I understand this, but why not wait until the database is better before launching a way below par app? Also, some of the errors on Apple Maps is not down to the database, but just plain mistakes by the programmers.
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Wow. Apple Maps is a disaster.
- Thread starter b24pgg
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I understand this, but why not wait until the database is better before launching a way below par app? Also, some of the errors on Apple Maps is not down to the database, but just plain mistakes by the programmers.
ok I'm going to give my genuine opinion since I used them properly for the first time last night properly.
When I first tried them I searched for a couple of places and it was a bit of a nightmare. I just couldn't find anywhere. I wasn't exactly looking for somewhere small and obscure either. I was searching for a place called chillfactor which is a big 250m indoor ski slope that raises about 80 metres in the air so I would expected some mention of it within a map app. So anyway, I sort of ditched maps and just carried on using tom tom but last night I was determined to try the map app and try and be as impartial as I can. Loaded up my friends address.....found straight away (am guessing address searches are fairly cmprehensive its just the landmarks and businesses that are sparse at the mo) and set off driving. It started the directions straight away which was great. I even went the wrong way on purpose to see how quick it redirected me and it was immediate. The whole experience was way clearer and easy to navigate than on my tom tom app. I was sold in one journey!
I saved the address in my friends contact book, stopped, got rid of the journey and then hit siri and said get me directions to alex.......straight up it pulled her address up and fired up the maps up with the route ready. I was really impressed. I will say for long journeys I would still go with Tom Tom because I trust it more but for shorter journeys the apple maps were great for me. I love how simple and great the navigating view is. I also love how it go's into the lock screen and if you hit the home button and look through something on the phone it uses the notification window at the top to give you journey information. That stuff is genius! I haven't tested the traffic. I don;t even know if it integrated with the turn by turn stuff....am assuming it is though.
I know it has its problems, I was frustrated with it out of the box BUT I think it is a fantastic base for a great maps app. Hopefully it will evolve quickly into something near googles offerings. I will also say I've only ever used ios google maps so I can;t compare it to google maps on android which is more comrehensive.
My view is probably contrary to a lot of views on here so be nice! I haven't posted it to provoke negative responses!
When I first tried them I searched for a couple of places and it was a bit of a nightmare. I just couldn't find anywhere. I wasn't exactly looking for somewhere small and obscure either. I was searching for a place called chillfactor which is a big 250m indoor ski slope that raises about 80 metres in the air so I would expected some mention of it within a map app. So anyway, I sort of ditched maps and just carried on using tom tom but last night I was determined to try the map app and try and be as impartial as I can. Loaded up my friends address.....found straight away (am guessing address searches are fairly cmprehensive its just the landmarks and businesses that are sparse at the mo) and set off driving. It started the directions straight away which was great. I even went the wrong way on purpose to see how quick it redirected me and it was immediate. The whole experience was way clearer and easy to navigate than on my tom tom app. I was sold in one journey!
I saved the address in my friends contact book, stopped, got rid of the journey and then hit siri and said get me directions to alex.......straight up it pulled her address up and fired up the maps up with the route ready. I was really impressed. I will say for long journeys I would still go with Tom Tom because I trust it more but for shorter journeys the apple maps were great for me. I love how simple and great the navigating view is. I also love how it go's into the lock screen and if you hit the home button and look through something on the phone it uses the notification window at the top to give you journey information. That stuff is genius! I haven't tested the traffic. I don;t even know if it integrated with the turn by turn stuff....am assuming it is though.
I know it has its problems, I was frustrated with it out of the box BUT I think it is a fantastic base for a great maps app. Hopefully it will evolve quickly into something near googles offerings. I will also say I've only ever used ios google maps so I can;t compare it to google maps on android which is more comrehensive.
My view is probably contrary to a lot of views on here so be nice! I haven't posted it to provoke negative responses!
Could Dev Team release an emergency IOS 6 Jailbreak to enable people to restore a proper map app? Lives might depend on it.
PS Siri based Navigation sexy but iPhone 4 owners are barred from it.
PS Siri based Navigation sexy but iPhone 4 owners are barred from it.
Yep, I've heard good things about the navigation too. The trouble is I don't use this function as have inbuilt sat nav in the car. I do however, use google maps a lot prior to my journey as don't like driving 'blind'. Just the lack of difference in colours between motorways and A-roads etc makes Apple Maps unpleasant to use, add to that the lack of detail and it's little to no use to me. Also the lack of street view is a big problem for my wife when she's trying to navigate around London when she goes for business meetings. Google maps in safari does not have street view either on the iphone.
So I guess it all comes down to what functions you use. I'm sure if you use Apple Maps as a sat nav you'll be happy, if you use it as a map/atlas you'll not be.
