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Apple's New Map

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Re: Apple's New Map

#81

Post by ryandrake »

crazygringo wrote: post #73
mulmen wrote: post #60

This is really neat but I don't really care about greenery when I'm using Apple Maps. Can they take a break from figuring out how to convert satellite images into green blobs and devise an algorithm to put street names on the screen ? Apple and Google maps are both worthless as maps without typing in an actual address and using navigation because they can't just show the main cross street names on the screen. It abso…

It's obviously an intentional choice to avoid too much screen clutter... but I agree it's infuriating. I've spoken in the past with some people who work on Maps products and have heard "people say they want it but then they really don't..." and I honestly can't imagine what UX studies are telling them that. All the time I see a destination and I'm trying to figure out what closest cross street I should stop at and by…

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 company wants to bike-shed about it and insert their opinions because the problem to them “seems so easy.”

I’m not going to go into too many specifics but for most map products I’ve worked on, the usual reason that a label doesn’t appear somewhere is because the map data provider hard-codes the potential places where a label could be displayed, and it’s not “everywhere along the road”. You might be zooming into a place where a cartographer chose not to add a label point. Good map software will try to sensibly fill in these gaps but are not perfect. Too aggressive about adding labels and you have the artists and cartographers telling you some areas on the map are too cluttered. Not aggressive enough, and some areas on the map are bare.

It’s maddening getting those bugs saying “I think there are too many labels”, backing it off, then a few days later getting the bugs, “I can’t find the street label next to my house!” Lots of simple-to-whiteboard solutions would work well for your particular neighborhood but look terrible in Manhattan or rural Idaho, not to mention Japan. It’s really not simple.

Re: Apple's New Map

#83

Post by puzzle »

floatrock wrote: post #49
max76 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author has a genuine passion for maps, and finds the vegetation to be a great feature.

But that's what I don't like about the apple map. Check out the image where he says: > Regardless of how Apple is creating all of its buildings and other shapes, Apple is filling its map with so many of them that Google now looks empty in comparison: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54ff63f0e4b0bafce6932... Yeah, the google view has a lot less green, but it's really a different kind of green -- it shows me wher…

Google does have vegetation and desert data, but you can see that it starts to fade around zoom level 5 in the US (at which you can only see a number of entire states and the names of major cities).

If you go somewhere else on the planet, e.g. along the Amazon river, you see that the vegetation data reappears, only to start fading again at zoom level 11 or so. It's too irregular and following satellite imagery too closely to have been drawn from human sources such as parcel data. It must have been built from imagery.

So it looks like it's a deliberate choice on Google's part to only use human-derived features such as a park's outline at most zoom levels, on most of the inhabited surface of the planet.

Re: Apple's New Map

#84

Post by matt4077 »

mulmen wrote: post #60

This is really neat but I don't really care about greenery when I'm using Apple Maps. Can they take a break from figuring out how to convert satellite images into green blobs and devise an algorithm to put street names on the screen ? Apple and Google maps are both worthless as maps without typing in an actual address and using navigation because they can't just show the main cross street names on the screen. It abso…

After taking a look at SF, it seems to me that there really isn't enough space for additional street names without losing something else. So I believe your complaint is more about the prioritisation among streets, or of streets vs. other entities?

The first would seem valid, if Mission St is, as I gather, rather important. FWIW: after searching for Mission District, the street is now visible far more often. It's labeled even at a zoom level where the water on the east and west are comfortably within the frame.

The decision of de-emphasising street names for the benefit of landmarks/museums/event locations etc. is rather subjective: I often use Maps for purposes other than directions, such as getting a feel for an apartment's neighbourhood, finding restaurants, exploring places in the news, or that appeared in books or movies, or even just "sightseeing".

For all these purposes, the style of Google and Apple Maps is obviously far better than traditional folding maps.

You seem to do direction planning the "old-school" way of manually planning a path from A to B. But that mode has been somewhat deprecated, because typing an address and getting a specific route happens to be far better for this purpose. It's not so much decreasing skills in map reading the luddites so often bemoan: In unfamiliar locations, Google has so much more information, such as both typical and real-time traffic, specific expected times to negotiate every intersection, up-to-date road closures etc. Plus a slightly better shortest path algorithm than eyeballing it.

