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There are a lot of errors with the actual mapping data in the UK.

This one near to me still hasn't been fixed.

It's not limited to the UK. I had a problem in Denver, Burbank, CA and also in Chicago. Is it EVERYWHERE?
No, not at all.
But a map app's reliability when traveling in an unfamiliar location is what people rely on. And when you've had bad information happen to you a few times, it makes every location suspect...and that's not exactly a confidence builder for an application that's integrated into the IOS.
 
The big problem with Apple maps is bad POIs. 3rd party doesn't make use of these, AFAIK. Apple's addresses are fine, and in some cases, even better than google's.

There are plenty of reports, including my own, where addresses are significantly off.



Nothing is dead. I might have missed it, but I haven't really seen any problems with apps no working because of Maps. Maybe if you run and use the maps, you might not be able to map your run, but this is in isolated cases. And I"m sure you'll still get your mileage computed correctly. I'm also sure you are not running by looking at your maps.

If there are more serious cases, please post. Otherwise, I'm starting to suspect FUD is at play here. Too many chicken littles.

Yes, you missed it... which is somewhat surprising considering you have quoted the comments saying what is dead.

Location services, because of the wrong addresses in the maps, no longer work at all. If I were to now tell Siri, "Remind me when I get home to call ___," it wouldn't work since, according to the maps, I haven't been home in weeks. My home is now a off in the middle of the woods somewhere - along with all of my neighbors (so I don't even have the option of putting in a wrong address for the time being).

No, I don't use the maps while I run, but I do share them with my friends/ jogging partners... something I can no longer do since it now shows me running in the middle of a blank landscape (it used to show the path,

The bulk of my real estate apps are, for the moment, completely useless as they also use the maps for the addresses and now show the homes in completely wrong spots.
 
There are plenty of reports, including my own, where addresses are significantly off.





Yes, you missed it... which is somewhat surprising considering you have quoted the comments saying what is dead.

Location services, because of the wrong addresses in the maps, no longer work at all. If I were to now tell Siri, "Remind me when I get home to call ___," it wouldn't work since, according to the maps, I haven't been home in weeks. My home is now a off in the middle of the woods somewhere - along with all of my neighbors (so I don't even have the option of putting in a wrong address for the time being).

No, I don't use the maps while I run, but I do share them with my friends/ jogging partners... something I can no longer do since it now shows me running in the middle of a blank landscape (it used to show the path,

The bulk of my real estate apps are, for the moment, completely useless as they also use the maps for the addresses and now show the homes in completely wrong spots.

So, aside from the problem that everyone has on POIs, your immediate location is badly mapped. My gps coordinates in NYC are bad also, but that is because my company's wifi has its geolocation set to another building. I turn off wifi and get more accurate results.

In any case, that is bad, and Apple should be ashamed, but this is not the general experience (at least not in the US), from what I can tell.

POIs are general. Bad address and road data, not so much.

I am curious, though. What town is that? I haven't seen many cases of bad mapping data in iOS and would like to get a better idea.
 
Don't think that matters - they have already payed. The agreement would run out in the middle of the year and could not be tied to a IOS/iPhone refresh...

I expect that payments are yearly and you can bet that apple dropped it as soon as they stopped paying for it. Makes the most business sense.
 
I expect that payments are yearly and you can bet that apple dropped it as soon as they stopped paying for it. Makes the most business sense.

Even on the extremely dubious logic that Apple were paying anything in the first place, the vast majority of Apple devices are still using Google Maps today.
 
Have no fear, Apple is luring Google map employee to help out :cool:)

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/23/so...g-ex-google-maps-staff-to-build-out-ios-maps/

Apple is going after people with experience working on Google Maps to develop its own product, according to a source with connections on both teams. Using recruiters, Apple is pursuing a strategy of luring away Google Maps employees who helped develop the search giant’s product on contract, and many of those individuals seem eager to accept due in part to the opportunity Apple represents to build new product, instead of just doing “tedious updates” on a largely complete platform.

My source — a contractor who worked on Google Maps as part of a massive undertaking to integrate Street View and newly licensed third-party data to improve European coverage, as well as develop the platform’s turn-by-turn navigation — says that when attention turned to indoor mapping, things started to become less interesting and a lot of staff began looking around for other opportunities. That turned out to be good timing for Cupertino. Here’s what my source describes happening around that time:

..........
 
An interesting survey to define how big a disaster the Apple map is to the end user.. In presidential polling, a 1000 participants survey get us +-4% or so error rate.. Not sure how scientific this poll is in term of selecting users... But it at least adds another data point. The 5.6% is still a big number. With 4Q project Iphone sales of 50M unit. 5.6% is 2.8m unit. So Apple will loss 2.8m unit sales in 4Q if this number is true.. But however we term the map disaster, it does not translate into a sales disaster... And as the map improve, this 5.6% number will improve as well... Are we ready to shut down this Map disaster thread? I am ready for a "has IOS Map improve lately" thread without all the repeat of how big a blunder Apple made. We already know that.

http://www.phonedog.com/2012/10/11/are-apple-maps-in-ios-6-sufficient-for-your-needs/

A recent survey suggests that overall satisfaction with iOS 6 Maps isn't as low as some media outlets would have us believe, though. Electronista reports this morning that a SEO ranking provider conducted a survey with over 1,100 respondents. Only 200 of those, however, had used iOS 6 and Apple Maps. But what those 200 had to say might surprise you.

