Apple Turning to Select Retail Store Employees to Help Improve Maps for iOS 6

[Brazuca]

You think TomTom is a good source for a mapping app? It is fine for a bog standard simple Sat Nav, but not for a full mapping application. You need to get that from mapping agencies. You know people that actual do the cartography. TomTom, take the data and strip it down to purely what they need for the Sat Nav system to work correctly. If as has been reported Apple bought this, then they truly are ***** idiots.

I haven't got the App myself, I went to our local reseller and played around to see what all the fuss was about. Checked out some of the images of where I live. They are using stuff that is 10 years old. It still shows my mothers car outside a house she sold in 2002. After that I just laughed and walked out.

Now, clearly not all of the world has up to date aerial photography etc, but nothing more recent than 10 years in the UK? Rubbish.

In the states the mapping itself might be okay, but the rest of the world is a joke.

Apple tried to be cheap and it has back fired. Which ever shmuck stood on stage and claimed that they were doing all of their own cartography should be fired.

I'm not sure where they are getting which data from whom. I know that there is a long list of companies involved, and TomTom is one of them. Could be that it is 100% TomTom, but I highly doubt that. TeleAtlas is in the mix, to name just one.

So, again, is this just conjecture on your part or do you see any actual data? I would honestly like to know if TomTom is the main source or if they are only one piece of the puzzle and are mostly doing traffic info.

As per old sat info, at least for NYC the maps are about 1 month old. It seems like you should know that all maps have different priorities as to which areas they update more often. It's easy to find old sat images for any of the maps.

 

[macs4nw]

Although 40,000 employees' input is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of pieces of input they need, it's still good to see them make the extra effort. It can only accelerate MAPS' improvement. Kudos to APPLE for the extra effort and $$ spent.

 

[sishaw]

It won't be enough

Apple needs to bite the bullet and crowdsource this effort. Just Apple store employees won't be enough to cover all areas. Apple needs to push out an app that easily lets any iPhone user fix mapping errors, and then of course have their own employees/contractors verify the corrections.

 

[G4DP]

I'm not sure where they are getting which data from whom. I know that there is a long list of companies involved, and TomTom is one of them. Could be that it is 100% TomTom, but I highly doubt that. TeleAtlas is in the mix, to name just one.

So, again, is this just conjecture on your part or do you see any actual data? I would honestly like to know if TomTom is the main source or if they are only one piece of the puzzle and are mostly doing traffic info.

As per old sat info, at least for NYC the maps are about 1 month old. It seems like you should know that all maps have different priorities as to which areas they update more often. It's easy to find old sat images for any of the maps.

TeleAtlas? They have been owned by TomTom for a few years. So no it's not conjecture TomTom provide the majority of the data.

This is a list of sources Apple used - http://gspsa21.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html.

It shows that TomTom did the smart thing and went to the national Mapping Agencies, e.g IGN in France. Apple just went to TomTom and used second hand data.

I'm so happy for you that NYC is up to date. But the world does exist out side of America.

 

[mnemonix]

Is this an April Fools? Seriously. If not, amateur hour at Apple rolls on.

Either buy in accurate maps and data or employ a team of professionals to do it. I don't care which but do it, and do it now before I lose all faith in you as a company.

 

[avanpelt]

So, Forstall is turning to the Genius Bars around the world for help? Wow. Next thing we know, they'll be asking Siri for advice.

Why would they solicit the help of people making $12-$20 an hour to fix the Maps issue? This company is sitting on billions upon billions of dollars in cash and they're turning to the retail folks to help after the corporate folks botched this up?! Please tell me this story isn't true. Heck, why don't they ask Mansfield to help, too?! They've already agreed to pay him a cool $2 million a MONTH!

 

[KnightWRX]

this sounds really bad....it took Google years and years to get this.

And tons of cars, and tons of driven miles and tons of user reports and tons of data mining of their own search indexes (don't think those POIs all come from users, just mining the web itself by crawling it is a great way to collect POI information).

And Google is still at it, still perfecting it, still making it better. It's a moving target.

