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Also, what is so bad about the iOS notification system? I just hit "Close" if I don't care about a notification at that time.

How about getting two notifications. Try telling me what the first one was? That's right, you will have no clue. Try using Android or WebOS for about 10 minutes and you will realize how obtrusive and useless notifications are in iOS.
 
How about getting two notifications. Try telling me what the first one was? That's right, you will have no clue. Try using Android or WebOS for about 10 minutes and you will realize how obtrusive and useless notifications are in iOS.

I check the home screen.

Jailbreak + LockInfo FTW.
 
So what we have here is a little wishlist:

-Option for map storage on local machine, all or just a user-specified area even temporarily
-Live Turn By Turn directions w/ optional audio interactivity
-High contrast color option
-Eliminate highways & toll roads options
-Bike & foot paths
-Bus routes
-Weather overlay
-Street View Fly thru previews
-View options, with intelligent default zoom levels & levels of detail:
---Zoom to fit where you are and your destination with total trip info, and zoom in live as the two points get closer together
---Zoom to fit where you are and where your next turn or two is going to be, and zoom in live as the two points get closer together
---Flexible Scaling option, w roads using either a dynamic graphical scale or breaklines to condense your map into a smaller, clearer image for easy reference...
-An advancable picture-in-picture of your next few turns that doesn't get in the way of your present view showing your current position & next turn...

...

But they'll probably just add restaurant & hotel data overlays or something.
 
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Google don't map the world either - they do the street map images, but if you look at Google Maps you'll see that the actual roads data comes from either Tele Atlas or Navteq. Those two companies sell their map sets to all the sat-nav companies too.

Exactly. Google gets map data from multiple sources. The reason Turn by Turn nav is only available on GMaps Android stems from licensing arrangement from map a provider.

Google Maps can't be used for commercial purposes or modified or used as a base to build software on top of etc. Apple isn't looking to build a better map application than Google, it's building a map platform that developers can fully tap into and not have to abide by any restrictions or limitations from Google Maps.
 
Also, what is so bad about the iOS notification system? I just hit "Close" if I don't care about a notification at that time.

Let's say I'm driving in my car through a city. Every 20 yards a huge window pops up blocking the view onto whatever I do (mostly Google Maps because I try to find my way) just to tell me there are 5 new Wifi Hotspots in my vivcinity and I have to close it while I'm driving. This is the reason why I have to constantly go to Settings/Wifi/Off and then switch Wifi on again later.

Also every stupid text comes up with a huge blob that blocks the view and I have to have a hand free to close the window.

At the same time when my Phone is in a dock there is no way to easily see what and how many messages are waiting. I have to slide, type my pin, navigate to home screen and look at the little red indicator on various apps.

It's just ten years behind what others have.
 
I seriously had a dream last night that maps was updated to 3D and you could use the gyroscope etc to fly through optional routes before chosing which one to take ahha.

Apple's been advertising a job opening just for YOU!
 
How about getting two notifications. Try telling me what the first one was? That's right, you will have no clue. Try using Android or WebOS for about 10 minutes and you will realize how obtrusive and useless notifications are in iOS.


as an android user, i like iOS notifications a lot better
 
Why not? The USA for example has only 4 million miles of roads. A car with driver + passenger + some decent equipment should be able to map say 10 miles per hour, at a cost of $50 per hour. 200 cars for a year, that's 20 million dollars. And then you have a database that you can sell, and that you can use everywhere. Then write an iPhone app that lets users make corrections, lets businesses add their locations etc. and you are ready.

As a driver in North America, rather than just the US, let's make that an extra million miles to include Canada and Mexico. Canada seems well served by most map services but Mexico is not. Most map services seem to leave out gas stations in Mexico, a rather basic need.
 
Why not? The USA for example has only 4 million miles of roads. A car with driver + passenger + some decent equipment should be able to map say 10 miles per hour, at a cost of $50 per hour. 200 cars for a year, that's 20 million dollars. And then you have a database that you can sell, and that you can use everywhere. Then write an iPhone app that lets users make corrections, lets businesses add their locations etc. and you are ready.

Is this well-veiled sarcasm? If not, you guys are ridiculous.

1) Google does not own the mapping database they use
2) Even if they did, there are multiple geographic/mapping data providers
3) None of them obtained their data by having employees drive around in vehicles... That's an absurd suggestion
 
I'm just wondering when they're going to unveil it! If I'm not mistaken, March/April is usually the announcement period, with a launch in June-July.

They haven't announced anything yet, which either means that they're working on something HUGE, or it's behind schedule

Ummm, you do realize it isn't April yet? ;)
 
Excellent, the Map app is the weakest link of the default iOS apps. The GPS/navigation aspect of it works okay at best. Can't wait to see what progress they've made!
 
