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 Issues Statement Over Day 1 'Maps' Glitches, Maps Team Reportedly Under Lockdown to Fix Issues
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Considering that we've pretty much known about these issues since June, and that people have been telling us in the iOS 6 forum that "Apple is going to fix it by release time! This is just Beta data" and that no fix was done for release, let me not really have faith this is a "couple of days" type of issue.
As explained before, it's not really an app problem, it's the dataset. And yes, even the DPs used the live data, because that's how you debug/Q&A things properly, with data reflecting your production environnement.
Sure it'll get better, the question is at what rate ? Will that rate of improvement be good enough to catch up the competition ? Will Apple slowly get better but lose pace to the competition that also keeps getting better ?
Will it cause competition on iOS for mapping whereas Apple's solution might be left unused and thus become a financial burden for the company ? Was it really a good choice on their part to try their hand at this ?
All questions the future will answer. Unfortunately, back in the present, us users are the ones paying for it. We've gone from a soso Apple stock app with good data backing it up to a good Apple stock app with shoddy data backing it up. The problem is that for Maps, it's not really the app, it's the data that's important.
Isometrical calculations are bad in some cases
I did some comparisons to a book of isometrical corrected sat maps I have and found out that many isometric calculations were slightly off when set to the same scale, being slightly off could mean 100 miles in cases, this just one problem, I dont know what formulas the programmer was using, but it was obviously wrong.
I did some comparisons to a book of isometrical corrected sat maps I have and found out that many isometric calculations were slightly off when set to the same scale, being slightly off could mean 100 miles in cases, this just one problem, I dont know what formulas the programmer was using, but it was obviously wrong.
This brings up another point. Google seperates streets using colors (white, yellow, orange) for side streets to major highways. All streets are rendered fairly large to be easy to spot.
However, in my experience with Apple's stuff and all the screenshots I've seen, their side streets are so thin it makes the maps hard to read. I don't know why some people seem to prefer this, sure it looks "nicer", but if I have to squint or zoom in more to the map to see what's going on, that's a big fail.
I'd rather have less good looking maps but that are easier to read than good looking unreadable stuff.
Also, don't get me started on their completely deficient implementation of traffic. Google had these nice thick green/yellow/red lines with none for fluid circulation. Apple goes from nothing to red thin intermittent lines... so I've lost the detail in the reporting and it's also much harder to read now.
But hey, it looks nicer. It's also vector based... just like Google implemented like 1.5 years ago....
*sigh*.
Yeah sorry but Apple have dropped a big one over this. Most people apart from the most blinkered Apple supporters will realise that they've introduced a substantially inferior feature that offers a much poorer customer experience. Does rather go against the Apple ethos of functionality, integration and ease of use?
Mapping services are a core feature of smartphones and Apple have introduced a service quality from about 2004 but hey their fight with Google and obsession with proprietary platforms is all that counts really.
Mapping services are a core feature of smartphones and Apple have introduced a service quality from about 2004 but hey their fight with Google and obsession with proprietary platforms is all that counts really.
A lot of the screenshots also show they've mapped isometric pictures directly on top of terrain elevation maps to give you "3D". The problem is terrain elevation maps don't give you the shape of objects, but the pictures contain said man-made objects like roads/bridges/building.
That's what results in the sometimes completely distorted isometric screenshots we have.
Yep there's far less demarcation of features on Apple's maps. At it's core mapping is about functionality more than visual appeal. What's the point of a map that you can't easily identify features on?
It's a lot more complete than Apple. Sure it's always a work in progress, but at least Google offers two metric tons of POIs on maps.
I wasn't using complete in the sense that Google doesn't have to keep working on their solution. It's good to see that was basically your only point on contention with my long post though.
----------
I think that's one of the issues they had internally. Before WWDC and the DPs, they probably focused a lot on "design" of the maps, and really it shows. The little icons used for road numbers/map features all match local imagery used by the country/state you're in (they use Quebec's road marker designs for everything like construction/road numbers/logos for gas/food/etc.., right from our Transport signalisation database which contains full AI files of every sign in the province). And really that's a nice touch. The park areas are nicely textured and look real nice and so do most of the features...
But god it's all so hard to read!
And after WWDC, they've probably realised that they hadn't look at it properly. Maps being "ugly" is not what needed fixing. Ugly is good in this case if it means readable and quickly identifiable at a glance. But by then it was too late.
Why should we, when we had a working app before Apple decided to dump it for their own corporate reasons? POIs are abysmal right now, and I've looked at a few places in different countries that I know very well. Within half a mile of where I stay in NJ Apple only has one POI, a chicken place, shown in the wrong place entirely. All the other businesses including a large supermarket, Subway, Gamestop, bank, chinese takeaway, diner, not shown at all. Near where I live, there are a handful of POIs, some in the wrong place, some misspelt. This stuff should have been working on day one. Maps is not a new feature, it's a replacement of a working feature with an inaccurate, incomplete one. It's a fiasco.
if it was crowd (not cloud) based then people would be able to contribute but they are not. so it is just PR BULLSH**.
And to all the wannabe IT Nerds here: Since the maps are loaded from the server (cloud) it is not necessary to update the whole OS/app to fix this. They need to fix their backend.
And it is just typical for Apple to not approve the new Google Maps app. Just because it is better!
And to all the wannabe IT Nerds here: Since the maps are loaded from the server (cloud) it is not necessary to update the whole OS/app to fix this. They need to fix their backend.
And it is just typical for Apple to not approve the new Google Maps app. Just because it is better!
All I know is that people that offers explanations are guessing.
There's no major guesswork needed. A few of us predicted that Apple's foray into maps would be bug ridden and/or inferior to Google's offerings for at least a couple of years.
Aside from search (and arguably email), Google Maps is Google's star project. Keep in mind that Google Maps completely obliterated the competition (yahoo maps and mapquest) when it came out. They have been improving it for 7+ years and it has always been the best app available on blackberry, ios and android platforms.
As things stand, Bing Maps (yes, microsoft does have their own map program) is better than Apple's version.
If Apple were to wait for their Maps to be at least as good as Google Maps, then it would never get released.
Couldn't agree more with this, if the data is poor it doesn't matter how good the app is, its useless. If apple are going to compete in this arena then they are going to have to invest an eye watering amount of money very quickly to catch up. When Google maps first launched it was rubbish too but there wasn't any competition back then, things are very different now and Apple has 7 odd years work to catch up on.
The reason why Apple Maps will be always behing Google Maps is that Apple will not be able to provide a consistent experience.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can only use Apple Maps on iOS devices, you cannot view them in a browser on a computer.
With Google Maps I can find a location within a browser on my big computer screen, check the a route to that location in detail and then send the route to my phone, where I will see the same thing alas on a smaller screen. I will also get the exact same route if I look it up on my phone. This is a consistent experience across devices.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can only use Apple Maps on iOS devices, you cannot view them in a browser on a computer.
With Google Maps I can find a location within a browser on my big computer screen, check the a route to that location in detail and then send the route to my phone, where I will see the same thing alas on a smaller screen. I will also get the exact same route if I look it up on my phone. This is a consistent experience across devices.
To ensure the map team work hard, place a heavy weight above the coffee machine.
Or put them in a maze so they can get inside the customers mind when using iOS6.
Does all seem a bit of a silly thing to do, let's be fair it's not a bad first attempt it just doesn't compare to a far more mature product. I just can't see Apple having the same commitment Google have to collating mapping data, I don't expect to see the Apple maps car at the end of the street any day soon.
Apple can always sell the maps to kim jong un's missile program, but something tells me he's already using them.