 

[Born Again]

All the hipsters they pick will hide all their favorite hangout spots so no one can find them.

Lol

Great comment

 

[sitsonthefence]

Does it really matter "how", as long as it gets better?

 

[japeurotrash]

jobs made a mistake

Apple should have stuck with google maps and paid more for turn by turn directions. Or they will have to hire cars like the google cars and do their own street view etc...
Seems very expensive, and way beyond forty hours a week per store. That idea is almost laughable!
To catch up to google will take some real effort, not some half-assed stop-gap measures.
But if they get it right they can sell the rights to use their maps to other companys.
Still seems easier to buy from google.
Or if they want to buy companies that create maps as they have been, buy the best one, just buy google!

 

[KnightWRX]

Does it really matter "how", as long as it gets better?

It matters how long till it gets better.

 

[bozzykid]

Apple needs to bite the bullet and crowdsource this effort.

Crowd sourcing isn't the problem. I'm sure Apple has had enough reports of errors. The problem is how does Apple verify the changes? They have no street view (which Google uses to verify a lot of errors). They don't own the data either. So changes have to also be verified by the 3rd party provider. After that, Apple has to merge the 3rd party data with their collection of data providers. So, as you can see, it isn't a crowd sourcing problem that is causing the delays in making corrections. It is caused by Apple owning very little of the data and not having any means to verify corrections.

Google went through this same issue years ago. But now that they own most of the data and have a real means to verify corrections, they can rollout corrections in less than 2 weeks.

 

[charlesdayton]

Apple should just ditch TomTom and get more reliable map data.

TomTom already stated they are not responsible for the App or satellite imagery. But they are responsible for the map data including places.

 

[ipedro]

Apple Store employees as moderators

I don't know how effective a few employees in a city could be on their own looking for errors, but they can certainly be very influential on the quality of Apple Maps by being moderators for problems submitted by iOS users.

Who reviews if Ted's Burger Joint in Montreal, Quebec is really where an iOS user corrected it to be? Well, Sarah at the local Apple Store can verify that in seconds because she knows her own city. Some guy in Cupertino isn't gonna have the slightest clue.

Apple can put a points system in place where if an iOS user's Apple ID corrects past a certain threshold of submitted problems that are all accepted by an Apple Store moderator, those corrections automatically go into effect or are at least placed in priority to be accepted by the moderator.

This is a brilliant use of company resources if you ask me.

 

[bozzykid]

Apple should just ditch TomTom and get more reliable map data.

And where would they get more reliable data from other than Google?

 

[iphoneclassic]

There is nothing wrong with Map data from TomTom. Their app works fine as long as you enter the destination address. With Google you could enter a partial name to the best of your knowledge still get reasonable results.

Digital imagery comes from companies like Digital Globe. If you try to visualize different layers it will look some thing like below.

7)Street View (Google)
6)3D Imaging (Providers: Arial Imaging)
5)Traffic (Local Radio Data Systems)
4)Points of Interest (Google,Bing,Yahoo) Yelp???
3)Map Data (Land,Water bodies,Roads,...)
2)Arial Image (Providers:Mostly Local Governments)
1)Digital Satellite Image

What Google did with manual workforce is to integrate and align these layers.
Lets say you have a digital image, if you overlay map on top of digital image land,water and roads has to match. Similarly if you overlay POI data, a coffee shop should appears exactly where it is both on image and map. For Google, this work done by manual workforce.

Bottom line is there is no automated way to do this and expect a good visual result.

Google has "1" system administrator for every "1000" servers. No other IT company has such a ratio. You can imagine if there is a way to do this without manpower, Google will be the first one to do.

So what is still doesn't make sense, how these Geniuses driving around places going to help with integration.

 

[mgreernz]

Well, as much as this might be a great idea - it's not going to help correct the mess that Maps is in New Zealand. NZ has to chug along just with Apple resellers - the nearest Apple Store is Sydney, Australia. And O boy, is Apple Maps a mess here.