Easiest solution would be for Google to port their current maps and navigation software to iOS. Not that Apple would allow it, and not that Google would want to do it :). I love competition...
 
All I want is a little scale in the corner. Is that too much to ask? It's impossible to figure out how far away things are visually. In the heat of navigation (especially via car) time is of the essence and having to re-calculate the route just to figure out the distance to destination from the current location takes too long.

Which is why, in the heat of navigation, it's better to use a dedicated GPS system. I'd love it if Apple made my TomTom redundant. One fewer thing to carry and charge.
 
Google don't map the world either - they do the street map images, but if you look at Google Maps you'll see that the actual roads data comes from either Tele Atlas or Navteq. Those two companies sell their map sets to all the sat-nav companies too.

No need. Apple would just license the map data from either Navteq or Tele Atlas. The map data that Google uses at present is TeleAtlas (Especially for Europe).

Is this well-veiled sarcasm? If not, you guys are ridiculous.

1) Google does not own the mapping database they use
2) Even if they did, there are multiple geographic/mapping data providers
3) None of them obtained their data by having employees drive around in vehicles... That's an absurd suggestion

In the U.S., Google does own the map data. For further confirmation, note that it says "Map data ©2011 Google" in the footer when viewing U.S. maps, and says nothing whatsoever about TeleAtlas or Navteq (this is not the case for some other countries). They made this change back around October 2009, around the same time that the very first Google Maps Navigation app for Android was released.

Also, driving around to collect map data is absurd?

Let's say I'm driving in my car through a city. Every 20 yards a huge window pops up blocking the view onto whatever I do (mostly Google Maps because I try to find my way) just to tell me there are 5 new Wifi Hotspots in my vivcinity and I have to close it while I'm driving. This is the reason why I have to constantly go to Settings/Wifi/Off and then switch Wifi on again later.

I agree with you that the current iOS notifications system is terrible. But you do know you can keep Wi-Fi on and just turn off "Ask to Join Networks", right?
 
as an android user, i like iOS notifications a lot better

As an Android and iOS user, I'm asking you to please put the crack pipe down. While I preferred WebOS notifications over both, Android notification implementation is head and shoulders above iOS. Don't get me wrong though. I love the sms popup box in Handcent on Android, but I can also respond instantly to the text within the box, never having to go into the app. I can also swipe through multiple messages from multiple people within that popup box, responding to each. iOS notifications simply serve to bring to a halt whatever you are doing, then forces you to locate and open various different apps to tend to those notifications.
 
That's a great idea! I'd love to see that for when I'm traveling and don't want to turn on international data roaming for the internet, but can still use cell towers for triangulation of my position.

Android has had this for months. Not only do they have turn-by-turn directions, but their maps are vector based, which is highly compressed. Accordingly, they can cache thousands of miles of maps onto the phone with a few seconds of internet connection.
 
Is this well-veiled sarcasm? If not, you guys are ridiculous.

1) Google does not own the mapping database they use
2) Even if they did, there are multiple geographic/mapping data providers
3) None of them obtained their data by having employees drive around in vehicles... That's an absurd suggestion

Is this well-veiled sarcasm? If not, you are ridiculous. How do you think Google gets its "Street View" data? Here's a hint:

google-street-view-car.jpg
 
How about getting two notifications. Try telling me what the first one was? That's right, you will have no clue. Try using Android or WebOS for about 10 minutes and you will realize how obtrusive and useless notifications are in iOS.


+

I bought an unlocked Pixi (what a weird phrase...) as my iPhone is on its last legs and I want to wait until the iPhone 5 before upgrading. It's hard to overstate how much better the notifications are than the iOS ones.
 
I don't understand why the maps app doesn't take your location twice before giving you directions. There's been dozens of times I'm on the highway looking for directions and it thinks I'm on the other side of the highway or it thinks I'm on some street I just passed over.

If it took my location, waited a second, and took my location again it would know exactly which direction I was headed or which street I was on.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Fingers crossed for bike directions and route choices for public transit.

I want this for walking, showing when the lights are red or green.

Maybe an footstep sensing app showing black footsteps to step into on screen.

Oh wait, that would break the Retina display.
 
In the U.S., Google does own the map data. For further confirmation, note that it says "Map data ©2011 Google" in the footer when viewing U.S. maps, and says nothing whatsoever about TeleAtlas or Navteq (this is not the case for some other countries). They made this change back around October 2009, around the same time that the very first Google Maps Navigation app for Android was released.

Also, driving around to collect map data is absurd?



I agree with you that the current iOS notifications system is terrible. But you do know you can keep Wi-Fi on and just turn off "Ask to Join Networks", right?

Yes, but wouldn't you get one of those awful pop-ups each time you detected a new network?
 
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