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Apple Hints at Future Turn-by-Turn GPS Directions With Traffic for iPhone

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Stella said:
ChazUK said:
Garmin/Tomtom and co should be scared.
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Na, these two have and will survive without iPhone.

These already have traffic capability anyway ( via subscription service).
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I use the Navigon iOS app and Apple would have to produce something truely remarkable to make me switch from that. They do store the Navetec maps locally so it continues to work without a cell signal. They also offer lifetime traffic and speed/stop light camera locations.
 
stevenshizzle said:
I took this to mean traffic as in network traffic. iOS devices, and all new smartphones, utilize a lot of network traffic. It wouldn't surprise me if they were looking at more robust ways of utilizing traffic, compression, etc. I'm not sure how they would collect traffic data. I suppose if they see a cell signal sitting in the same place for 20 minutes, it would reflect a traffic jam. But then again, they could have parallel parked and went to go grab a Starbucks.
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I agree, I definitely read this as network traffic and not navigation based traffic;
 
JAT said:
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.
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they have had crowd sourced apps that do this in the app store. they were useless. and i'm not going to send data to the crowd database while i'm driving with my kids in the car. illegal and dangerous
 
using cell phones for tracking traffic is not a good way to grab data sets. There may be a lot of cells out there but at the same time they generated a lot of noise and useless data you have to shift threw of phones not moving. People walking ect.

Right now there are tons of places that collect the data for cities and then give it out for free.

Currently most places use toll tags for figuring average speed. They just look at the last 4 numbers of them and do not store the info at all. Great way to grab a data set that does not generated as much noise.
 
alent1234 said:
they have had crowd sourced apps that do this in the app store. they were useless. and i'm not going to send data to the crowd database while i'm driving with my kids in the car. illegal and dangerous
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Yeah, reading the app description is a little frightening about people reporting accidents and whatnot. But it also uses data regarding location and traffic without manual user input. I might try it out, price is right.
 
gnasher729 said:
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.
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I'd be glad to contribute to fix GPS map errors - nothing bothers me more than trying to find an address that appears to be in an empty field. :p
 
Trying to copy the free Android turn by turn. Apple always playing catch up. No doubt it will be inferior to the Google Maps on android.
 
stevenshizzle said:
I took this to mean traffic as in network traffic. iOS devices, and all new smartphones, utilize a lot of network traffic. It wouldn't surprise me if they were looking at more robust ways of utilizing traffic, compression, etc. I'm not sure how they would collect traffic data. I suppose if they see a cell signal sitting in the same place for 20 minutes, it would reflect a traffic jam. But then again, they could have parallel parked and went to go grab a Starbucks.
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No, nobody refers to network traffic in that way as it comes to development, projects and jobs.

They are talking about actually road traffic with cars and buses.
 
marksman said:
No, nobody refers to network traffic in that way as it comes to development, projects and jobs.

They are talking about actually road traffic with cars and buses.
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Exactly, especially considering this wording:
"...the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service..."

As you say this is not how one would go about referring to network traffic, but rather real world road traffic, but don't point this out to those who think everybody (including MR) are idiots, because we see the story as having to do with turn-by-turn gps directions.
 
diamond.g said:
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.
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There is the OpenStreetMap project, which I think also has an iPhone application that lets you collect GPS locations and send it to their project. Yes, the map creation is the hard part :-(

A clever move to get around the problem to distinguish between cars and everything else: I guess the iPhone would know if it is plugged into a charger. So if it is plugged in, and moving, then chances are very good it is in a car.
 
Apple has a tall hill to climb if they want to beat FREE google maps on android? But since it will be on iOS, ignorance is bliss, and people will think its the best thing ever.
 
dgree03 said:
Apple has a tall hill to climb if they want to beat FREE google maps on android? But since it will be on iOS, ignorance is bliss, and people will think its the best thing ever.
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You keep your widgets and "free" Google maps on Android. I'll take a robust catalog of quality apps on iOS.

At least I can buy a good nav app for iOS. You can't buy (at any price) a vast number of the highly-polished and functional applications and games I can get on my iOS devices.

Enjoy the compromise.
 
840quadra said:
I am in agreement with Chaz on this. With Android and iOS having so much built into their portable OS now, I kinda think the days of dedicated GPS devices are going to be limited.
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True but I still see a use for dedicated devices. I rode across the country and back (6000 miles) on my bike. I don't think the iPhone would hold up too well to the rain, snow and vibration. Not to mention not being able to use the touchscreen with gloves on. ;)
 
LagunaSol said:
You keep your widgets and "free" Google maps on Android. I'll take a robust catalog of quality apps on iOS.

At least I can buy a good nav app for iOS. You can't buy (at any price) a vast number of the highly-polished and functional applications and games I can get on my iOS devices.

Enjoy the compromise.
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Cant buy it on android because there is really NO NEED. The free maps app is GREAT. You would know this had you used it :rolleyes:

Navigon, Tom Tom and the bunch on iOS are needed because there is NO OTHER solution. Thats when apps are good, when they fill a specific need.;)
 
Erwin-Br said:
It will be only useful to me if it doesn't require a constant Internet connection (as is the case with Google's solution).

Roaming costs are ludicrous, and I need navigation most often when I'm abroad.
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The only downside would be that an offline navigation system requiring only a GPS signal would require GB's of maps data to be stored on the phone. A sacrifice that a lot of people aren't willing to make. Especially people with the 16GB models. Otherwise, without an internet connection, you will just appear as a dot on a map full of gray squares. That's the reason Apple chose google maps in the first place. When they first introduced the iPhone, there would be no plausible way to store maps on a phone with only 4/8GB of storage.
 
canderton said:
The only downside would be that an offline navigation system requiring only a GPS signal would require GB's of maps data to be stored on the phone. A sacrifice that a lot of people aren't willing to make. Especially people with the 16GB models. Otherwise, without an internet connection, you will just appear as a dot on a map full of gray squares. That's the reason Apple chose google maps in the first place. When they first introduced the iPhone, there would be no plausible way to store maps on a phone with only 4/8GB of storage.
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True, that's the tradeoff. You could save space though by only installing the maps you need. My Navigon maps are not much bigger than 1GB in total.
 
Erwin-Br said:
Hehe, nice one. That's exactly the reaction Google would get if they started working on something Apple already did. Where are the "Start your photocopiers" posts now, eh? :D
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don't worry with in a few months of the release of Apple Turn by turn the fanboys will be saying Google copied Apple even though Google turn by turn has been around for years longer.
Remember to fanboys nothing existed until Apple starts using it.
 
It would be great if they delivered it with iOS 5.

Turn-by-Turn navigation WITH downloadable maps of countries and cities for offline usage.
 
Uhm, what is everyone talking about?

Obviously it's not network traffic, because apple isn't going to provide us with a better "network" traffic service.

Also, why is everyone bringing up turn by turn?

The better "traffic service" likely means that Apple will be able to know the speed of vehicles on the road, and from that decide how well traffic is moving through a specific highway. That way if someone wanted to open up the maps application and see what traffic is like, they could see this because there could likely be enough people on that road with iPhones reporting traffic movement. This data is reported to Apple and they will respond back to that map user with the current traffic flow.

Google already does this, and since Apple purchased a mapping company while ago, I assume they are just doing the same.
 
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