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

[johncrab]

Hey, a house address in Tempe, AZ that Google maps always placed incorrectly in a vacant lot four miles away is bang-on in Apple maps. I even got three different routes to get there and all are accurate. I'm willing to stick with this and it grows and is refined.

 

[StoneJack]

This is extremely clever idea from Apple.
We know that Google has close to 7000 people working on maps.

Apple needs to hire ASAP thousands to do the manual work of cross checking millions of user submissions, which in many way will be far up-to-date than anything Google has.

But you CAN'T hire thousands of people at once, this is incredibly difficult task for human resources departments. So you a high quality teams working on principal issues, you have to have large manual cross checking teams and you have to have teams for countries and places where Apple doesn't have much presence but which are important and all work of leapfrogging Gmaps should be done in mere weeks.

So what Apple does is that they hire brains, a relatively small number of very good cartographers to help with principal issues and in a day create select teams of 4000 Apple staff devoted to maps, because they already working for Apple. These are new assignments and of course, not a free work.

Combined with enthusiastic user support, additional brains and strong organization of Apple Store staff teams, the seemingly impossible task of leapfrogging Gmaps is suddenly within reach.

Something tells me that many of Apple staff assigned to mapping process, will stay there for long time. Once Apple decided to do maps, you will need thousands of people constantly improving them.

And they already got thousands of them in place, already checking all missing or incorrect locations. So Forstall is being helped not only by its own iOS division, the whole Apple corporation is moving behind his efforts.

 

[JHankwitz]

Not sure how I feel about this. Some of the store employees are clueless.

If you were Apple management and selecting store empolyees to perform a specific technical function, would you select the ones that are clueless, or would you select those that were most capable and compitent? You know, businesses don't work like government.

 

[Zunjine]

There are people who use computers, like Macs and PCs. If you click on an address in an Address Book entry on a Mac, it points to Google Maps.

Also, at some point, if a person logs into iCloud on a Windows or Linux PC and clicks on an address in the Address Book section, it should again open a browser page for Apple Maps, not Google Maps.

Moreover, business owners might want a web interface to correct/update imagery, business information (hours of operation, telephone, URL, etc.).

A printable map might come in handy from time to time.

Lots of reasons why a web interface for Apple Maps would be useful if you can see the forest for the trees.

Apparently, you cannot.

I take your point that business owners and people who want to locate themselves on Apple's maps may find a web interface useful for reporting problems. That said, in general the point remains. My comment was with regard to reporting errors -

you wrote: "Rather than relying on handful of employees, if apple would open maps to general public using some web based method like google maps, it will be far far easier to report errors.
Egoistic company."

The vast majority of people who will want to report errors are people who have an iPhone/iPad/iPod touch - and those people have access to the maps on their devices so wouldn't require a web interface. Those are the people who's errors Apple needs to focus on. So while there are reasons someone may want to USE these maps on the web my comment wasn't about that - it was about error reporting.

 

[Apple Corps]

I look forward to the coming MacRumors story confirming Apple hiring many new software engineers for maps with the forum thread complaining about Apple not having any distributed people to help out with the POI information.

Go easy NAG - Apple deserves a big heaping of criticism on this. Too many of their launches are plagued with problems. Yes, there are Apple haters who can't wait to shoot Apple down,

but WHY does Tim Cook have to give them so much ammunition?

 

[samcraig]

Don't be so quick to think Apple employees will be excited about this.

Some will. I suspect many will not. They don't work at Apple stores to do data entry. And doing that day in and day out will not excite some. Some thrive on customer interaction, sales, showing off product knowledge, etc.

This is extremely clever idea from Apple.
We know that Google has close to 7000 people working on maps.



Something tells me that many of Apple staff assigned to mapping process, will stay there for long time. Once Apple decided to do maps, you will need thousands of people constantly improving them.

And they already got thousands of them in place, already checking all missing or incorrect locations. So Forstall is being helped not only by its own iOS division, the whole Apple corporation is moving behind his efforts.

