimes, I cannot access my matched music at all. iTunes will do an iTunes Match update, which fails for some reason, and then suddenly all songs are greyed out. Usually, a match update will only succeed after a few hours of trying. During that time I can only play music that is locally available.
Match is a big mess and I will probably not renew it after a year.
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's plenty worth criticizing about Apple, but you didn't even mention radar:// 1) "Social Experiences" - Ping failed where... who succeeded? 2) "Data Harvesting and Search" - These are two terms that are either exactly the same, or extremely different. Neither points at a clear criticism. You realize Apple pioneered desktop search, right? 3) "Data synchronization" - Where's the problem, exactly? Is there any comp…
1) Many other companies have succeeded at getting social to work: Ping did not; do you use Ping? I explicitly go into the story with regards to Ping. I know of no one who considers Ping a success. http://www.powayiliad.com/2011/01/itunes-ping-an-apple-failu... http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/ping-fail-5-reasons-to-avoid-j... Even Apple considers Ping a failure, so I'm really not certain where you are trying to go with…
1) Which companies succeeded at "getting social to work?" Facebook?
2) Okay. I've tried to buy large numbers of servers from Apple in the past. They really aren't server people, it's true. I was trying to buy these servers because I was working for a company whose primary business is searching through petabytes of data. Apple was and still is kicking the shit out of everyone with Spotlight.
3) I'm not saying there have never been bugs in any of Apple's data synchronization software, but Dropbox is the only company doing a better job.
4) I guess I don't realize who I'm talking to. Apple has a great reputation when it comes to malicious code. Until I finish posting this and get to researching your history, I'm going to assume you're behind jailbreakme, or similar. Thanks! Great job! Really, it's hard for me not to come off as hypocritical here, but that kind of work is incredibly valuable.
5) Eh, I have difficulty garnering sympathy for anyone complaining on IRC about ~160KB download speeds for downloading their personal backup from Apple while Apple is also distributing iOS6 binaries to at least 15 million devices or so (based on napkin math derived from here: http://allthingsd.com/20120920/usage-of-apples-ios-6-hits-st...)
You're not wrong about Apple's hubris in general. These are just bad examples.
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple actually makes this kind of mistake often: they positively excel at some things (retail relationships, hardware supply chains, physical design, software integration) but really suck at other things (social experiences, data harvesting and search, data synchronization and security, dealing with developers): even "within" the Apple community this leads to a number of well-known failures, from Ping (a similar situ…
There's plenty worth criticizing about Apple, but you didn't even mention radar:// 1) "Social Experiences" - Ping failed where... who succeeded? 2) "Data Harvesting and Search" - These are two terms that are either exactly the same, or extremely different. Neither points at a clear criticism. You realize Apple pioneered desktop search, right? 3) "Data synchronization" - Where's the problem, exactly? Is there any comp…
I think that the point really is that Apple has been missing the mark in a lot of ways. That they create products that are half-baked or too buggy.
1) What about Ping was interesting? Though in general I think that it was an attempt that they didn't exactly bet the company on.
2,4,5) I agree with you
3) Implementing iCloud is really annoying. I tried for weeks and now I just think I won't bother. It was released for iOS 5 but an Apple Engineer told me not to implement iCloud+CoreData under 5.1.1. And iOS 6 introduces methods that are pretty much required anyway. So basically they introduced it while it was incomplete and buggy. It's frustrating for the user because no one is using this amazing feature and if they are...
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#68The headline doesn't seem to come up in the article at all.
As I mentioned above, I believe he's referring to the 400 year history of map making which Apple appears to have ignored, in part at least.
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#69Articles like this make me suspect that http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4367517 was an extremely accurate description of Apple's problems.
I wonder how long it will take for the outside world's expectations of Apple to drop to what they should be in the permanent absence of the gaze of Barad-dûr?
Re: Google Maps' advantage over Apple Maps
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple actually makes this kind of mistake often: they positively excel at some things (retail relationships, hardware supply chains, physical design, software integration) but really suck at other things (social experiences, data harvesting and search, data synchronization and security, dealing with developers): even "within" the Apple community this leads to a number of well-known failures, from Ping (a similar situ…
There's plenty worth criticizing about Apple, but you didn't even mention radar:// 1) "Social Experiences" - Ping failed where... who succeeded? 2) "Data Harvesting and Search" - These are two terms that are either exactly the same, or extremely different. Neither points at a clear criticism. You realize Apple pioneered desktop search, right? 3) "Data synchronization" - Where's the problem, exactly? Is there any comp…
ITunes is also terrible.