True, it is a real town... but is every road in it named that as well?
Last edited:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Wow. Apple Maps is a disaster.
- Thread starter b24pgg
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
True, it is a real town... but is every road in it named that as well?
If they are paying 50k on average, they are spending 350m per year for this group. I think this is a bit hard to believe, especially since they also spend considerably on planes, submarines, bikes, cars, backpacks, servers, electricity, and ping pong tables.
Not saying it isn't true, but that is a lot of money for salary alone.
Has anyone in the US heard of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, one of the federal government's biggest employers?
Neither does Apple Maps. It's just a blank area. No label, just blank. Sad.
Interestingly enough, we received an Institute-wide email 2 days ago (I work there) telling us NOT to updates our devices to iOS 6 "due to reported user problems".
Neither does Apple Maps. It's just a blank area. No label, just blank. Sad.
Interestingly enough, we received an Institute-wide email 2 days ago (I work there) telling us NOT to updates our devices to iOS 6 "due to reported user problems".
I'm wondering if in any way this issue is tied to a carrier or area as this is the third instance of my searching on something like this and it comes up just fine
Once in NY, IL now MD. I've seen similar issues where Siri will not be working for my rep in MI but it comes up just fine for me in OH.Apple is owning up and vowing to fix it. Easier said than done.
david pogue hears from an apple exec
david pogue hears from an apple exec
Well the number is also fairly incorrect - it varies a lot, when Google gathers data there will be more people in their maps group (Indian sourced amongst others) - the number 7000 was back in the day when Google were intensely expanding their maps in many areas. Both the 7000 and the 1500 is dead wrong.
But it does point to how far Apple has to go if they want to get this thing off the ground. Thing is - Google is in the next phase, they have the crowd-sourcing and feedback locked down by now, they have local admins involved... Apple really need to cover some distance on this - not something they do in just a couple of years.
----------
"Apple passes the error reports to TomTom or whichever data vendor is responsible. Eventually, the vendor makes the correction, and hey, presto: Maps gets better."
Wow - i'm amazed how much stupid goes into this turd... passing it on!?! What the **** are they building? An IOS version of a bureaucracy?
+1. There is nothing wrong with TomTom Maps. When they have the best offline navigation product on iOS which sells for $49, why would they give other layers of data to Apple. Probably Apple didn't understand when they signed agreement for "Maps" with TomTom.
I agree. Right now the future of iMaps will depend on apple streamlining the updating and correction process. It's been my position from the start. If they release a web map, they can use it as their mapmaker. I hope they don't just ask for error reports.
But, hey. The first step is admitting you have a problem. They didn't pass the buck.
Time and manpower won't help.
Apple simply can not shun partnerships and do everything themselves There are literally millions of things that need to be fixed, just not possible. Instead they need to find partners that can provide them with the correct data in the first place.
What's needed is a charismatic figure that can convince reputable mapping and satellite imaging companies to work with Apple even at the cost of having them breach their contract with Google, and establish a partnership with a search engine that will source the POI and search results while giving them credible evidence that the partnership will result in something that could beat out Google.
Believe it. TomTom paid $4.3 billion for TeleAtlas. Nokia paid $8 billion for Navteq. When maps are done correctly they cost a ton of money.
Yes, you can search for it and it will drop a pin on it, but there's no indication that a huge campus is actually there. There no label, no different color. Contrast it with the Naval Medical Center across the street.
Time will tell. Google went its own way and is doing great.
----------
But this is over a third of a billion just in salaries. Per year.
Could be true, but it is amazing. Or, the average is much less than 50k.
They also made 37 billion $ dollars in revenue for 2011. Operation cost was 11 billions. The math works.
Many of the contractors are making less than $50K I am sure. But, if Navteq is worth $8 Billion, Google maps is probably worth much more. Maybe $15 Billion in the highly unlikely scenario where Google sold their maps to another company.
Personal preference, I've never cared for TomTom (standalone or otherwise). I find their iPhone app kind of crappy. Just my two cents. (Navigon is my flavor of choice...)
Now today I experience my first "mistake" in Apple Maps. I had Siri navigate me to a Wal-Mart (I know...I know) and it was off by about 0.5 miles, with the pin being quite a bit off-position of where the store itself was located.
This sounds like a colossal waste of time, even if I had any time to spare.
The correct data is already out there, and it's what Google and their partners are using.
It would make sense if somehow the data created for OSM was "better" (from a technological standpoint), but from what I understand OSM is only trying to re-create the wheel when it's clearly not needed.
What Apple should have done is cracked their wallet open and bought TomTom or an equivalent outright. This is the only way they can get competitive with Google and Nokia/Microsoft in any reasonable amount of time.
At the very least they could've licensed the TomTom app (or equivalent) until they could get their maps to a competitive level. It's not like Google was the only maps player in town. It's just that Apple is too greedy and would rather slap the customer than crack their wallet open.
The 2 biggest features of the last 2 gens have been Siri and Maps. Both are beta quality junk at best. Not a good trend.
At the very least they could've licensed the TomTom app (or equivalent) until they could get their maps to a competitive level. It's not like Google was the only maps player in town. It's just that Apple is too greedy and would rather slap the customer than crack their wallet open.
The 2 biggest features of the last 2 gens have been Siri and Maps. Both are beta quality junk at best. Not a good trend.
apple is not going to do that since they don't like to compete with their partners. there are lots of other Nav apps.
i remember when google maps first came out and it was pretty bad. apple maps will improve a lot. its already pretty good in a lot of areas
Unless Apple has an elephant up its sleeve I can't see anything big happening anytime soon, let alone in time for the holiday season.
I mean, what CAN they do? It took them 3 months of Beta to get the continents right.
They don't have access to good imaging sources, they don't have access to good POI databases.
I say this over and over again, without establishing partnerships and getting out of this top-down approach Apple is going nowhere very quickly.
We moved here a year ago. My wife works there. We live across from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, MD. Huge research campus. That's not there either. The major university I graduated from is the same way. Every single building on a campus of over 40,000 students has been wiped from the map. All bike and pedestrian paths wiped from the map.
I have an iP4 and she a Droid X. We were both excited as hell to get new iP5s until we put OS6 on our iPad and saw what a colossal failure the maps were. Being new to the area, we rely on them heavily. For directions yes, but also to get our bearings and identify all of the various things around us. For that purpose, crApple maps are worthless. Shockingly, appallingly bad.
We are waiting. And after 5 years of rocking an iPhone, I'm looking into a contingency plan to extract myself from that ecosystem.
The only way this will be resolved in the near future (1-2 years) is with
1. a functional Google App
2. a means to set that map as the default app for mapping
That's the only way this will be fixed.