Apple Actively Recruiting Ex-Google Maps Employees

[DamonBowser]

If I hear another person complain about not having street view I'm gonna do a back flip!! Seriously, that feature isn't even available in 2/5ths of the world!! Just look at countrys like Germany! Germany is a pretty well know country I'd say but it's street map coverage is pretty much limited to Berlin and a few other cities. If you look at other major places still in the world like Russia, China, Turkey, Chile all have almost not cover. So basically only 20% of the entire world lost street map coverage of there area with this update. Wow, pretty much no big deal.

 

[verniesgarden]

Shouldn't they have...you know...done this before they released the app? I know I'm not the CEO of a fortune 50 company, so I can't make a call from experience here, but it seems wiser to make your product as complete as possible before you release it, instead of giving it to everyone half assed then rushing to make it good after pissing everyone off.

I know. I know. There's a reason why I'm posting on Macrumors instead of being a billionaire. No one's going "Renzatic wouldn't have let this happen", or claiming I'm rolling in my grave whenever someone does something stupid. But...I dunno...it just seems like a better idea to me.

It's a go to market situation, you wait a year to go to market, the competition has the same amount to improve. when you have the product in market it actually will develop at a faster rate. especially with the social aspect of the maps. the map app is past beta quality, not it's time for real field use, and what better way than launching on millions of devices? so in reality you will see maps getting better as you use it. when google maps launched it was far more inferior than apple's starting point

 

[santaliqueur]

Apple is going to need thousands of workers to get near Google Maps quality. At least they are trying though.

Good thing their problem is with the map data. Also good thing the data can be crowdsourced. Thousands of workers? How about millions of contributors?

Apple's map "problem" is temporary. Competitors and anti-Apple sheep are jumping all over this because they have nothing else. News outlets are playing this up against Apple just as they would if Clooney got into a fender bender. A very popular thing has a minor issue we can discuss? FIRE UP THE OVERBLOWING MACHINE!

 

[verniesgarden]

If I hear another person complain about not having street view i'm gonna do a back flip!! Seriously, that feature isn't even available in 2/5ths of the world!! Just look at countrys like Germany! Germany is a pretty well know country i'd stay but its street map coverage is pretty much limited to Berlin and a few other cities. If you look at other major places still in the world like Russia, China, Turkey, Chile all have almost not cover. So basically only 20% of the entire world lost street map coverage of there area with this update. Wow, pretty much no big deal.

and in half of where it is available, it's laughingly out of date

 

[Renzatic]

If I hear another person complain about not having street view i'm gonna do a back flip!! Seriously, that feature isn't even available in 2/5ths of the world!! Just look at countrys like Germany! Germany is a pretty well know country i'd stay but its street map coverage is pretty much limited to Berlin and a few other cities. If you look at other major places still in the world like Russia, China, Turkey, Chile all have almost not cover. So basically only 20% of the entire world lost street map coverage of there area with this update. Wow, pretty much no big deal.

Lame excuse. If you had access to it, and came to rely upon it, knowing someone else doesn't have it doesn't make the loss any more tolerable.

 

[hexagonheat]

If I hear another person complain about not having street view i'm gonna do a back flip!! Seriously, that feature isn't even available in 2/5ths of the world!! Just look at countrys like Germany! Germany is a pretty well know country i'd stay but its street map coverage is pretty much limited to Berlin and a few other cities. If you look at other major places still in the world like Russia, China, Turkey, Chile all have almost not cover. So basically only 20% of the entire world lost street map coverage of there area with this update. Wow, pretty much no big deal.

Germany fought tooth and nail to prevent street view from entering the country because they were concerned about privacy. Personally I don't live in Germany so why should the fact that it isn't available everywhere in the world make it less useable for me.

 

[DotCom2]

What I don't get is that these maps were supposedly at least in part supplied by TomTom right? Then how could they be that bad from a well known map producer??? Or did TomTom just sell their grade "C" maps to Apple?
I just don't get it!

 

[mrial]

Same! This problem is so overhyped and I LOVE the new maps!

The Apple standard vector map is so much faster and smoother when scaling than the bit map tiles. I'm sure google will copy this technology soon because of it's obvious advantages.

Google maps needed some competition. They were just getting too big for their britches. There is no doubt that Maps will rapidly improve. Already love the passing of end points for transit to the Portland Oregon Transit App "PDX Bus".

 

[BC2009]

Am I the only one that hasn't had a problem with Maps so far? I'm guessing yes.

Nope. Maps has been great for most folks. Just read the Anandtech review of iOS 6. They put Maps through its paces head-to-head with Google Maps. They were impressed with Apple's offerings. The Internet is just abuzz with the anecdotal early missteps that are going to be ironed out. Folks who don't read the tech news don't even know there is a problem with some of the 3D flyover rendering and the OpenStreetMaps data used outside the USA.

The gap between Google and Apple maps is far less than the gap was between iOS and Android in 2007/2008. It took Google until late 2011/mid 2012 to put out a polished version of a mobile operating system. It is going to take Apple at most 12 months to work the kinks out of Maps and have an arguably better offering than Google and another 12 months to have an undisputed better offering.

Apple just needs to address the glaring stuff in the next 30 days and then start iteratively rolling on improving maps. Google is gloating right now in much the same way RIM was gloating in 2008. Google will be missing a whole lot of data very soon as every iOS app will use the native maps API and thereby cutoff a large chunk of Google's data lifeline.

