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Australian Police Warn Against Use of Apple Maps Due to Safety Concerns
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At least in the UK, limitations on liability under EULAs are unlikely to be binding. Particularily for gross negligence.
Not So Bad
I submitted a wrong location for a small zoo near us and it has been fixed.
What I do with Apple Maps I do with any GPS - after it finds a location, I zoom in and reality check that I have the right location. I've had GPS's, including Garmin, TomTom and yes - google maps - have bogus location data. Just look before you leap and you should be fine. And the vast majority of the time, it's spot on.
I enjoy how quickly it launches and the routes feel right to me. The voice turn by turn works great as well.
Still keep TomTom on my phone for times when there is no signal, such as some parks in our area that are dead zones.
I submitted a wrong location for a small zoo near us and it has been fixed.
What I do with Apple Maps I do with any GPS - after it finds a location, I zoom in and reality check that I have the right location. I've had GPS's, including Garmin, TomTom and yes - google maps - have bogus location data. Just look before you leap and you should be fine. And the vast majority of the time, it's spot on.
I enjoy how quickly it launches and the routes feel right to me. The voice turn by turn works great as well.
Still keep TomTom on my phone for times when there is no signal, such as some parks in our area that are dead zones.
Bbc
BBC also picked up the story (iLost) and featured in front page
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20663447
BBC also picked up the story (iLost) and featured in front page
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20663447
I just don't understand how these maps can be so grossly inaccurate, especially in this day and age of satellite imagery and crowd-sourcing and, well, the fact that Apple isn't the first one to try and map an area. Other maps exist! I'm not saying "copy the data" but they could at least, you know, compare...
I can understand if a map is outdated in terms of new streets and neighborhoods not yet input, or old streets still in the map that have in reality been removed or rerouted. I can understand the maps missing important metadata like gas station listings or small businesses. That old data can lead to incorrect mapping, like the maps telling you how to get to Woolworth's, or to go here to get to Dairy Queen when in reality they moved down the block two years ago.
But entire cities don't get up and move. That city was never where Maps is telling you it is. Satellite imagery these days is accurate enough that an overlay would quickly tell you that the maps don't match up with reality.
How does it get to be so wrong in the first place?
I can understand if a map is outdated in terms of new streets and neighborhoods not yet input, or old streets still in the map that have in reality been removed or rerouted. I can understand the maps missing important metadata like gas station listings or small businesses. That old data can lead to incorrect mapping, like the maps telling you how to get to Woolworth's, or to go here to get to Dairy Queen when in reality they moved down the block two years ago.
But entire cities don't get up and move. That city was never where Maps is telling you it is. Satellite imagery these days is accurate enough that an overlay would quickly tell you that the maps don't match up with reality.
How does it get to be so wrong in the first place?
Again, this must be THE least understood aspect of what Google does. Here is my take on it in the following link:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16227927/
They don't sell your data to advertisers. They sell advertising and in particular, their ability to target advertising.
Dont want any personalised ads?
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...fdgfjilccfpfoe
http://www.aboutads.info/choices/
Check your ad profile: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
There is nothing personal or identifying in your ad profile, it's all very general.
This is a non-issue that is frequently blown massively out of proportion. At least Google are transparent about what they are doing.
I'm thinking of moving to Samsung galaxy s3 due to two problems with my current 4S. Maps do not even provide navigation at all in my country. Siri is able to pick about 1 word out of 1000000 words I speak. In galaxy s, both works perfectly fine. I use both maps and voice commands during I drive.
What you guys don't understand is that it's not as simple as clicking on an area or place and typing in the changes. The maps data consists of three sources:
Satellite images
Yelp
TomTom mapping data
These three sources have to be brought together as a coherent and accurate representation and result on the screen. The problem is in the algorithm used to do this. I read an excellent explanation about this a couple months ago. I'm sorry I don't have the source at hand but I'll try to find it later and link to it.
Anyway, this is one of the reasons you're not seeing changes and from what I read and understand it can take months if not years to get it right.
Wow. If you seriously believe this you should probably start taking those pills again that your doctor gave you.
I'm not trying to insult you, but that is completely baseless and spectacularly unbridled paranoia.
Are you just trying to prove a point or something or do you honestly believe that Google Maps are purposefully sending you off-course in order to send you past businesses which advertise with Google? Is that what you are claiming?
Thank you!! I wish more people would understand this and not see some dark advertising conspiracy. Maybe it's me but if I'm going to be advertised to I'd rather see ads pertaining to tech gear or camping gear rather than tampons. But maybe that's just me
It's really a remarkable test of human psychology. My guess is a lot of these people knew they were going the wrong place very early on, but kept on driving because an authority (their phone) kept giving them instructions. It's like the Milgram Experiment.
Without a doubt, there were clear signs that they were going the wrong way, but because the phone kept telling them what to do, they obeyed. It's actually a little scary. Apple Maps hasn't steered me wrong yet, but I always look at road signs when I'm driving, and if the instructions make no sense, I stop and take a look at the map closely for myself.
Had a convo with my buddy about this just recently, here were his thoughts:
"Apple currently uses TomTom to supply their mapping information which is why it's so awful.