To get back to shrubbery: I rather shrug. Because you're right that it's less important than roads. But by its nature as just the background colour, I believe it does not actually compete with street labels, at least not in the way that other labels do.

Re: Apple's New Map

#85

Post by mulmen »

crazygringo wrote: post #73
mulmen wrote: post #60

This is really neat but I don't really care about greenery when I'm using Apple Maps. Can they take a break from figuring out how to convert satellite images into green blobs and devise an algorithm to put street names on the screen ? Apple and Google maps are both worthless as maps without typing in an actual address and using navigation because they can't just show the main cross street names on the screen. It abso…

It's obviously an intentional choice to avoid too much screen clutter... but I agree it's infuriating. I've spoken in the past with some people who work on Maps products and have heard "people say they want it but then they really don't..." and I honestly can't imagine what UX studies are telling them that. All the time I see a destination and I'm trying to figure out what closest cross street I should stop at and by…

I agree it is a deliberate choice and may even be necessary. The problem is how they identify "clutter". To Apple clutter seems to be street names or useful human scale landmarks. To me clutter is the name of a coffee shop four blocks away that happens to be highly ranked on Yelp when I haven't recently searched for coffee shops.

Re: Apple's New Map

#86

Post by eridius »

floatrock wrote: post #49
max76 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author has a genuine passion for maps, and finds the vegetation to be a great feature.

But that's what I don't like about the apple map. Check out the image where he says: > Regardless of how Apple is creating all of its buildings and other shapes, Apple is filling its map with so many of them that Google now looks empty in comparison: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54ff63f0e4b0bafce6932... Yeah, the google view has a lot less green, but it's really a different kind of green -- it shows me wher…

> it shows me where there's a public park I might visit

Google's map shows a relatively tiny bit of land that it labels as the regional park.

Apple Maps, meanwhile, highlights a much larger area that it gives the same label.

Based on the fact that Apple Maps is explicitly highlighting this area, I'm going to guess that it's correct and that entire highlighted area is, in fact, the regional park. So if you wanted to visit Garland Ranch Regional Park, wouldn't you prefer it to be accurately mapped, instead of represented as a tiny slice of green?

Or if you meant that tiny bit of green in Caramel Valley, Apple Maps has it too, it just has a lot more green too that might be interesting if your goal is to visit bits of greenery stuck in the middle of towns.

Re: Apple's New Map

#87

Post by sid-kap »

mulmen wrote: post #60

This is really neat but I don't really care about greenery when I'm using Apple Maps. Can they take a break from figuring out how to convert satellite images into green blobs and devise an algorithm to put street names on the screen ? Apple and Google maps are both worthless as maps without typing in an actual address and using navigation because they can't just show the main cross street names on the screen. It abso…

Agreed. At the very least, when you pull up directions, every road that you have to turn on should have the street name should be visible (at least without too much zooming).

Re: Apple's New Map

#88

Post by agumonkey »

mulmen wrote: post #60

This is really neat but I don't really care about greenery when I'm using Apple Maps. Can they take a break from figuring out how to convert satellite images into green blobs and devise an algorithm to put street names on the screen ? Apple and Google maps are both worthless as maps without typing in an actual address and using navigation because they can't just show the main cross street names on the screen. It abso…

You remind me of a lot of tech these days. Too much computing power, far less usable value. Especially when moving.

Re: Apple's New Map

#89

Post by puzzle »

docker_up wrote: post #61

The original Google Maps showed all the street names on all the streets, so you didn't have to guess. Later versions of Google Maps didn't do this, so on some streets, you would have no idea what the street names were, and would have to zoom out or scroll out until you saw the name. THIS is what I want fixed. I don't care about vegetation, I want to be able to see what the street names are without distracting myself…

The original Google Maps was pre-rendered in a gigantic MapReduce. It had many fewer landmarks.

The modern Google Maps does a lot of the layout and rendering on the client or on the fly, with a differing set of constraints and tradeoffs. It also has many more landmarks.

You can see this in action by going to https://mapstyle.withgoogle.com/ and playing with the "Landmarks" control.

Re: Apple's New Map

#90

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #19

What pleases me is that - obviously I suppose - this mapping is all done in the counties near where the map developers live / work. It's the thought that they just got in their cars and drove up to buildings and harbours and cloverleafs and checked . That bit just says a lot about ... accuracy.

Let me introduce you to OpenStreetMap...
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