 

[WhySoSerious]

this is so lame.

surely, apple has a better plan to make maps better than letting these kids in the stores 'fix' maps.

 

[fruitpunch.ben]

Nah, Apple Store managers need to pick the 'Indiana Jones' types ... and set them out on a quest to locate missing towns and cities. That'll be a start.

Or maybe the delivery trucks bringing stock to Apple stores are using apple maps and store staff is being deployed to flag down the trucks that cant locate the stores.

(You're from Ontario and you don't know why the hatred? Do you use maps often? Apple maps is a joke for this province, I use maps daily and apple maps is literally unusable)

I've used maps 3 times and it has worked once. BUT the two times it failed, Google maps also failed to give me proper directions to the location (they were rural).
So at this stage I personally have no reason to complain.
I understand the hatred against Apple Maps. What I meant was I don't understand the hatred against this idea to use retail store employees to fix it. That is a great idea imo.

But lol at the Indiana Jones employees locating the missing cities.

A lot of people read that article that claimed that many towns in Ontario are not found by Apple Maps. But did people read the follow-up article (linked to by Gruber) which found that Google maps actually did just as bad if not worse than Apple maps? The difference is that google (maps) will always give you a destination for a query, even if it is completely wrong, while Apple Maps, will often state that a location cannot be found

 

[tehreflex]

I wonder what Steve J would've done in this situation. I'm leaning towards he wouldn't have let their Maps app out until it was perfect.

Hopefully they get all the issues with Maps fixed soon.

 

[cvaldes]

this is so lame.

surely, apple has a better plan to make maps better than letting these kids in the stores 'fix' maps.

My guess is that Apple is not solely rely on these retail employees to make Maps better.

If you would like to point out where in the article is says that Apple is using these employees exclusively for Maps improvement, please point it out. Your reading comprehension is apparently based on a type of logic that is, well, different.

 

[gnasher729]

What's with the worrying? It's probably just "Go here. Look at our maps, verify location first-hand. Verify with Google Maps. Is the info correct?"

What you can't do is "verify with Google Maps" because of the possibility of copyright issues.

On the other hand, I think the USA has 4 million miles of roads, UK has 400,000 miles. Write some decent software, send pairs of two employees out by car to verify the road network (one driving, one checking, to keep it safe). If they have 20,000 employees in the USA, that's 10,000 pairs or 400 miles per pair to check the complete road network.

 

[WhySoSerious]

Can someone post an actual Map screw up somewhere in North America? I just want to see one for myself. I haven't come across one yet.
Thanks,
I'm in Edmonton, AB, Canada

I can post you numberous examples of missing POI, inaccurate route mapping, cloud cover blocking satellite view, obnoxious nav routes throwing in unnecessary U-turns everywhere, etc.

I just don't feel like taking that much time to post these. Get on maps yourself and see. It's not hard to find these errors.

 

[StoneJack]

I wonder what Steve J would've done in this situation. I'm leaning towards he wouldn't have let their Maps app out until it was perfect.

Hopefully they get all the issues with Maps fixed soon.

He would mobilize anyone around, especially the Store guys. Because maps and dealing with maps is close to dealing with customers than say designing a hardware. Store guys are constantly in touch with customers, send and receive information, fix things and so on. They are trained in customer support and this is biggest customer support or Apple Quality Guarantee thing that should be done ASAP.

 

[dv8r]

An asinine suggestion.

That tool is hardly guaranteed to provide better data.
Old Maps vs. New Maps

That one has been refuted as bogus.

 

[acslater017]

Gee, I hope they're not relying on store drones to update the maps... surely something as important as maps require a more highly trained (and dedicated) employee.

The ability to submit corrections is built into tens of millions of iOS devices already, so you don't exactly need to work for the USGS to tell Apple that a restaurant is in the wrong place.