Can completely understand that. Has she tried flyover? I can see how it isn't as good as streetview if you wanted to find somewhere exact and look out for something on the street as you are walking there but flyover combined with the navigation I imagine is fairly comprehensive. Although if you are used to using steetview can also understand its a complete pain for a lot of people to change how they have to search for something.
It's on its way apparently, here's the full Google Maps app running on iOS 6 on a jail broken iPhone 3GS. The changeover from Apple Maps to Google Maps is around the 25 second mark.
https://mobile.twitter.com/rpetrich/status/249802824567881728
I've never been jailbroken myself, however.
Here's a report on the 7000+ mix of full-time employees & contractors involved on Google maps;
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/apple-maps-rival-google-maps-employs-7100-people-50009284/
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I don't see how an optional, opt-in service can be seen as a privacy risk.
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Street View and Apple's 3D view are incomparable.
For starters, Street View covers far more of the world.
Street View covers every UK street!
I don't fly a plane around Boston, so being able to see it from the Sky doesn't really help me.
I walk and drive around streets every day - something that Street View CAN help with.
I tried a jailbreak once on my iphone 3, but it made it glitchy. Are jailbreaks still glitchy or are they much better these days?
Flyover doesn't show shops etc etc to get your bearings very well. Flyover is a cool feature that looks amazing, but in reality has little to no use in the real world.
It's a shame google haven't put street view on their web app. I know the web app isn't as slick as the proper app was, but with street map it would give virtually all the functionality. Does anyone know if street maps will be available on the web app anytime soon?
Here is an excellent article by TechCrunch, which goes into the immense detail & workload behind maintaining Google Maps.
Some quotes I found interesting included,
"This is where Street View is very critical. This is a simple intersection. We examine all of the intersections, determine where you can and can’t turn. Our operators jump into 3D mode, so you can see what you’re editing. Grab a no uturn sign as an “Observation”, to leave yourself breadcrumbs as you move around the system.
If there’s something that an operator can’t quite figure out, and this road is a major artery somewhere in California, they can file a ticket to send a Street View truck out again to survey the area. It’s that efficient, and that processed filled".
"As it stands, the team pushes new imagery every two weeks, 20 petabytes of it, to be exact. As the company now relies less on third-party information and imagery, it doesn’t have wait a long time to verify and push the new information. Sometimes it used to take up to eighteen months to perfect a city in the United States, but now it can be done in hours".
"Make no mistake about it, there will be a native Google Maps app for iOS 6, but it won’t be made available until it is ready to blow Apple out of the water, as this is Google’s only chance to give people a true Coke vs. Pepsi test for what they want to use to navigate the globe".
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Here's What Goes Into Making Google Maps, Will Apple Be Able To Recalculate?
http://goo.gl/40HQp
Some quotes I found interesting included,
"This is where Street View is very critical. This is a simple intersection. We examine all of the intersections, determine where you can and can’t turn. Our operators jump into 3D mode, so you can see what you’re editing. Grab a no uturn sign as an “Observation”, to leave yourself breadcrumbs as you move around the system.
If there’s something that an operator can’t quite figure out, and this road is a major artery somewhere in California, they can file a ticket to send a Street View truck out again to survey the area. It’s that efficient, and that processed filled".
"As it stands, the team pushes new imagery every two weeks, 20 petabytes of it, to be exact. As the company now relies less on third-party information and imagery, it doesn’t have wait a long time to verify and push the new information. Sometimes it used to take up to eighteen months to perfect a city in the United States, but now it can be done in hours".
"Make no mistake about it, there will be a native Google Maps app for iOS 6, but it won’t be made available until it is ready to blow Apple out of the water, as this is Google’s only chance to give people a true Coke vs. Pepsi test for what they want to use to navigate the globe".
-----------------
Here's What Goes Into Making Google Maps, Will Apple Be Able To Recalculate?
http://goo.gl/40HQp
Flyover doesn't have anything to do with Street View, they are totally different things.
And, by the way, when Flyover cover the 5 million miles Street View covers, call me
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And? Flyover is not Street View
Doing things that must be done in a business environment seems to have got Dell and RIM so far. Their recent histories are littered with business decisions of this sort.
The 3d renders of Apple Maps are no replacement for street view the technology used to capture them will never be good enough to read the signs on the front of stores there are actual physics limits to the image quality something strapped to a plane could ever capture, and the renders are from just too high a vantage point to deliver useful information to someone on foot.
For example, as I pointed out when this catastrophe was only rumoured, I have a friend in a wheelchair. I frequently use street view when were trying to find a bar to meet because you can look at the front of the venue and see if its wheelchair accessible. Youre not ever, ever going to be able to use the 3d renders to do that.
