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 Hints at Future Turn-by-Turn GPS Directions With Traffic for iPhone
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
So they are secretly following you when you drive so they can make Google maps? I hope Google sues them.
Looking forward to an improved native turn by turn navigation app. IMO this is night and day the biggest advantage Android phones have over the iPhone. The turn by turn nagivation and voice integration of the Google maps navigation app on my Droid was absolutely amazing and the free iPhone apps pale in comparison. I haven't tried any of the paid navigation apps. What I'd really like is Google's navigation app on the iPhone but I'm assuming that will never happen. Hopefully this new app will be ready with iOS 5
Hey, that'd be great! And they could offer a "Find My Car" service and help you report thefts and unauthorized access.
"Hey, did you let your daughter borrow your car today? Because there she goes!"
The USA has the longest road network at about 4 million miles. There are probably 40 million iPhone users in the USA. So that is 1/10th of a mile per user. If mapping the USA cost $10 per mile of road then the cost would be one dollar per user. I'd invest a million or two in writing some really clever software to analyse GPS data and let iPhone users collect all the necessary data, then professional drivers just following all the mapped roads to fix errors.
They've been scared for a long time. The combination of Navigation systems now not being limited to premium luxury cars and the increasing capabilities of smartphones, I have no doubt their sales have seen a steady decline over the last 2-3 years.
I don't think you've been paying close attention. All the gps companies now offer lifetime map updates for about the price that one update used to cost. And there are bundles with devices that render the lifetime cost to nearly free, maybe it comes out to $20 or something.
Also, they have finally seemed to learn that their fancy, pay-for traffic systems are crap. They are disappearing and only the FM-based traffic remains. And, other than the additional hardware cost (also usually bundled for less), that is free.
That said, the traffic info on the iOS Maps app is better for me than my Garmin's FM traffic hookup.
Ditto. Who cares about network traffic at the user level? Are you going to go somewhere else to use data on a phone because of this? (which would have to be many miles away, hardly a quick walk)
But I also wonder how crowd-data would help automobile traffic details.
For example: After some opt-in, your phone records its GPS locations, finds out what looks like driving based on speed etc., sends the data to Apple, where they use it to find streets that are not in their mapping software, and the most useful thing would be average speed data depending on the time of day. If you are in a traffic jam and want to be helpful, you press a button to send the information right now, not when you are near to some WiFi. So people can be directed on the best routes based on actual average speeds, and they can be sent around traffic jams in real time.
It's not a trivial problem, but not really _that_ difficult. If it ever goes over 30mph then it's a car, and if it doesn't stop at a stop sign then it's a bicycleSeriously, it's quite possible to sort this out. And there are many iPhones around, so if you have some iPhones at 30 mph and some at 4 mph on the same road, then you know who are drivers and who are pedestrians. If iPhones move at an average of 3 mph through your favourite park, then turn-by-turn software won't direct car traffic there, whether it is pedestrians or enormous traffic jam.
Like Waze... seriously Waze is the quintessential crowd sourced mapping application. Everyone should check it out. The one thing I think Apple could improve on is the map creation portion itself.
The better Apple does, the more desperate you are to find something, *anything* to hold against them. Most of which is actually meaningless. The latest is the cell-tower logging issue. You do realize that about 90% of tech companies out there would kill to have this be their biggest problem . . .
Apple told Congress that the GPS info to "analyze traffic patterns and density" (which I too, originally took to be about signals, not navigation) is only sent to Apple every 12 hours. Hardly realtime data.
So right now, it could simply be data collected as test info to help developers more realistically simulate traffic during code testing.
No, because its funnier that way.Will it be able to tell you (via voice) which side of the street your destination is on before actually reaching it, unlike Navigon?
But wouldn't they need to take into account all the other 3G data devices on using the cells at the same time?
Is it as sporadic as it looks at 11am in my town? It does look like it could give details on any street, though. That would be better than the FM traffic or even the DOT/camera based traffic used for most things. Esp during road construction when side streets with no other data accumulation become thoroughfares for the summer.
It's so when your new shinny iPhone 6 shows up with an NFC chip they can just charge you for walking near an Apple store. Kinda like layaway plan, but you won't know about it anyhow... at least until someone figures out the hidden file with a list of charges!
In a way this makes the iPhone cheaper, seeing how I will save on a GPS device
LOL, this reminded me of the Office episode where GPS tells Michael to drive into the lake, and he does.
That's kind of immaterial if the data is timestamped, no? It would only need to be real-time for when they actually deploy it, which we would know about.
Haha, he tells Jim: but it's telling me to go there! Then Jim looking sideways ironically to the camera as usual
I wonder what hurdles they would have to jump over, to bless the iP6 with legitimate GPS capabilities?
anyhoo...Ive never had a use for traffic monitoring capabilities in GPS. Most of the time its either, "wait in highway traffic 30min or re-route through DC and add 60min to your drive".
anyhoo...Ive never had a use for traffic monitoring capabilities in GPS. Most of the time its either, "wait in highway traffic 30min or re-route through DC and add 60min to your drive".