Apple Fires Manager Responsible for Maps as Eddy Cue Turns to Outsiders for Help

[IJ Reilly]

who says this is better? this is a choice of course but I much prefer the one that google made in this instance. I want to be able to see traffic directions on several streets at once instead of having to zoom in to every one of them individually. This is opposite of user friendly.

In fact it's a classic rule of cartography at work. Maps should show detail appropriate to the map scale. Inserting more detail just because you can is poor map design. The good news for digital mapping is that detail can easily be made scale appropriate, and this is what Apple has done. Google's approach isn't automatically better by any means.

----------

The people who say Apple Maps is just fine must be scratching their heads and wondering why heads are rolling.

No, we're not. In reality we are seeing a blame-game going on within Apple.

 

[JHankwitz]

How this happened originally is crazy. Firing people now is too late - the mess already happened.

Firing is one of may actions that may be taken to prevent problem recurrence. It's usually reserved for when there are other factors such as personality or attitude at play.

 

[attila]

I've been using the Maps app since like June and haven't had any problems. What's it doing for the rest of you? Like guiding you into a lake? Hahaha you guys are like Dwight Shrute.

It works okay in America. Outside America it doesn't.

Example: I can't find ANYTHING in London - one of the biggest cities in the world! Let it be an address, post code, POI, Starbucks or a freaking tube station!

 

[lilo777]

I've been using the Maps app since like June and haven't had any problems. What's it doing for the rest of you? Like guiding you into a lake? Hahaha you guys are like Dwight Shrute.

Navigation is important feature but it's a small part of the map application (at least in case of Google Maps). It might be less obvious for people who live in rural areas where there is little but roads but in the cities there are tons of things that you might use the maps application for (finding places is one of them).

 

[Catacang]

I found that the maps in my town are completely outdated: not 2 or 3 years old but more than 15~20 years old outdated! No kidding!

When I was a teen, back in the 90's, the street where I lived changed it's name at the time. In the Apple Maps the street has the old name instead of the current one for the last 15 or 20 years!
The POI are also really, really old: in my neighborhood since 2005 there is this nanotechnology investigation center that Apple Maps say it's a amusement / theme park that was there before it closed and the laboratory was built there, so the POI information is at least 8 years old!

So, really, at least where I live, the Apple maps are a complete disaster! I have a standalone GPS unit, a Garmin Nuvi 300 from 2006 that has more up to date maps... it's just incredible how Apple screw this up.

 

[gluckett]

Navigation is important feature but it's a small part of the map application (at least in case of Google Maps). It might be less obvious for people who live in rural areas where there is little but roads but in the cities there are tons of things that you might use the maps application for (finding places is one of them).

Exactly. It was absolutely vital for finding places in downtown Chicago when visiting (although lack of reliable GPS signal because of the buildings didn't help either).

 

[coldmack]

Apple,

Just buy google already and make their maps (with voice navigation) yours.

You know that the purchase would barely make a dent in your corporate surplus anyways.

What's stopping you? Anti-trust?

You what would even be better? Buying Nokia and using their even better maps, at least it was when Nokia decided to get in bed with stuff that insects wouldn't touch.

 

[jonnyb098]

This is further proof that software was really being overlooked in the past year in favor of selling hardware (product refresh to EVERY line). Did no one look at maps and say "somethings wrong here". Steve was a visionary whereas Cook is a hardware guy. He wants to sell as many devices as possible and doesn't have the same "hands-on" approach.

I hate to say this but Steve would have not let Maps go out the door until they were much more polished.

 

[Rocketman]

A 5 million share trade passed the tape at about 15:40 eastern 11-27-12 at about $584 a share.
$2.9B
I wonder if there is any relation?
AAPL shares outstanding 940.69m down from over 1B (1000m) a year ago.

 

[ericg301]

wasnt that papermaster guy fired for antenna gate?

 

[coldmack]

Apple plz put back Google maps ( with Turn-by-turn) as an option... Everyone will be happy camper and grateful.

There is ways Apple sucks (social,cloud, making affordable computer for students etc) and maps will be another one of them....Google send real peoples in the Grand Canyon for their map! They are AWESOME for that kind of think Wake up!!!

Speak for yourself, as I prefer Nokia. Little known fact, Nokia navi, at least on their Sybian devices didn't require data as everything a little space, did turn by turn and was FREE.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

This is odd. Just like any mundane finger-pointing exercise.

If the Maps App was so bad, then the people responsible for quality control should also be fired; actually the whole chain of command from bottom to top should be fired.

Instead of firing people at random, they should take the Map app failure (as some may consider it) as a learning experience; you'll see that this kind of issues will not happen again.
Now, they have to hire and train someone else, introduce him to the team, etc., causing a complete mess and waste of time.

 

[weing]

He shouldn't have been fired, he should have been beat to death.

 

[rdlink]

I used it twice over the weekend - first time was to go to a hotel for a wedding. It sent me to a residential culdesac near the hotel and told me I was there.

Second time was to go to a bday party that turned out to be at a store in an outdoor mall. It sent me to a residential street behind the mall and told me I was there.

While I don't doubt some people have had problems (I haven't) those really aren't necessarily fair barometers. I've had Google maps do the same, and my Garmin GPS did it with regularity when I lived in Northern Virginia.

 

[testcard]

Creating a maps app based around photocopied pages from an atlas was never going to work.

 

[NedBookPro]

If only Eddie Cue would fire more people responsible for the mess that is iOS6

One can only hope.

