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iolinux333

macrumors 68000
Feb 9, 2014
1,798
73
One simple thing Apple could do that would give them an instant and huge edge over Googhke Maps is to allow their base map and POI data to be completely downloadable as an option, so that a data connection is not necessary for most navigation - like TomTom or CoPilot have always done. North America i complete data set in CoPilot is only about 1.2 Gigs.
 

linuxcooldude

macrumors 68020
Mar 1, 2010
2,480
7,232
No, but its an embarrassing failure that is very un-apple like. If they continue to produce products that fail to live up to people's expectations, people will go elsewhere

I think peoples expectations are way too high for Apple when options from competitors are not much better.
 

iolinux333

macrumors 68000
Feb 9, 2014
1,798
73
I'll look at Apple maps again when they have Street View and when they do public transport options as well as Google do.

Google does intelligent recognition with all their street view data, recognizing numbers on mailboxes and buildings and adds that to their address data. Freaking amazing stuff.

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They can cripple it like they were before Apple Maps. Google maps still would not have turn by turn if Apple didn't force them by competition. It was not in Googles plans to include it. That's why it took so long to produce a solution after Apple provided one. Even though their mobile maps learned a lot from Apple they kept features only for Android.

Agree. Still no night mode in Google Maps for iOS. They're doing it on purpose.
 

prizm

macrumors regular
Oct 29, 2007
146
143
Apple maps is still woefully inadequate. Living in New York City it would be pretty obvious that if you say, searched for something on 35th Street in Manhattan while standing on, say, 7th St in Manhattan you'd get a Manhattan address. More times than not the map flies to some address in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere in Pennsylvania. Sometimes even out of the country.

Touching hyperlinks for an address in programs like Yelp will sometimes take you out of the state and beyond. Again to other countries. It's really, really sloppy.

Also...Why no subway colored lines on maps? Is that so hard? It's not like they build a new subway line every week. Or decade, for that matter.

And lastly when you're riding a train it's nice to see where the tracks go on the map so you can track your progress. Which works if you're completely zoomed in on your location. If you start to pull back for a wider look at the map the train tracks disappear. It's madness. Google maps doesn't behave this way.

Lots of issues. Kind of a pain in the butt. Step it up Apple, it's high time.
 

kaielement

macrumors 65816
Dec 16, 2010
1,242
74
I like how peoe like I talk badly about Maps lol. For me though I really haven't had that many problems, no more then I ever did with google maps. And yes I have gotten wrong info from google maps. While I think Maps could be better I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
 

Cod3rror

macrumors 68000
Apr 18, 2010
1,785
113
Maps is one thing that is very important and Apple cannot replace instantly. It takes a lot of time to update and build a maps database and lots of effort and resources.

Nokia and Google have been doing it for years!

Apple made a mistake thinking they could easily and quickly mitigate that problem. If they were smart, they'd have switched to OSM (OpenStreetMaps), open crowd sourced maps. They'd have gotten good map source and helped the open source movement too.
 

tevion5

macrumors 68000
Jul 12, 2011
1,966
1,602
Ireland
I'm not at all familiar with Apple's internal politics. I've often read on this forum that Cook's only weakness is not being Steve. I disagree with that. Steve is gone. Anyone in the CEO slot would not be Steve. Not possible.

I am not a Cook fan. I was very optimistic when Cook became CEO. My expectations are now very low. Just yesterday I was asking a friend about good hardware for a Windows notebook.

It's a sad thought but my next primary computer may be a Windows unit. Win is secondary here for the occasional thing that is better suited to Win.

I hope that's not necessary.

Any time I start to get annoyed with OSX after a few months, I use a windows machine for a week. I always end up running "back to my mac", as it t'were.
 

MagnusVonMagnum

macrumors 603
Jun 18, 2007
5,193
1,442
I guess it goes to show that while you can buy a company, that doesn't mean you get to keep the employees that made that company great. Apple has had a history of moving people around CONSTANTLY because they apparently DON'T HAVE ENOUGH EMPLOYEES TO DO ALL THE JOBS THAT NEED DONE.

Apple needs to hire Hire HIRE. People need jobs and Apple needs to keep their projects moving all at once instead of this piece-meal iPhone to iPad to Mac to Mac Pro to Pro software that's falling behind, back to iOS, etc. I said years ago this was a real problem. Leopard was the first Mac OS version to get massively delayed by the iPhone and it's been a bit of a snafu ever since. The Mac Pro should NEVER have had to wait that long for a major update, etc. Apple needs to get its arse in gear.
 

chocolaterabbit

macrumors regular
Nov 2, 2008
243
58
I'm not at all familiar with Apple's internal politics. I've often read on this forum that Cook's only weakness is not being Steve. I disagree with that. Steve is gone. Anyone in the CEO slot would not be Steve. Not possible.

I am not a Cook fan. I was very optimistic when Cook became CEO. My expectations are now very low. Just yesterday I was asking a friend about good hardware for a Windows notebook.

It's a sad thought but my next primary computer may be a Windows unit. Win is secondary here for the occasional thing that is better suited to Win.

I hope that's not necessary.

By all accounts, Cook hit it out of the park for developers at this WWDC. The only thing they were missing that was rumoured was Maps announcements, but everything else was excellent. If they can keep this up and get the same reception for the iPhone/iPad/iWatch announcement later this year, you won't have anything to worry about.
 