 

[iphoneclassic]

Search for Apple Store on Apple Maps

Try searching for Apple Store in Apple Maps, I got below results

Apple Printing
Oak Apple Run
Apple Driving School
Apple Fritter
Apple Home Health Service
Mac Apple Computer Repair
Red Apple Restaurant

and Drum Roll, Apple Store

 

[firewood]

It's a good idea, but why do this when MILLIONS of people are already doing it on their own iOS 6 device?

Because Apple employee map corrections will probably be cross-checked by their supervisor who lives in or near the same city.

Thus Apple employees can be fired (or at least dinged in their review) for submitting bad corrections. Not so with data from random users (which probably includes thousands of malicious kiddies out for some "fun", such as "correcting" the location of the rival school to be on top of the town garbage dump). (However, I wonder if any "corrections" will be made to the locations of any of those copycat Microsoft stores?

 

[firewood]

That's not copying in the same way that sitting next to a smart person in an exam and changing all your answers to match his isn't copying.

It's copying if you copy the other person's answer verbatim. But if you note that your answer is different, independently recheck your answer and find someplace partway in-between (google's POI locations aren't always dead-on either), it might still be a form cheating, but it doesn't sound like copying as far as IP law is concerned. How could it be a copy when your answer is more correct?

 

[Hyper-X]

This is a clear sign that Apple's desperate and has no idea on how to rectify iOS 6 maps

 

[iphoneclassic]

You can buy business address list 10 cents a piece from any one of the data mining companies. Dun & Bradstreet has database with 200 Million business location details. So without any high-tech equipment to collect additional data, I am still not clear what these Geniuses will do driving around.

If they are trying collect GPS co-ordinates, iPhone(for that matter any GPS enabled phone) is not the best device, and I believe someone might have it already in their database.

I don't think any of the information they require is copy wright protected. Just because Google Maps cars are making rounds Geniuses want to hit the road.

I love Apple. My worry is Cook/Forstall with this Maps fiasco at best weakening Apple's supremacy and at worst will take this company down. When you don't have Steve Jobs, you have to be cautious with your every move.

 

[mikefla]

That all sounds great. But how about giving the app a feature so that end users can download full mapping data to their phone so when they are somewhere where there is no signal or WIFI so that they can actually use the app? For those of you who live under a rock, there are many places where your wonderful phone will not get a cell signal yet your GPS will but if your GPS app depends on a data connection like the Maps app currently does then you will be screwed! Until then I just keep using TomTom, I have yet to find something better for the iPhone (I would love something even better though


-Mike

----------

You can buy business address list 10 cents a piece from any one of the data mining companies. Dun & Bradstreet has database with 200 Million business location details. So without any high-tech equipment to collect additional data, I am still not clear what these Geniuses will do driving around.

If they are trying collect GPS co-ordinates, iPhone(for that matter any GPS enabled phone) is not the best device, and I believe someone might have it already in their database.

I don't think any of the information they require is copy wright protected. Just because Google Maps cars are making rounds Geniuses want to hit the road.

I love Apple. My worry is Cook/Forstall with this Maps fiasco at best weakening Apple's supremacy and at worst will take this company down. When you don't have Steve Jobs, you have to be cautious with your every move.

I would just sub-contract the driving to the Geek Squad, have them drive around in their cute cars collecting coordinates instead of going around stealing peoples data at home

 

[ITGuy]

Apple is in way over their head with Maps. They now see that iOS 6 Maps usage has fallen off a cliff compared to iOS 5, so any hope of lots of customers providing crowd sourced corrections is now a bust.

Apple must spend billions of dollars if they are serious about providing a leading Maps service. They probably will not as they are unbelievably cheap, and purchasing Garmin or Nokia won't make Macs, iPhones, or iPads thinner. They will use their retail staff instead. What a joke.

Obsessing over thin and light hardware whilst providing mediocre software services will eventually catch up with you.

 

[BTW]

A former coworker of mine is in Poland and took the time out of his trip to complain about how useless the mapping tool was in iOS 6. He had to download another mapping application just to be able to get around. Apple needs to spend some of that $100 billion to fix this ASAP.