It is possible that something behind the scenes may have forced their hand. For all we know, maybe Google was demanding too much to license their own maps?
Tim's no simpleton. I like to believe that he has a larger plan, and removing google maps is just one tiny pawn in this whole chess game. We just aren't seeing the big picture.
Yes and apart from familiarising myself with a destination, which I've used street view for regularly, I also use it to check the parking restrictions on some city streets by reading the signage.
I realise this will catch me out one day with an old image, but it hasn't let me down so far.
Why would Google do this?
It makes no sense at all as they would lose potential advertising revenue from not having this application on iPhones and also miss out on the opportunity to have a key component on a (perceived) competitor's mobile operating system.
Like the YouTube removal, this is unfortunately an Apple decision based purely on their competition with Google & obsession to control everything about the experience, even when it results in a backward step for their customers.
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I respectfully disagree. Google has a big win in using street view. I do use that a lot if I'm traveling out of town to unknown areas and businesses. My team and I call on doctor offices that can be in a strip mall, office building, hospital, medical parks, etc...
There's nothing like being able to have a photo of the business handy when in the car. I usually cut/paste them into my calender appointments when I'm in my office at my desktop so that right before I set the GPS to go, I can have a look at the destination from a perspective of what it will look like from my car.
^^ good use.
It came in very hand with me one day as the company I work for has strict legal details behind the type of signage our customers can use outside their practices. One day I fielded a call from an office that said their competition was breaking the rules with the sign they have had in place. For kicks, I pulled up the google image and it indeed matched the description of what was provided, thus I could act on that immediately without having to actually be there or have a photo sent to me.
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Tim's no simpleton. I like to believe that he has a larger plan, and removing google maps is just one tiny pawn in this whole chess game. We just aren't seeing the big picture.
I also think the plan was if their out of the box solution doesn't meet your needs, that users could fall back on any number of apps that do and in many cases do it better.
yeah....first I'm the best unpaid employee of Apple and now I'm a Motion X Developer
Glad you came clean. people should now realise that your opinion is irrelevant and you are making apple look bad.
You don't read sarcasm very well do you? Re-read my post and tell me if you still think one of those two companies is my employer.
Beta products should not be released to retail and used in advertising.
PERIOID.
At least SIRI worked and wasn't replacing a BETTER voice-control product. That you can forgive. There was no free SIRI on the 4S, so it was welcome.
But taking an established, FAR SUPERIOR Google service and replacing it with some cheap MICKEY MOUSE Apple service is a disgrace. Just to reduce the visibility of Google on the device? Disgraceful.
With all the BAZILLIONS of dollars Apples makes on off cheap Asian labor and zombie-like customers, you'd think they'd do more homework...
PERIOID.
At least SIRI worked and wasn't replacing a BETTER voice-control product. That you can forgive. There was no free SIRI on the 4S, so it was welcome.
But taking an established, FAR SUPERIOR Google service and replacing it with some cheap MICKEY MOUSE Apple service is a disgrace. Just to reduce the visibility of Google on the device? Disgraceful.
With all the BAZILLIONS of dollars Apples makes on off cheap Asian labor and zombie-like customers, you'd think they'd do more homework...
I used the news maps app this weekend, side by side with my TomTom and my Honda (Alpine) GPS.
What an amazing upgrade, you can actually use it like a GPS, and it was easy to follow. Maps sucked before iOS 6 and was only useful if you were walking or taking public transportation.
Great update Apple, thanks.
What an amazing upgrade, you can actually use it like a GPS, and it was easy to follow. Maps sucked before iOS 6 and was only useful if you were walking or taking public transportation.
Great update Apple, thanks.
I can understand about street view but having a lay with flyover gives you a pretty good view of where a building is in relation to your surroundings.
I just typed in a building in manhester and had a look round the streets and it was very obvious where the building was in relation to the center......although I will concede the pin is in the wrong building the actual building is next door!!! But as far as detail go's theres not a massive amount between street view and flyover for locating buildings. I will say it was far easier to manipulate the flyover view than it was to faff with the streetview going forwards and backwards though.
I just typed in a building in manhester and had a look round the streets and it was very obvious where the building was in relation to the center......although I will concede the pin is in the wrong building
the actual building is next door!!! But as far as detail go's theres not a massive amount between street view and flyover for locating buildings. I will say it was far easier to manipulate the flyover view than it was to faff with the streetview going forwards and backwards though.Attachments
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I like the new maps but here's a few gripes:
1. More POI's
2. Zooming out further in Turn by Turn
1. More POI's
2. Zooming out further in Turn by Turn