No love for London in 3d maps?

[robbieduncan]

Should be interesting when one of Apple's 'spy' planes tries to overfly East London in a months time and gets shot down by a SAM battery on the roof of some council flats 😎

I love the fact that people keep calling Bow Quarter, a very poncy, privately owned, gated community "council flats". It'll make them so upset 😛

 

[Daveoc64]

Why can't it get better by release date? Internet-based map systems are updated constantly.

More like glacially.

A few years ago Tom Tom bought Tele Atlas, a company that produces the maps used by not just Tom Tom, but Google as well.

It can take years for changes to roads to get reflected in maps. Not only does the mapping company (Tele Atlas) have to update their map, but each company that uses it needs to get the updated copy into their program or service.

Tom Tom releases quarterly updates to its maps for their own navigation devices. If you read their forums, you'll see how long it takes for major changes (new roads, new layouts etc.) to get onto the maps.

Google is no better in this regard. They don't update the basic map data that frequently.

 

[MadGoat]

Beta by definition is functionally complete and needing further testing to iron things out. You are sadly misguided if you think Apple would reveal something and then let millions of people have it with major changes in mind within months. Why embarrass themselves by having people test and USE the solution day to day otherwise?

Current casual users will suffer most from this. They are not going to be smitten even with the expected cute Maps commercials that I am sure are coming. Not because it is different, but because data is missing and the level of details sucks compared to what even iPhone 1 had. It's ugly too but that is subjective.

Beta is also used for in the field stress testing while slowly ramping up full functionality. Testing what computational stress test cannot replicate. This is why you will sometimes see pieces being added as we go along, once their confident that service "A" can handle the stress, start service "B".

Just as OTA wasn't in the first beta of iOS 5 and slowly bade it's appearance and disappearances in subsequent betas.

Between now and September/October we'll see the Maps app go through phases.

 

[GoGa]

Apple have decently left out a few places for 3D, they must be perfecting it.

Places they haven't (that we know of) added but have the data for include:

London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5lM_KefDkg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Hoover Dam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlelVaxctI0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Oslo, Norway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSmunh6NIQI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Venice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNr_ToOFvHI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Also in this video they say the have over 100 cities mapped: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNFz-_fMsg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[nickchallis92]

to be fair, London is the financial capital of the world and one of the great cities. seems ridiculous that it isnt rendered