Yojimbo007

macrumors 6502a
Jun 13, 2012
693
576
I have always suspected internal issues at apple, but I wonder how bad is it. Apple is short on staff and that is leading to obvious stress.

My sources tell me TechCrunch sources are bogus.
And look at all these posts and engagement over pure speculation or even FUD.

Come on people !
 

ONH

macrumors newbie
Jun 16, 2010
18
0
Maps is one thing that is very important and Apple cannot replace instantly. It takes a lot of time to update and build a maps database and lots of effort and resources.

Nokia and Google have been doing it for years!

Apple made a mistake thinking they could easily and quickly mitigate that problem. If they were smart, they'd have switched to OSM (OpenStreetMaps), open crowd sourced maps. They'd have gotten good map source and helped the open source movement too.

Map Data is not bad in my location the map data surpasses that of google, simple map and routing Apple is already better than Google but they should have stayed with osm data which is in Switzerland most of the Times more recent than the government data, and the quality on par with it since they got confirmation they can use the orthophotos for maping, the same as the gov one use for theirs.

The one problem lies in business location data which google gets almost free since almoste every business includes it on the homepage, and if they are not stupide. They have found a way to extract it out of website data, with their web crawler.

The second problem ist the way it searches for the locations, globally instead of the nearest location, which is probably mostentimes the best choise.

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Google Maps for iOS has had vector maps since 2012.

Just after they get knotn that Apple is shiping an own map service not based on google map. Here google is worse than an local phonebook + pasting the data into an OSM or the iOS built in map. Google maps is just usefull for street view which is not really aviable in swiitzerland.
 

Boomish69

macrumors 6502
Sep 13, 2012
398
105
London
Thats classic Apple, spreading themselves thin, trying to get their engineers to cover too much, no wonder their app quality has dropped and development is so far behind. They need to invest some of that money stashed away in more staff!

It seems to be all about the money now and Apple product second..
 

Bhatu

macrumors regular
Apr 1, 2013
171
86
That doesn't make any sense. Why would Apple wait around for a magic number before doing anything? If fixes and bugs aren't being taken care of until some "magic number" is met; isn't that screwing over the people who already have Apple maps??
Its not like that. In iOS8, search provider has been defaulted as Bing. Does it means search is screwed? No! Users can anytime switch back to Google search.
Same way, People who feel lack of functionality with Apple Maps are free to download Google Maps and use it as they were using it before with previous versions of iOS. Apple is no more interested in promoting Google.
 

dragicon

macrumors member
Jan 12, 2014
42
154
Except WWDC where they explicitly brought up improved Maps in China in iOS8?

I'll believe their improvements when I see it. They are non-existent here. They have said they are always improving their maps, but they haven't done anything here yet. Open up your maps app and check it out.
 

mrjr101

macrumors regular
Jul 29, 2013
103
10
Flawlessly? It's an abomination. It takes forever to lock on and recalculate and it's never clear when to take a turn. It also lags behind considerably.

It might be different on the 5s but my exerience with Maps as turn by turn satnav is horrible. I prefer my Garmin with lane assists. It also actually zooms in when you're about to take a turn and it doesn't lag behind.
Huh? Lag? What phone do you have? Actually with the 5S Apple maps is faster and integrates better with the OS than Google Maps. I really have no idea what you guys are talking about. The only lacking feauture if Apple maps is the traffic data. Other than that it works smoother than Google for me by a long shot.
 

mtneer

macrumors 68040
Sep 15, 2012
3,179
2,714
Its not like that. In iOS8, search provider has been defaulted as Bing. Does it means search is screwed? No! Users can anytime switch back to Google search.
Same way, People who feel lack of functionality with Apple Maps are free to download Google Maps and use it as they were using it before with previous versions of iOS. Apple is no more interested in promoting Google.

I still don't get it. If Apple did not want to promote Google, fine, they should have an alternative that works just as well, if not better. If they have an alternative that's not good enough many ways, why would they just sit on it and not rapidly improve?

And more than anything, asking users who are unhappy with the product to go to Google, is in itself a massive endorsement of Google's product - negating the whole point of the project...
 

SusanK

macrumors 68000
Oct 9, 2012
1,676
2,655
By all accounts, Cook hit it out of the park for developers at this WWDC. The only thing they were missing that was rumoured was Maps announcements, but everything else was excellent. If they can keep this up and get the same reception for the iPhone/iPad/iWatch announcement later this year, you won't have anything to worry about.


chocolaterabbit, thanks for the reassuring post. I love the Mac. Always have. Our first computer was a Mac. Neither of us had a clue about computers then. We were drawn to the Mac and very pleased.

I hope to be using a Mac as my main computer all the time.

Thanks again!

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Any time I start to get annoyed with OSX after a few months, I use a windows machine for a week. I always end up running "back to my mac", as it t'were.


I'm definitely a Mac user. Hope to stay that way. If we started with Windows I'm not certain I would have enjoyed a computer as any more than a necessary evil. Macs have always been fun and friendly.
 

Tech198

Cancelled
Mar 21, 2011
15,915
2,151
Hire me now Apple........Looks like i saw this one coming and several other stuff.. nailed it every time

They keep saying in chat i'm smart :), so what are THEY gonna do about it ?

hmmm
 
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