Flyover for Apple Maps Expanded to Include New Cities in France, Sweden, Italy and Netherlands

[RebornProphet]

Wrong. Flyover is vastly superior to exploring places and get an overview of the situation, fast! Unless you want to look into an outdated window display of the store you’re going to, Google Street View is pretty impractical. If you actually lived in a city with flyover, you would understand that...

I live in Glasgow. Which has Flyover. Now don't do me the indignity if replying to me again. You optimise obnoxious and your presumptuous attitude has made you look like a fool.

I can find places on Google Street view when going to collect eBay pick ups or Gumtree purchase. If I want to look at my office building in 3D but then see a woefully rendered model of the streets across from my office when I zoom in, I'll use Flyover. Now go away.

 

[mw360]

I disagree, not because of the application in education that can be used for.
But the market reach, and because it plays no practical role in common maps for everyday use.

Most people look on a map to see how they get from A to B.
Especially in regards to smartphones, for which Apple maps was primarily designed for. Whereas this notion to be able to study architecture from an ariel perspective seems some what of a niche market.

Why does market reach matter? Maps doesn't make money. Maps only exists to promote Apple hardware. As such it needs to do something the competition doesn't do. An exact clone of Google's data would be almost worthless since the Apple hardware can already access Google data. It would effectively just be a billion dollar adblocker.

 

[d94ka]

I wonder if cities or certain interests outside of Apple look to have this function included? I mean Malmo is an absolute S*** hole, and has suffered from a huge crime increase in recent years along with gun violence, serial killers, extreme far right racism, racist attacks, drug wars, religious violence etc etc ... And even that twisting tower that was highlighted has been up for sale and not been able to find a buyer for it. So why Apple would choose to Malmo of all places ? Unless there is another type of incentive? Could local areas be paying or arranging deals to ensure their region is listed?

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Well, the reason for Malmö being chosen could just be because C3 Technologies (that Apple purchased for their 3D mapping tech) was a Swedish company.

(As for your remarks about the ********ness of Malmö I find it peculiar that those remarks are made by someone living in Stockholm, that (quite naturally) tops the violent-crimes-per-capita list in Sweden, while Malmö is on seventh place. I love both cities, and both are very far from being ********s. It is always interesting to see the energy used by Stockholmers to paint a black picture of Malmö while those living in Malmö couldn't care less about Sthlm. Some kind of envy, probably.)

 

[groovyd]

As it's gotten higher res, I'm finding Flyover more useful than Streetview. Using gestures, I can quickly zoom in from a flat view to detailed 3D view of an area I'm interested in.
With Streetview, you have to go into a completely different mode and use a convoluted frame by frame system to get the angle you want, and often you don't get an exact angle or you have a car in the way.
StreetView is still useful for when I want to see the number on a building or another very fine detail, but I'm finding less and less need as Flyover's detail is improved.

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Given that Flyover mapping of an entire city can be done in a day versus StreetView taking weeks or months of driving around, Flyover is more likely to be more uptodate than Streetview. In fact, I've noticed Toronto get updated pretty regularly.

then why is it taking them forever to get these places online?

 

[star-affinity]

Well, the reason for Malmö being chosen could just be because C3 Technologies (that Apple purchased for their 3D mapping tech) was a Swedish company.

(As for your remarks about the ********ness of Malmö I find it peculiar that those remarks are made by someone living in Stockholm, that (quite naturally) tops the violent-crimes-per-capita list in Sweden, while Malmö is on seventh place. I love both cities, and both are very far from being ********s. It is always interesting to see the energy used by Stockholmers to paint a black picture of Malmö while those living in Malmö couldn't care less about Sthlm. Some kind of envy, probably.)

I'm from Malmö, but have been living in Stockholm for seven years. All I can say is that the post by byke about Malmö isn't very nuanced. Of course there are problems in Malmö, but the picture he painted about the city seem to be based only on headers from newspapers.

 

[err404]

They're still wasting resources on this crud?

Useless, gimmicky feature and hardly the best way to view maps. Google Street view is far superior and more user friendly ... and that's hard for me to say given how much I loathe Google.

How so? What resource (employee) with 3d mapping expertise is going to work on ground truth data? Or do you mean money? Apple has more money than it needs for any mapping solutions.
Think of this as a side project that is integrated into the UI of the maps.
Removing 3d maps would not improve any aspect of Apple's maps. Besides, I really enjoy them.

 

[k1121j]

Instead of gimmicky stuff like this, I wish their next enhancement was the ability to change the default Map app to Google Maps. Apple still hasn't corrected some of the incorrect location labels I submitted well over a year ago. Enough.

same here Dave I had the same problem since apple maps started i reported incorrect locations on many devices for years and they never got fixed. finally I filled out an apple survey after calling apple support they told me to call tom Tom I was so upset I was given misinformation I filled out the survey with bad marks. a week ago my map was fixed. it's to bad I had to go through all that when reporting a problem on the map is supposed to fix it.

 

[Fzang]

- Still no public transportation.
- Still can't view content inside buildings, whereas both Google and Baidu can map every floor of a shopping center.
- Can't read signs with Flyover. Very useful if you know the exact colors, size and shape of your target location though.

Thanks but no thanks Apple. Just sign a goddam contract or something.

 

[patent10021]

Do you fly a helicopter?

He flies a drone.


For me, the biggest letdown about Apple Maps is that transportation is done via 3rd party apps. A real real shame. Sort of defeats 75% of the reason to have your own maps imo.