I used to work for Navteq (now a Nokia company), the company that used to supply google with map data before they took the operation in-house. We had vehicles on the ground continuously confirming the accuracy of map data provided to us by DOT's and local municipalities.
I know for a fact that TomTom does not confirm the raw data that they receive. They just regurgitate it and hope for the best."
So when the company is half assing things like TomTom apparently is, this is the result.
"Apple currently uses TomTom to supply their mapping information which is why it's so awful.
I used to work for Navteq (now a Nokia company), the company that used to supply google with map data before they took the operation in-house. We had vehicles on the ground continuously confirming the accuracy of map data provided to us by DOT's and local municipalities.
I know for a fact that TomTom does not confirm the raw data that they receive. They just regurgitate it and hope for the best."
So when the company is half assing things like TomTom apparently is, this is the result.
Gross negligence would be almost impossible to prove, even in the questionable UK court system.
Uhh, The CEO of the company has pretty much made an open admission that this is the case.
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You're kidding right? Where are you from?
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Because presumably they'd never been there before, hence the need for the GPS. 70kms is really not far in that part of the world given driving distances.
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I don't think it's a good idea to rely on your users to fix this. What is to prevent someone from submitting bogus error reports?
the thing is, I know the guy who was responsible for it was fired, BUT how did it go under the radar for that long? the app wasn't designed in a day...
I'm sure there were MANY other people working on the app as well as beta testers. How the heck did none of them bring it up to Tim and say "this might not be ready for primetime."
It doesn't make sense.
Navteq has me living on the wrong street. I've filed reports for the past 4 years and they still haven't fixed it. All they have to do is change the name of the damn street.
Apple got my street name right but the next one over is wrong. I reported it a couple months ago but it hasn't been fixed yet. Hopefully they will be faster at fixing it than Navteq!
Probably anyone who was in a position to bring it to Cook's attention would have had to go through Forstall and given his reputation, most would have considered going behind his back to be professional suicide. At the same time Forstall was probably feeding Cook what he wanted to hear.
Seriously, quit EMBARRASSING yourself. You're not fooling ANYONE with what you were inferring in your posts, even if you were too COWARDLY to come out and say what you want to say.
Okay, so now your entire "argument" is "Google Maps had problems too! That makes the debacle that is Apple Maps OKAY because Google Maps had similar problems 10 years ago!!!! YIPPEEE!!!!"
Sorry, but if that isn't "fanboy spin", I don't know what is.
Besides the utterly LAUGHABLE tin foil hat paranoia of your claim that "Google was sending drivers along routes benefiting its real customers--businesses"...HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! This claim is so delusional and ridiculous I'm not going to even waste my time debunking it.
Fact is, Apple Maps is a JOKE compared to Google Maps. I don't remember Google Maps BACK THEN ever even being as BAD as Apple Maps is TODAY, but that's IRRELEVANT ANYWAY because no one cares how anything was when it started out. All that MATTERS is where we are TODAY.
No one is going to compare a new smartphone release with the first iPhone, it's going to be compared to iPhone 5. Why then should we compare Apple Maps today with Google Maps from 10 years ago???
We SHOULDN'T!
There are more holes in your "argument" than in your mesh underwear. But keep it up, at the very least your posts are good for not only a laugh, but for setting new standards in fanboyism.
Ars Technica had an article a while back explaining just how difficult it actually is to map the whole world. Every locality often has its own point of reference from which maps are drawn. Sometimes these are country-by-country, sometimes these are town by town. There's been some effort to standardize, but it's just not a realistic prospect since nobody's going to measure a distance from halfway around the world just to put in a driveway. Other than the different points of reference, there's the fact that maps are made at different times, with different methods. So you can gather all that mapping data together, but then there's no common verified points of reference, with varying degrees of accuracy, so you have to figure out how to stitch the data together. The farther you are away from a point of reference (the border of any given map data set where you'd likely be doing that stitching), the less accurate it's likely to be. On top of all that, you're mapping a three dimensional mostly-spherical object on a flat, two dimensional plane. This issue in particular has plagued mapmakers for centuries, but it's made more difficult by the nature of digital storage that can at best imprecisely handle analog realities. Floating points aren't precise like integers, they have built-in error by their very nature, and introduce a lot of further errors the more you use them.
It's really a wonder we can make digital maps at all.
What it comes down to, is humans sanity-checking the output of the machine, because garbage in, garbage out. Apple needs to do this at their end, but the world is a very big place. I remember how bad Google Maps was when it was new, and other online maps before that. It's going to take a huge amount of man hours to get this done. At the same time, people using the service need to do their own sanity-checking. If something doesn't seem right, trust the signs on the road, not your phone. The map data your phone is using might be decades or a century old, approximately transformed onto a false geometry, and stitched together with a data set using a different reference point.
In many cases, yes, I suspect that advertising influences google routes given. It's not the only route offered but all too often what's listed as the #1/preferred route is not the best, or fastest, or one which would be taken by anyone who actually knows where he's going (but is doing a time/mileage check). You label such suspicion "paranoid"; however, I would suggest that anyone who hasn't considered that a company, whose business is wholly based on selling advertising, doesn't in any way let such advertising sales impact its maps routing, is naive to put it kindly.