Apple Hiring 'Maps Ground Truth Data Specialist' in Australia

[Bubba Satori]

Apple should just buy Australia and fix the streets to match Maps.

[apolloa]

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".....

[apolloa]

Originally Posted by Bubba Satori

Apple should just buy Australia and fix the streets to match Maps.

Nah, they would never let the Americans into the country to buy them. They have the best border controls ever.

[lucasfer899]

Originally Posted by apolloa

Nah, they would never let the Americans into the country to buy them. They have the best border controls ever.

Classic, but apple would, if they could.

[Bloomedis]

So.. they want cab drivers at Apple?

[Compile 'em all]

Originally Posted by jav6454

Oh look! Someone who refuses to acknowledge a hard known fact...

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.

[wkadamsjr]

Originally Posted by patrickfish

Apple, you are too late and too slow. Can I call you Microsoft?

The Apple maps in Washington and Oregon state have been a MAJOR fail. I used to be pretty much an Apple fanboi, but no longer. And a fanboi for 30 years.

Apple, your maps suck. You are too slow to respond. That's an understatement.

You should have been jumping through your butts when you saw issues. But you are not. You are taking your sweet time. You are becoming MS.

You know, maybe you should eat some crow and at least let me set Google Maps App and CHROME as my default apps for maps and web. Okay?

Since Steve died, the company has deflated like a balloon.

And, I'm tired of Cook talking about how "INCREDIBLE" and "AWESOME" everything is. How about under promising and over-delivering?

And if you don't come out with a bigger phone, I may jump ship. I will keep my MacBook Pro. Best computer ever.

And stop jacking customers on iPad? What a ripoff. Double the memory and add $100? Add LTE and it's $129 more? Even the most reasonable iPad mini is $549 with 32 GB RAM and LTE. NO THANKS! Especially with the ****** resolution.

BYe!!

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...

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by Oletros

Glad you have the documents of the internal negotiations. Can you share them with us?

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.

Originally Posted by Bubba Satori

Apple should just buy Australia and fix the streets to match Maps.

They are!

[carlgo]

Originally Posted by wkadamsjr

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...

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.

[AppleScruff1]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

They are![/URL]

Excellent!

[orthorim]

Originally Posted by nicwalmsley

So I was wondering, the problems with Maps in Australia are chronic (police have reported several life threatening situations where members of the public and even state authorities have been confused by mapping data provided by Apple, eg location of wild fires in relation to a town people have been order to evacuate)... but I had assumed it was a universal problem flowing from a structural design flaw, not something specific to Australia.

What I am talking about isn't the poor quality of low level data (eg, it can't find a fruit shop that is just around the corner from my house, yet gives a search result of somewhere 12,000 kms away).

There's a much bigger, more wore spread, significant problem.

Maps doesn't know where whole towns and even whole cities are.

And beyond that, it lists whole towns that do not exist.

The source of the problem is that it adds a marker on Maps that looks like it is meant to designate a town or city (and it looks like that because that is what it does do, some of the time)... but often the marker is actually placed at the geographic centre of a District. And the marker gets a label that is the District name. Which has nothing to do with the location or even existence of a town or city.

So we end up with a map that shows me South East Queensland - say 250 km top to bottom.

I see a town marker for Brisbane (pop 1.5 million), and it is in the correct location.

I see a town marker for Moreton, about 50km north of Brisbane. There is no such town. There is a district called Moreton. So maybe it is based on that.

I see a town marker called Redland, located on North Stradbroke Island. There is no town of Redland. There is a district called Redland, and Straddie is in that district.

I see Noosa (a real town) with no marker. As I zoom down on Noosa, no marker ever appears. Until I get to some suburbs, and streets.

Anyway - what I'm getting at is, this seems a structural flaw with underlying design of mapping data, not a specific locality based problem.

Or are they going to literally go through every district and town in Australia? if so, crowdsource it, outsource it, call it WikiMaps and it will be fixed in a month.

But, is this general problem where whole districts get turned into fictitious towns, and where real towns don't get any label at all, just an Australia specific problem?

ps, no replies that you shouldn't rely on a map to help tell you where you are. Don't call it a map if it can't do that.

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.

----------

Originally Posted by carlgo

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.

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.

[Oletros]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

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.

At least you have to read your own links:

. It wasn’t happy simply providing back-end data. It asked for in-app branding. Apple declined. It suggested adding Google Latitude.

Can you point where those "multiple sources familiar with Apple’s thinking" say

Originally Posted by Small White Car

Oh, sure, I loved the idea of picking either 'no-turn-by-turn' or 'ads in my maps.'

So, I repeat, can you share those internal negotiations

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Originally Posted by orthorim

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".

The problem is that Google got publicly into mobile phones BEFORE Apple

[VulchR]

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....

[jonnysods]

What a great job. Driving around, making sure that things are in the right place.

[Sock.monkey25]

"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.

[Lancer]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

They are!

LOL best video ever!

[numlock]

Originally Posted by VulchR

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....

maybe not enough of them have bachelors degrees

[MacDav]

Originally Posted by enzos

>Apple did eventually fix the issue in central Australia, but the company has been slow to fix many mapping issues even through the app's official "Report a Problem" button.<

Where I am at the moment (Tascott NSW) is confidently placed by Maps on the "Tasman Sea" (doh! it's on Brisbane Waters over 10 kms from said Sea). All easily fixable but Maps should never have been released in its current parlous state.

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".

[Small White Car]

Originally Posted by Oletros

Can you point where those "multiple sources familiar with Apple’s thinking" say
"Oh, sure, I loved the idea of picking either 'no-turn-by-turn' or 'ads in my maps.'"

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.

[Oletros]

Originally Posted by Small White Car

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

[Macist]

Once in a while I'll load up Apple Maps to see if any of the dozens of correction I made during the early days of release have been implemented. No, it's just as lame.

Just download Google Maps. See no point in Apple Maps at all.

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by macsrcool1234

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.

[Dagless]

Originally Posted by TheWatchfulOne

Apple, please do us all a favor and do not listen to this suggestion.

Do you not know how bad Apple maps is?

[macsrcool1234]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

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.

[rdlink]

Originally Posted by jav6454

Oh look! Someone who refuses to acknowledge a hard known fact...

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"?