 

[DMinTX]

It will take more than hiring Google's leftovers to get the job done. Why even bother instead of adopting the far superior Google maps?

I know it's a lot more fun to gripe and pontificate on how you know better than Apple, but you should at least read the articles. These are not Google's leftovers, they are people who left when boring projects were all that was left. Sharp engineers leave all the time to go to more intersting projects.

And I bet Apple didn't choose dropping Google Maps right now. I bet Google forced their hand.

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

Map problems only affect the people who are going someplace with obsolete data. With millions of people using iPhones, Apple got to find those defects quite quickly, although in a rather embarrassing way.

I haven't updated my current phone to iOS6 because of it. Unfortunately, to complete the unlock, I have to do a restore to the latest OS, so the next owner will get it no matter what.

 

[sticky.chicken]

What skills? To able to drive a car and operate equipment to steal WiFi passwords and other information?

These l337 h@x0r sk1llz are hard to come by.

 

[stukick]

So Apple is admitting, at least privately, that their maps app sucks.

 

[Baytriple]

I was just having a look around my area of what was in the map. Petrol stations missing. 2 shops opposite me with petrol station symbols.

Restaurants in completely the wrong location. It's a real mess.

 

[hexagonheat]

The Apple standard vector map is so much faster and smoother when scaling than the bit map tiles. I'm sure google will copy this technology soon because of it's obvious advantages.
.

Yeah it's pretty fast when you pump out quality renders like this:

 

[eagandale4114]

Am I the only one that hasn't had a problem with Maps so far? I'm guessing yes.

It fine for me.
Then again I havent been able to fully stress test it.

 

[Renzatic]

It's a go to market situation, you wait a year to go to market, the competition has the same amount to improve. when you have the product in market it actually will develop at a faster rate. especially with the social aspect of the maps. the map app is past beta quality, not it's time for real field use, and what better way than launching on millions of devices? so in reality you will see maps getting better as you use it. when google maps launched it was far more inferior than apple's starting point

The biggest problem was that Apple completely replaced the (currently) considerably more functional app to make room for their (currently) subpar solution. We wouldn't be having this discussion now if Apple provided it as a downloadable beta off the App Store while still keeping the old Google driven app available as a fallback option. That way, people could've worked on expanding it and making it more accurate without having to make any sacrifices in the meantime.

And yes, right now it's pretty beta. The software driving the maps is complete, sure. It's actually quite nice. But the maps themselves? Not so much.

 

[efktd]

i like the new apple maps. but also i don't have the old google maps to compare the two. so, whatever.

 

[BC2009]

What I don't get is that these maps were supposedly at least in part supplied by TomTom right? Then how could they be that bad from a well known map producer??? Or did TomTom just sell their grade "C" maps to Apple?
I just don't get it!

USA and Canada maps are from TomTom/TeleAtlas. Outside the USA it is using OpenStreetMaps data which is crowd-sourced. The data is about to improve by orders of magnitude. Google hates OpenStreetMaps because it is an open effort to commoditize mapping. In fact, some Google contractors were caught vandalizing the OpenStreetMap database with bad data last year. Google terminated their contracts and said the effort was not endorsed by Google, but it shows the sentiment of Googlers towards OpenStreetMaps.

Apple's Maps are great in the USA. Look for some glaring things to be fixed with flyover and international map data in the next 30 days. Then look for Maps to steadily improve for the next 12 months.

Google Maps does some really stupid stuff too. There are tons of anecdotally wrong things in Google Maps. Folks are just less forgiving of Apple's mistake. Anything "Apple" is always big news.

 

[Renzatic]

The Apple standard vector map is so much faster and smoother when scaling than the bit map tiles. I'm sure google will copy this technology soon because of it's obvious advantages.

Vector maps have been available for a couple of years through the Android app. It's already happened.

 

[mrial]

If I hear another person complain about not having street view I'm gonna do a back flip!! Seriously, that feature isn't even available in 2/5ths of the world!! Just look at countrys like Germany! Germany is a pretty well know country I'd say but it's street map coverage is pretty much limited to Berlin and a few other cities. If you look at other major places still in the world like Russia, China, Turkey, Chile all have almost not cover. So basically only 20% of the entire world lost street map coverage of there area with this update. Wow, pretty much no big deal.

I don't get it either. You can still get google's street view with the app "Live Street View". How much harder is it to start a new app and tap for the occasional times you need a street view?

 

[iphoneclassic]

Case #1 Google vs Apple & Employee - Breach of non-compete agreement. Being California it will be dismissed.

Case #2 Google vs Apple - Maps data integration patent infringement. Goes forever.

Hope these former Google guys are good to clean this mess without infringing any Google's patents.

Hint: Just because you are under immense pressure don't copy code or algorithm and definitely not documentation. Very difficult to explain it to jury.

 

[DrMotownMac]

I was talking to my Grandad today, in a busy shopping centre. He looked at me wistfully: "You know, son," he whispered: "When I was a lad, all this were fields."

Sure enough, I checked Apple maps, and he was right!

Did you hop in your Grandad's DeLorean and go back to 1955??

Old Man Peabody

Sorry, but that's the scene that came to mind when I read your post....

 

[subsonix]

We wouldn't be having this discussion now if Apple provided it as a downloadable beta off the App Store while still keeping the old Google driven app available as a fallback option.

maps.google.com

 

[applesith]

I'm waiting for Google Maps app to come to App Store