Nearly half of the 200 (50.7 percent) who had used iOS 6 and Apple Maps said the issues found with Apple Maps had not affected them. Another 23.3 percent called Apple Maps "good enough", and 17.2 said the new Maps were "annoying, but not a deal breaker." Only 5.6 percent of those dissatisfied with Apple Maps said the issues at hand "might affect" future buying decisions.

Sure, the sample size is excruciatingly small, but the results of the survey were interesting nonetheless. And this isn't the only data suggesting overall reception of Apple Maps is positive.
 
...And this isn't the only data suggesting overall reception of Apple Maps is positive.
I think saying that the reception to Apple Maps is "positive" is a stretch, especially given the sample size.
And you know the old saw: there are lies, damned lies and statistics...
All you need to know is that the CEO of the most highly capitalized company in the world thought the public's reception of Apple Maps was so much less than positive, that he issued a public apology for it...
 
But to say the map will continue to be a disaster in the next 3 months, 6 months or 12 months is just non-sense.

You claim to have 20+ years of software development experience and you think everything will be sweet within the year? You're making the exact same mistake Apple did. You've never heard of the phrase "Garbage in, Garbage out"?

Software development was a tiny part of this project and it isn't what is causing the the thousands, if not millions of errors. The problem is with the source data and how the disparate sources were integrated and the scale of the problems is enormous. The problem here is one of cartography and data organisation, not software development.

Cartography is clearly an area that you and Apple know nothing about.

I've said it before and I'll say again. For Apple to get Maps usable in the sort of timeframe you are talking about they will need to completely start again with new data.

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I expect that payments are yearly and you can bet that apple dropped it as soon as they stopped paying for it. Makes the most business sense.

Do you understand what a contract is and what usually happens if you break the contract early?
 
You claim to have 20+ years of software development experience and you think everything will be sweet within the year? You're making the exact same mistake Apple did. You've never heard of the phrase "Garbage in, Garbage out"?


I've said it before and I'll say again. For Apple to get Maps usable in the sort of timeframe you are talking about they will need to completely start again with new data.




heh heh, may I ask how much do you know about software development and map development specifically in making that statement? You keep claiming the data is the problem but yet tom tom has some pretty decent Nav out on the market. So how can the data be the major issue here??? Appleinsider has a pretty good review of the Map and identify different class of problem within the IOS 6 map. A lot of the error are things like using old data model, 3D rendering error, typo, misplace name.. All those can be corrected within a reasonable time frame and enough man power. And in the fix they had last week, they have already fix some 3d rendering problem. So I think it is at least a decent start in the long journey. I would love to revive this thread in 3 months, 6 months, 9 months and a year to see what the passionate Android lover will say about Apple map by then :cool:) I am optimistic as a would be shareholder.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/25/inside_ios_6_whats_wrong_with_apples_new_maps/page/1

One year is a very long time in software development and Apple is hiring Google map contractor to help out the process. There is something no one want to discuss, Apple map is better than Google map in China. So at least in the effort to make IOS 6 map usable, there is one less country to worry about.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/27/apple_maps_works_in_china/

While many around the world have slammed Apple's new mapping software in iOS 6, the company has built a special version of Maps for China that has been praised as a "huge improvement over Google Maps," though it lacks some new features due to Chinese laws.
 
Even on the extremely dubious logic that Apple were paying anything in the first place, the vast majority of Apple devices are still using Google Maps today.

Haha, you think that Google just allowed Apple free access to a mapping service which cost them hundreds of millions of dollars to develop?

:rolleyes:

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You keep claiming the data is the problem but yet tom tom has some pretty decent Nav out on the market. So how can the data be the major issue here???

There have been plenty of people in this thread who have stated that what they see in Tom Tom and what they see in Apple Maps are not even close.

It quite clear that either Tom Tom is not the sole provider of mapping data, or they have not provided Apple with recent maps.

I'm not sure if you're from the US or not, but outside of the US the Apple Maps situation is simply appalling and given the worldwide nature of the issues - the scale of the problem is simply enormous.

Anyways, clearly you think this is a software problem which can be corrected with software patches and I believe the problem is source data. Not much more to discuss but I will be revisiting this thread at a later date to tell you "I told you so" ;)

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I would love to revive this thread in 3 months, 6 months, 9 months and a year to see what the passionate Android lover will say about Apple map by then :cool:)

Wow, we just said the same thing. Please do.

