I do like this idea.
However, the "fix the maps yourselves" atitude is not right for a company who have just charged you £529 for a phone.
And the worst part is they think you are the fool.Not sure how I feel about this. Some of the store employees are clueless.
Luckily, Iowa has no points of interest.
The downside is not every country or area has an apple store. I'm currently working in Qatar and there is no official apple store. So who is going to collect data here?I fail to see how this has any downside. At worst it marginally improves the maps experience while giving employees a new opportunity. Smart move.
They could be using this to double check corrections being offered by iOS 6 users. It's actually kind of clever, since there are Apple Stores all over the place.
They could be using this to double check corrections being offered by iOS 6 users. It's actually kind of clever, since there are Apple Stores all over the place.
The downside is not every country or area has an apple store. I'm currently working in Qatar and there is no official apple store. So who is going to collect data here?
Ping was so bad that it had to be shut down. Antennagate where they had to ship free covers is very similar to this case and their confidence in a product or design where they had to backtrack later on. I'm not sure why some of you keep bringing up Steve Jobs, as if he was some sort of infallible God. He was an excellent CEO but he was still human. Most of what he did was pretty great, a few things not so great. Just like the feature set in the iPhone 5. Let's move on.iOS 6 maps is a failure. Steve Jobs would have never allowed such a terrible product to be released.
and it takes a super genius to compare the google map to the apple map and submit a correction.Retail staff are hardly the brightest bunch, this cant end well.
2 issues with this :
If simply using retail store employees to scout around and "Report problems" from the app : while they're doing that, who's going to be serving customers in the retail stores ?
If taking user reports and simply updating the database, as pointed out, what if the mistake is in the integration of data from OSM or TomTom and the correction is eventually overwritten with faulty data ? I doubt retail store employees have the capacity/knowledge required to trace back the mistake to the source.
And frankly, if the problem is OSM or TomTom, the retail employees can't exactly fix that beyond sending the report upstream and waiting for an update/re-merge.
No really, this sounds quite fishy and desperate as a tactic. Unless retail employees are willing to work for free, you're going to lose 40 man hours/store where customers are now going to get even less service (I hate going to the Apple stores, the employees never seem to have time to get you what you need).
sounds to me like a lot of the updating is grunt work - seems pretty smart to me to enlist their 40,000 employees to fix the mapping issues!!!! i'm sure initially they will fix the areas they live in - then once they get the hang of it spread out.
To the forum member who suggested this days ago, and then was blasted for the idea, you were right.
"its vast number of retail store employees"
Does it have a vast number? 60k isn't nothing but I'm not sure it is vast either.
Net result
Apple Maps becomes flawless within a 5-mile radius of any Apple Store.
Apple Maps remains hopeless for the majority of other locations.
Ping was so bad that it had to be shut down. Antennagate where they had to ship free covers is very similar to this case and their confidence in a product or design where they had to backtrack later on. I'm not sure why some of you keep bringing up Steve Jobs, as if he was some sort of infallible God. He was an excellent CEO but he was still human. Most of what he did was pretty great, a few things not so great. Just like the feature set in the iPhone 5. Let's move on.
A recent report had apple maps usage at just 4% (and even those who spot errors may not report them). I am guessing that Apple's initial plan of relying on consumer loyalty didn't quite pan out.
People working on maps correction could use interactive map of cities like the one of Quebec city: http://www.ville.quebec.qc.ca/carte_interactive/index.aspx
Don't know if that kind of maps is easy to get but in theory, every city must have somthing up to date that can be use.