PS... still waiting for some sort of response from apple about mail and exchange server. Nothing.

.

 

[sulpfiction]

Apple,

Just buy google already and make their maps (with voice navigation) yours.

You know that the purchase would barely make a dent in your corporate surplus anyways.

What's stopping you? Anti-trust?

Because since u have the money, u can just buy huge corporations that aren't for sale.

 

[Xano]

4. As for incorrect data, I have a friend who lives in Manhattan and when I look up his address on the map, the pin appears in the middle of the block instead of on the corner where it should be. I have reported this error a few times since Apple Maps came out and it's still wrong. Has anyone seen reported errors corrected yet?

Here; I already reported 10 times the same error, not fixed until today, I don't now which kind of maps are being delivered to Apple because exist 10 years old data on Maps.

 

[V.K.]

In fact it's a classic rule of cartography at work. Maps should show detail appropriate to the map scale. Inserting more detail just because you can is poor map design. The good news for digital mapping is that detail can easily be made scale appropriate, and this is what Apple has done. Google's approach isn't automatically better by any means.

of course the details should be scale appropriate but what's so appropriate about having to zoom in to every street individually to see the traffic flow direction? It's not appropriate, it's just nuts.

 

[komodrone]

Wow I actually met Richard in person.

 

[MatthewStorm]

They should buy Waze - awesome social interaction and brilliant interface for reporting issues and crowdsourcing is already there with speed, etc... then put their gorgeous cartography on top of it.

For a first venture, Apple's maps is actually quite elegant in many aspects. I'm sure the next iteration will be quite an improvement.

I had my TomTom GO 2435 on my dash along side my iPhone 4S to compare the mapping. I saw no evidence of true re-routing or crowdsourcing as promised in Apple's mapping. After a month of testing them side by side, I stopped using Apple's maps.

Then, I started using Waze - and tested that side by side w/ my TomTom for a month. The Waze app won hands-down. Not 'perfect,' but close enough - and a lot more intuitive menus than TomTom.

I LOVE Waze for navigating road hazards, reporting police activity and for traffic and re-routing - beats the pants off Google & TomTom big time. Apple+Waze would be too awesome for words.

I second Waze. It's great! Use it every day.

 

[Mac... nificent]

Just buy google already and make their maps (with voice navigation) yours.

It's not that simple. A little back history might be in order. The whole Maps fiasco happened because Uncle Steve felt betrayed by google. To be more precise, Uncle Steve felt betrayed by his old friend (google chairman) Eric Schmidt, who as some know, sat on the Apple board. Steve Jobs felt that Android was a pure rip-off of the iPhone, and things got so bad that it actually resulted in Schmidt’s having to resign from the Apple board, which he probably should have been removed from sooner. So now Apple has lost all of its respect for google and the two companies have become revels. Then Apple asked google to include a new feature into their mapping app, but google turned its nose up at Apple. On top of that it was revealed that google was intentionally making the iOS version work worse than the Android version of their Mapping app. This was like google putting salt on a wound, so Apple really had no other option but to cut its ties with google.

They were only paying google for a diluted version of the mapping app, which was helping google, but hurting Apple and their customers. I don't blame Steve Jobs or Tim Cook for feeling the way they do about google. Tim Cook publicly apologized for the less than stellar performance of the Maps app and that took a lot of kahunas, so I'm not worried about the Maps app. The first version of google maps sucked too. Apple has a lot of money and they will hire incredible talent to take care of this issue. A mapping app is one of the hardest apps to create, so in time I'm sure Apple will do whatever is necessary to produce a world class Maps app. In the mean time I just use something else.

 

[agonyou]

Map problems

Folks complained about the 3D version being all screwed up, etc. and I mean yeah, those kinds of things suck, etc, but I've had a lot of problems where I expect maps to be able to tell me and it hasn't been working. In Manhattan there are *tons* of problems, in NJ, looking for a gas station, or something like it has been a huge pain. i.e. BP is a gas station, and a business. Looking for corporate headquarters told me it was a gas station, while the gas station was the headquarters.

It's simple, stupid, blatant issues like that of which there are tens of thousands at least, (look how long google has been at it and there are still mistakes), not to mention in NYC you no longer have the subway schedules, poor directions for walking versus driving, lack of efficiencies (telling you to drive up 3 miles to find someplace to turn around to come back almost 3 miles to the "correct side of the highway" so you can go the right way when you could've gone .1 mile south and done the same thing.)

I've been giving it a fair shot and driving on major roads has been fine, but it's going to all those places not on the main strip that tends to suck and when you sold however many *million* phones, you have that many users with a potentially crappy situation where maps is concerned. At the very least a huge embarrassment for Apple, at the worst lost mind share for the quality they hold dear resulting in lost customers or revenue streams from partners.

When you look at the immediate impact they have by rolling out a sub-standard maps application like they did there are very real business implications from reputation to valuation and that is why Williamson was let go, not just that "maps sucked too bad."

 

[26139]

Yep

Funny thing, I haven't really encountered any problems with maps.

I've used it in Los Angeles, New York, Salt Lake City, Miami, and the respective surrounding regions. Search, turn by turn, etc. Seems to work fine. If anything, its a lot faster and has a cleaner interface.

Go figure.

All around AZ, LA, Sacramento, Ashland, Corvallis, Portland, Kent and Seattle...

No problems. Scary accurate.

 

[kemal]

Next fire whomever is responsible for thinnovation.