I've been wondering about the licensing and resources Apple requires for the new features in Siri and Maps. I'm in the UK so this is mainly about that but its general enough to be about every region.
Siri
Siri is obviously touted as pulling data from Wolfram Alpha, Yelp and other sources but I'm wondering if Apple makes the data requests on the fly or weather they have some kind of snapshot of the data to work with. The reason I wonder this is because in the beta there are nowhere near the same amount of search results found in yelp that would be found in the yelp app. Its possible the beta is just pulling from a small data resource for testing purposes and they'll switch to the live data down the line.
Maps
There's a lot of speculation and wondering about where Apple is getting its map data from and most people seem to think that its from TomTom because of the mention in the maps app. Again, if this is true, then I hope the app is using a small data chunk because the maps are nowhere near as detailed or accurate as my 5 year old TomTom device. It seems to me that Apple might have only licensed the route planning technology. The algorithm bit that plots the quickest way through the map data. The map data looks so basic at the moment that its hard to believe it came from TomTom.
Also, currently Siri's pronunciation of words is awful. I live in Wales so most areas are welsh names. in IOS 5 Siri seemed to cope quite well with the names. For example, I live near a town called Abergele (pronounced Abergelly) Siri now says Abergeel. I wondered if the google map data siri was using previously included a hidden translation to help text-to-speech apps pronounce properly. hopefully Apples maps will work in the same way.
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These are just thoughts for interesting discussion. I know its beta 1 and everything can change.. im not judging, assuming or having a go.. I just like the fun in trying to understand how it all works... I would love other peoples thoughts on this
Siri
Siri is obviously touted as pulling data from Wolfram Alpha, Yelp and other sources but I'm wondering if Apple makes the data requests on the fly or weather they have some kind of snapshot of the data to work with. The reason I wonder this is because in the beta there are nowhere near the same amount of search results found in yelp that would be found in the yelp app. Its possible the beta is just pulling from a small data resource for testing purposes and they'll switch to the live data down the line.
Maps
There's a lot of speculation and wondering about where Apple is getting its map data from and most people seem to think that its from TomTom because of the mention in the maps app. Again, if this is true, then I hope the app is using a small data chunk because the maps are nowhere near as detailed or accurate as my 5 year old TomTom device. It seems to me that Apple might have only licensed the route planning technology. The algorithm bit that plots the quickest way through the map data. The map data looks so basic at the moment that its hard to believe it came from TomTom.
Also, currently Siri's pronunciation of words is awful. I live in Wales so most areas are welsh names. in IOS 5 Siri seemed to cope quite well with the names. For example, I live near a town called Abergele (pronounced Abergelly) Siri now says Abergeel. I wondered if the google map data siri was using previously included a hidden translation to help text-to-speech apps pronounce properly. hopefully Apples maps will work in the same way.
---
These are just thoughts for interesting discussion. I know its beta 1 and everything can change.. im not judging, assuming or having a go.. I just like the fun in trying to understand how it all works... I would love other peoples thoughts on this