Why not do this? Tens of thousands of employees already on the payroll, spread around 400 cities worldwide. If each of them knocks out 10 inaccuracies, that's potentially millions of bad experiences prevented.

 

[kralnor]

You guys are acting like this is all they are doing just because this happened to be reported on. Who knows what else is going on.

 

[d21mike]

My brother in law has a local business. I did a search for it but the name in Yelp had an extra word in the name. He has an account with Yelp so he went in and got it change last week. If you go to Yelp it has the new name (changed immediately) but if you do a search it still shows up with the wrong name. I am not sure how often that Apple gets updates from Yelp but obviously it is not in real time. My point is that they can't just change map data because someone posted an error. It must be verified and maybe this is mainly what these employees will be doing. However, I do believe they should work with their partners to get map updates as quick as possible.

On a side note: When I search on Google it looks like the information comes from the Business Web site. Even has the URL for the business. Not sure how it got updated on Google. The person who created the web site said he did not do anything other the create it on GoDaddy.

 

[shoreyUK]

How difficult is it to just sit on a computer and using Google Maps to verify stuff?

Google map data is copyrighted...Apple can't just use that as a reference and correct their own maps based on what Google shows...they have to go out and research it themselves, or licence it.

If Google have any sense, they will have plenty of deliberate mistakes in their maps which they would be able to use to prove if Apple had copied their data.

 

[G4DP]

What's with the worrying? It's probably just "Go here. Look at our maps, verify location first-hand. Verify with Google Maps. Is the info correct?"

Easy stuff.

Because that's very easy in the middle of a mountain range isn't it. It's a half arsed attempt to fix a less than half arsed piece of software.

If they hadn't been so cheap in the first place none of this would be required.

 

[crepuscular]

That article has been debunked so many times it's not even funny, not to mention it does say Google maps is superior and more accurate.

But not consistently (as also illustrated by Consumer Reports — which historically hasn't been the most ardent Apple supporter), which is the point. (To spell it out, since you seem slow to grasp this — any time there's a discrepancy, you won't know which is actually correct.)

An all this quite apart from the legal ramifications of simply copying another company's data.

So I reiterate:

Or you know, they could simply use the following international tool :
http://maps.google.com

An asinine suggestion.

 

[tekno]

They should have done things like this before they forced the incomplete app on their paying public.

 

[kralnor]

I can post you numberous examples of missing POI, in accurate route mapping, cloud cover blocking satellite view, obnoxious nav routes throwing in unnecessary U-turns everywhere, etc.

I just don't feel like taking that much time to post these. Get on maps yourself and see. It's not hard to find these errors.

The nav routes I blame on the partnership with tom-tom. I swear mine is trying to get me arrested with all the unnecessary u-turns it wants me to make. Yesterday it directed me to a dead end street in a neighborhood that happened to be 30 ft behind the store in the strip mall i was trying to get to. When i read that tom-tom had anything to do with the new maps app I knew it was doomed.

 

[bt2184]

I'm not a programmer, but it seems like Apple could create an app that would allow iPhone users to pin their home, work, gym, grocery store, etc using their GPS and take a photo of those places to start creating a "street view".

Then give an incentive to people to tag more places by giving an iTunes store credit for each unique place they tag.

Utilizing the millions of iPhones out there I think they could have a vast database in a few short months.

 

[koban4max]

Apple really gotta go to that level just to get map fixed? I thought Apple was different in regarding to being innovative or to "think different." This piss me off.

 

[RoboCop001]

Because that's very easy in the middle of a mountain range isn't it. It's a half arsed attempt to fix a less than half arsed piece of software.

If they hadn't been so cheap in the first place none of this would be required.

lol, I don't think they'd send them to the mountains. Besides. Would you rather have them not use them? It's not like they're relying 100% on these employees to do this. They're just adding them to their efforts at fixing this stuff.

They know these employees aren't export cartographers. They'll give them tasks suited to their abilities. Which is most likely just driving around.