Even IF Apple somehow does the miraculous and gets their Maps to be as good as Google Maps on iOS was within the year, Google Maps on Android is already so far ahead of what you had on iOS it's not funny. In a years time, Maps on Android will be even further ahead than it is now so i'm not sure why an Android user would be feeling jealous.

The current detail and quality level of Google Maps is based on 7 years of them pouring massive amounts of resources into this project. Apple won't be catching up in a few months with the current data.
 
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There are a lot of errors with the actual mapping data in the UK.

This one near to me still hasn't been fixed.

I'm a daily mapping user and I've really been trying to give Apple Maps a chance. But it's appalling.

It's the search box that really makes it useless. I was trying to find an address on foot in Clifton, a big area of Bristol. But typing 'Street Address Clifton' utterly failed. The best I could do was type 'Road Name Bristol' to finally work out where I was heading. The specific address wasn't there. I'm not sure if Clifton exists on the map or whether it's the bad search that was the issue.

Sometimes it works okay but it's so hit and miss it just can't be relied on like Google Maps.
 
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I'm a daily mapping user and I've really been trying to give Apple Maps a chance. But it's appalling.

It's the search box that really makes is useless. I was trying to find an address on foot in Clifton, a big area of Bristol. But typing 'Street Address Clifton' utterly failed. The best I could do was type 'Road Name Bristol' to finally work out where I was heading. The specific address wasn't there. I'm not sure if Clifton exists on the map or whether it's the bad search that was the issue.

Sometimes it works okay but it's so hit and miss it just can't be relied on like Google Maps.

I think what some people fail to appreciate is that once a map has been known to be unreliable, it is no longer useful for the user. It doesn't matter how correct it sometimes is, since you'll never know when that sometime is. I tried using it in London the other day and it was so useless (=couldn't find addresses and/or long established shops) that I had to switch to googlemaps via safari, but that is slow, doesn't show which direction you're facing and is generally cumbersome. Finally I just asked for directions since I was in a hurry and didn't have patience/time to deal with the hassle of the technology.

By contrast, a few weeks ago I would have put in my address in maps and just followed the directions with the confidence that it would get me where I wanted to go. And, even if it sometimes (but extremely rarely) was wrong at least it would take me to within close proximity of where I was going. With the new app, sometimes it'll show me places on another continent and quite often 'location not found'.

Appalling is definitely the right word to describe my experience of using the new maps app.
 
To contrast...

I reported problems to Apple four weeks ago. Heard nothing and problems haven't been fixed.

I reported a problem to Google four days ago and I've received an email saying I was correct about the issue and they'd fix the map soon.
 
I wrote:

[/INDENT]However, I still think that, if a viable maps competitor appears (one comparable in both features AND USABILITY to the old Apple/Google Maps app), the new Apple maps app is probably dead.


I beg to differ. The ace in the hole for Apple is the location based apps like Passport. When they tie into Apple map, what is a user going to do? Also Apple map allow 3rd party tie in. so if you want to use the 3rd party apps that tie into Apple map, users don't exactly has a choice.

Right now we have already experienced the worst of the Apple map. As they fix some of the problems, the map will become more useful for more people. At some point, may be our friend in UK and other European countries can use the Apple map also.. I am optimistic that 3 months from now, the map will improve. And 6 months from now, it will improve more.. And pretty soon, the Apple map fiasco will be behind us.
 
And pretty soon, the Apple map fiasco will be behind us.

People don't forget that quickly.

'Antennagate' is still brought up and that was a quick and easy fix (where Apple still bribed their customers).
The maps have hindered phones for millions of people all over the world and we've simply been told to deal with it and wait. Even if/ when the maps are fixed, there has been some serious damage done to overall faith and trust in Apple.

Add in the scratches, bugs, and numerous other issues turning up in the iPhone 5, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 5S sales do take a major hit.
 
I think what some people fail to appreciate is that once a map has been known to be unreliable, it is no longer useful for the user. It doesn't matter how correct it sometimes is, since you'll never know when that sometime is...

This is SPOT on! You can't trust it when it gives you a multitude of wrong locations, etc. So how do you know when it's right or when it's wrong? The answer is that you don't!
 
"ChangeWave Research and 451 Research surveyed 4,270 North American consumers in September 2012"

The mapping is better in North America than anywhere else... and North America is only 1/3rd of Apple's iPhone market.

This survey proves nothing.

It seems like you are rooting against Apple. What is the point of that?

The survey proves a lot. It proves that, in North America (probably in the US), it's not a big deal.

I would bet that in other places the numbers are much worse. But I still think that they won't be as bad as people think. Why is it so hard for some to accept that, while Maps may be horrible for them, there are lots of other people who don't have a problem with it?

If I was one of the unlucky few(?), I would be happy that the bad press is pushing Apple to fix things. If the bad press was proportional to the people who were upset, Apple might never get its maps fixed.
 
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