Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Hiring 'Maps Ground Truth Data Specialist' in Australia
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You can see it now...
Sexy women by the bar, man approaches looking all cool and suave, she sees him and thinks hello.... he buy's her a drink.. she asks him "so what do you do big boy"
The man looks into her eye's in a sexy mannor and reply's, "I'm a Ground Truth Data Specialist".....
Sexy women by the bar, man approaches looking all cool and suave, she sees him and thinks hello.... he buy's her a drink.. she asks him "so what do you do big boy"
The man looks into her eye's in a sexy mannor and reply's, "I'm a Ground Truth Data Specialist".....
Nah, they would never let the Americans into the country to buy them. They have the best border controls ever.
What fact? May be a fact in YOUR opinion. I never had a problem with Apple Maps and it has been improving constantly since months ago.
Android fan posing as a "longtime Apple fanboi"?
The Steve Jobs argument is just plain old at this point. Steve was the one who made the decision to switch. Decisions like that aren't just made overnight...
Yes, it's only "multiple sources familiar with Apple’s thinking," but if you can't accept that as a source then we have no business discussing Apple, period. Do we ever get greater confirmation than that?
One anonymous source is suspect, but once a reporter gets multiples I'm inclined to believe it unless the other party involved comes out and disagrees. (This smells like a planned leak from Apple, honestly.)
So if you have a source where Google denies it...says that All Things D is full of crap...then I'll swing my opinion back the other way. But until then, I'll take "multiple sources along with no-Google-denial" as pretty damning evidence.
They are!
It sure seemed like it was, perhaps in a rage. Surely many Apple employees knew that maps was not ready but were afraid to say anything.
Maps is a POS - that's the way it is right now. To me, the pace of improvement isn't nearly fast enough. This is a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it, and that's what I expected Apple to do - but they fell short. Maybe they didn't think it was all that bad? I don't know. They have the cash, assign $1M to each larger country and have all the data fixed, can't be that hard?
Each major country needs a small team of people that compare with OSM data and fix everything they can, and another ground team that runs around and checks things. Apple could do so much if they just added a "help us fix maps" app to collect data - give it a nice UI and soon Apple maps will be better than anything out there.
And forgodssake take control of the data. Licensing data doesn't cut it. Nokia Maps is worth $8Bn (which is what all of Nokia is worth now but that's besides the point), Apple has 130Bn in cash lying around, let's go fix this....
The maps data here in Thailand is, unsurprisingly, pretty useless. Search doesn't work at all.
But there's also user interface issues that seem like they'd be easy to fix. Only they haven't been fixed. The level of detail that is shown at a given zoom level is not enough - I was recently trying to orient myself in Hong Kong, and in Apple maps I had two choices, both bad: Either I'd zoom in all the way down to a street to see the street name - and lose all context of where I am; or I'd zoom out but wouldn't see any street names for smaller streets. This is just dumb. They could easily just copy the "level of detail" algorithm from gmaps and be done with it.
----------
Forstall was in charge of Maps. He is now gone. FWIW.
While I don't like to argue with trolls, no matter how bad Apple maps is right now Apple has no choice in the matter. To quote Jobs "Apple didn't suddenly get into search; Google got into mobile phones".
It should be obvious that you can't have a key technology of your product be controlled by your main competitor?! Is BMW going to use Mercedes engines? Is Chevy going to use Ford engines? I mean.. really. It's obvious.
Did we expect Apple to do a lot better with their own maps? Yes we did. Did they have a choice to stick with Google? Nope.
At least you have to read your own links:
Can you point where those "multiple sources familiar with Apples thinking" say
So, I repeat, can you share those internal negotiations
----------
The problem is that Google got publicly into mobile phones BEFORE Apple
A couple of comments:
First, Apple should be hiring a bloody army of fact checkers.
Second, they should trust the army of fact checkers they already have: their users. Apple needs to start paying attention to crowd-sourced problems with iOS Maps, otherwise they come off as rude, aloof, and incompetent.
Third, I can just imagine the office if the Map Ground Truth Data Specialist: On the right of their desk is a monitor with an iOS Map information editor. On the left is a monitor with Google maps....
First, Apple should be hiring a bloody army of fact checkers.
Second, they should trust the army of fact checkers they already have: their users. Apple needs to start paying attention to crowd-sourced problems with iOS Maps, otherwise they come off as rude, aloof, and incompetent.
Third, I can just imagine the office if the Map Ground Truth Data Specialist: On the right of their desk is a monitor with an iOS Map information editor. On the left is a monitor with Google maps....
"Apple should just buy Australia and fix the streets to match Maps."
NO. The streets will be boring and designed for the elderly and kids. Plus, they will charge an arm and a leg to drive on their streets, adding more to the BILLIONS$$$ in their bank.
NO. The streets will be boring and designed for the elderly and kids. Plus, they will charge an arm and a leg to drive on their streets, adding more to the BILLIONS$$$ in their bank.
Question: Is Parlous a word commonly used in Australia? Just wondering because it is rarely used in the U.S. In the U.S. it would more likely be "perilous" or "precarious".
Ah, I see where I overstepped. I'm one of those guys who sees all intrusions into my privacy as the same thing, so I'm not so careful about my wording when I complain about one or the other. It's all just "bad" in my mind.
But if you're the type who sees different exploitations of your personal life as shades of grey...well, ok. Yes. I didn't mention the exact correct shade of grey there. I didn't really think about that because of my outlook.
If you can explain why more branding is a violation of privacy I will be very glad but the fact is that you said that Google wanted showing ads and it is false. And it has nothing to do with privacy, like optional Latitude is not a privacy violation
How about a "ground truth specialist" in every country?
Apple Maps are obsolete second tier garbage.
Maybe it's live threatening to drive to the middle of the desert in Australia, miles off the roads. However, in England I would consider it live threatening if you drove your car onto a cricket ground in the middle of a game, got out of the car and asked for a pint of bear. And if you follow Google Maps directions to the pub in my village, that's exactly what you would end up doing. All you want is a pint of beer, and suddenly you are surrounded by some very, very angry cricket players.
Have you reported it? We could go blow for blow between Apple Map mistakes and Google Map mistakes and I guarantee you would run out of ammunition years before I would...
I live in New York City and this happens quite a bit with Apple Maps.
Somehow I think it's worse in NYC (and other large metropolitan areas) than an obscure English village.
What is a hard known fact? The fact that I use Apple Maps every day, and it works nearly flawlessly for me? Or the fact that Google wouldn't give turn by turn to iOS maps unless Apple let them take control (i.e., mine our data and sell it)?
Apple, do me a favor and continue to develop your already nice app. I look forward to the day when Google won't have to be in my life. Notice how I spoke for myself, and didn't display the arrogance of assuming that I spoke for "us all"?