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[Ubuntu]

God damn. There are certainly better things to be spending time on.

I think it's pretty awesome, and now my Swedish friends can actually use this. Also from what you said it sounds like you think Apple can't multitask. There's probably a team dedicated to handling the flyover content - what else are they going to do?

 

[carlemil]

God damn. There are certainly better things to be spending time on.

You know it doesn't work like that

 

[byke]

Well, the reason for Malmö being chosen could just be because C3 Technologies (that Apple purchased for their 3D mapping tech) was a Swedish company.

(As for your remarks about the ********ness of Malmö I find it peculiar that those remarks are made by someone living in Stockholm, that (quite naturally) tops the violent-crimes-per-capita list in Sweden, while Malmö is on seventh place. I love both cities, and both are very far from being ********s. It is always interesting to see the energy used by Stockholmers to paint a black picture of Malmö while those living in Malmö couldn't care less about Sthlm. Some kind of envy, probably.)

I don't live in Stockholm/Sweden, but do visit both Malmo and Stockholm at least 4 times a year. And can say this has nothing to do with being a Stockholmer/Swede (Since I am not one) ... When I lived in Sweden, I came across more people with hangups over what is classed as Stockholm envy. As most people from Stockholm never paid the smaller towns in Sweden a second thought.

As for violent crimes, I don't know where you got your statistics from. But just an example from todays news, another Bomb was detonated in Malmo ..... this is the third bomb to have exploded in 48 hours.

By all means, feel free to call it Stockholm envy if you like. But if staying in Stockholm is the difference between being shot or blown up, then I will gladly choose being labelled instead.

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6052477

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I'm from Malmö, but have been living in Stockholm for seven years. All I can say is that the post by byke about Malmö isn't very nuanced. Of course there are problems in Malmö, but the picture he painted about the city seem to be based only on headers from newspapers.

I don't think you can paint a city much worse than by its actions.
Bombs, shootings, serial killers, racial hatred, antisemitism, drug smuggling, hate crimes, guns etc ... even the Danish crime series (The Bridge) is tame in comparison. And Grand theft auto would have a hard time trying to make the place look more sketchy than it is.

 

[ablashek]

since there are still many cities without adequate maps functionality (i mean basic roads), cities that are capitals of countries, i think this is a great use of resources on apple side.

 

[a0me]

As to whether they should hold off on any development of the flyover feature until after they are COMPLETELY done with everything else, I'd posit that they should find a cure for cancer before adding or correcting even one POI. The cure for cancer is more important, right? Next comes feeding hungry children. Somewhere way down on the list is adding public transportation info for people who are wealthy enough to own an iPhone, and all the things above it should be done first.

Except that I didn't mention "everything else" or "a cure for cancer". What I said was that Apple has replaced a map app with their own and that they should offer at least the same basic functionality as the app they want to replace.

 

[Smigit]

Wrong. Flyover is vastly superior to exploring places and get an overview of the situation, fast! Unless you want to look into an outdated window display of the store you’re going to, Google Street View is pretty impractical. If you actually lived in a city with flyover, you would understand that...

The two technologies excel at different things. Street Views fantastic for getting a view of the surroundings at ground level, which is useful for getting an idea on what the destination looks like when it's not 100% obvious, such as what side of a building the front door is on and the like. Flyover is better suited for further ranged views of the area, possibly flagging landmarks quickly and the like. Until Fly Over lets you get close to ground level but, it'll have its limitations.

Both technologies are useful, and it's telling that Google is also heavily invested in 3D mapping itself to complement their Street View technology. Obviously they see merit in both methods of representing mapping data.

 

[bollman]

I don't live in Stockholm/Sweden, but do visit both Malmo and Stockholm at least 4 times a year. And can say this has nothing to do with being a Stockholmer/Swede (Since I am not one) ... When I lived in Sweden, I came across more people with hangups over what is classed as Stockholm envy. As most people from Stockholm never paid the smaller towns in Sweden a second thought.

As for violent crimes, I don't know where you got your statistics from. But just an example from todays news, another Bomb was detonated in Malmo ..... this is the third bomb to have exploded in 48 hours.

By all means, feel free to call it Stockholm envy if you like. But if staying in Stockholm is the difference between being shot or blown up, then I will gladly choose being labelled instead.

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6052477

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I don't think you can paint a city much worse than by its actions.
Bombs, shootings, serial killers, racial hatred, antisemitism, drug smuggling, hate crimes, guns etc ... even the Danish crime series (The Bridge) is tame in comparison. And Grand theft auto would have a hard time trying to make the place look more sketchy than it is.

Are you for real? This really sounds like someone who never been to Malmö at all and really swallowed all of the headlines. I remember when I was asked to take visiting friends from Stockholm to Rosengård just so they could see the decadence... Turnes out almost every suburb of Stockholm has far more problems and look a lot worse than Rosengård. Media loves to exaggerate the violence in Malmö.

When it comes to turning torso, I think the price of 2 billion put a lot of companies off, but in the end HSB decided to rent out the apartments instead of selling them as they usually do. If they tried to sell the apartments now I pretty sure they would cash in well as that area of Malmö has become the place for the rich and famous with apartment prices in the range of tens of millions.

As for the risk of being "blown up", there's a substantially higher risk of being subjected to crime in Stockholm than in Malmö. Go check the figures yourself: www.bra.se

As for the feature of Apple maps, I couldn't care less. Apple maps are way too inaccurate and filled with useless features to actually make me even consider using it.