Looks like Apple's map software has lots of issues

[Childs]

I think one thing that is missing from Apple Maps is approximations. Google does the "Did you mean" thing when it doesnt know. Apple Maps just says no results.

I just looked at Nokia's Maps, and they use address approximation as well.

 

[Aikouka]

I think one thing that is missing from Apple Maps is approximations. Google does the "Did you mean" thing when it doesnt know. Apple Maps just says no results.

I just looked at Nokia's Maps, and they use address approximation as well.

Oh, I agree that it can be quite worthwhile if there are no results. It's the equivalent of Google's "Did you mean...?" web search results, which have certainly saved my bacon a few times! Above, I'm just stating that a valid result should trump an approximation.

Although, when you start entering slightly vague things such as just saying "ny", what exactly constitutes a valid result becomes a little hazy. As I mentioned before, I lived in New York state for awhile, so when someone says "New York" to me, I think of the state. Most people around here think I lived in New York City if I mention where I moved from.

 

[Eug]

Reuters compares Apple Maps to Google Maps in Hong Kong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lw2Sh1Joj4&feature=player_embedded#!

Result is that walking directions not great for either, but Google has way more information.

 

[ThermalShark]

Consumer Reports re evaluates maps:

Bottom line:
Both the free Apple and Google navigation apps provide clear routing directions. Apple feels like a less-mature product. But as seen with the initial competing applications for the iPhone, we would expect updates to this new app over time--and Apple has promised as much. When getting down to the nitty gritty, Google provides a better overall package, but we feel that both provide a good solution for standard software. We expect the competition between the companies will benefit customers with ongoing improvements.

http://news.consumerreports.org/car...on-showdown-apple-ios6-vs-google-android.html

 

[Eug]

NY Times: Jobs started building Maps app in 2009. Apple executives embarrassed by Maps app release.

Some have sought to pin the blame for the maps debacle on a relaxing of standards under Mr. Cook, who was elevated from the No. 2 position at Apple just over a year ago. He took over shortly before the death of Steven P. Jobs, a notorious perfectionist known to shelve products that did not pass muster.

But numerous interviews with former Apple employees in the wake of the maps controversy made it clear that Mr. Jobs and other executives rarely paid as much attention to Internet services as they did to the devices for which Apple is best known. Nor did they show the kind of consistent foresight in this area that has served the company so well in designing hardware and software.

Including a maps app on the first iPhone was not even part of the company’s original plan as the phone’s unveiling approached in January 2007. Just weeks before the event, Mr. Jobs ordered a mapping app to show off the capabilities of the touch-screen device.

Two engineers put together a maps app for the presentation in three weeks, said a former Apple engineer who worked on iPhone software, and who declined to be named because he did not want to speak publicly about his previous employer. The company hastily cut a deal with Google to use its map data.

At the time, relying on Google, which had introduced its map service a couple of years earlier, made sense. Apple and Google had generally friendly relations, and Google’s chief executive at the time, Eric E. Schmidt, served on Apple’s board.

As the iPhone began to catch on with the public, Apple executives were surprised by the popularity of the map function, according to a former Apple executive who did not want to be named so as not to damage his relations with the company. It began to bother executives how much data about the behavior of iPhone users was flowing back to Google, which could see the coordinates of every iPhone user who downloaded a map, the former executive said.

Former Apple executives said the MobileMe fiasco was a symptom of a lack of appreciation among Apple executives, including Mr. Jobs, of the differences between running an online store like iTunes, where people download music, apps and books, and an online service that is used constantly and must be reliable, like e-mail and maps. Apple’s secrecy around new products also makes it hard to adequately stress-test such services. While MobileMe operated well in private tests by Apple employees, it melted down once it became available to the public, these executives said.

With that experience behind him and tensions with Google increasing, Mr. Jobs set out to build Apple’s own map service in 2009, with the acquisition of a start-up called Placebase. Later, Apple bought two other start-ups focused on 3-D mapping technologies.

Apple executives have said they felt the company needed to get out of the Google relationship in part because under the terms of their deal, Google would not let Apple offer important map features like turn-by-turn spoken directions. A Google spokesman, Nate Tyler, declined to comment.

While Google knew that Apple eventually wanted to build its own maps, there had been no indication that it would do so this year, since there was about a year left on the contract between the two companies, according to people briefed on the negotiations who did not want to be named discussing internal matters.

So Google was blindsided when Apple announced in June that it would replace Google’s maps with its own in a new version of its iOS mobile operating system, and was left scrambling to figure out how to respond, these people said.

According to a former Apple executive who has been in touch with his old colleagues, Apple was caught off guard by the map problems. “They’re embarrassed by it,” he said. Many of the problems are a result of merging map data, some of it flawed, from many sources.

 

[bearxor]

I'm liking the Apple Maps a lot better.

Yesterday, my wife and I were looking for a store and couldn't find it. She was on a 4S. Google was just dropping the pin at the street where the shopping center started. Pulled out my phone and looked for it, and it dropped the pin on the store itself, letting us find it in a corner of the shopping center we just couldn't see until we pulled around to it.

Not that my experience is the end all be all, but honestly, I've had nothing but great experience from the Apple Maps app. It even knows where the pizza place is down the street from my house, something google hasn't fixed in about two years, no matter how many times I've reported it.

 

[TheStu]

I'm liking the Apple Maps a lot better.

Yesterday, my wife and I were looking for a store and couldn't find it. She was on a 4S. Google was just dropping the pin at the street where the shopping center started. Pulled out my phone and looked for it, and it dropped the pin on the store itself, letting us find it in a corner of the shopping center we just couldn't see until we pulled around to it.

Not that my experience is the end all be all, but honestly, I've had nothing but great experience from the Apple Maps app. It even knows where the pizza place is down the street from my house, something google hasn't fixed in about two years, no matter how many times I've reported it.

Apple Maps also properly knows that my street dead ends. Google Maps thinks that it connects through to the next block.

The flipside of this is that the Apple thinks that you can't turn left at other end of my street, and so instead has you go out of your way to turn around on the 2 way street.

 

[jpeyton]

Apple edits their own website to remove praise about their Maps app: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410401,00.asp

As reported by Amit Agarwal, at his Digital Inspiration blog, Apple has since updated its description of its Maps app to omit any mention of Maps being amazing, awesome, or any hint that it's the top dog on the mapping market right now. In fact, the entire sentence praising Maps has been replaced with a new sentence that has nothing to do with the app's quality, but rather, its interface.

 

[Eug]

 

[khha4113]

Apple had been warned about its map's quality.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57529147-37/developers-we-warned-apple-about-ios-maps-quality/

To the casual observer it might appear that Apple was caught off guard by just how bad its in-house maps app was. But the company had plenty of warning.
Developers have been complaining about Apple's Maps since shortly after they were given the first pre-release version in early June, CNET has learned. They say they filed bug requests, sent e-mails to specific Apple employees, and vented on message boards only other developers and Apple could see.

 

[Mopetar]

Apple had been warned about its map's quality.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57529147-37/developers-we-warned-apple-about-ios-maps-quality/

I don't think there's any way that they couldn't have known. They chose to release it anyway. Either they were fine with it shipping in what amounts to beta status or there's a disconnect between their mapping team and the executives at the company.

 

[Oyeve]

I don't think there's any way that they couldn't have known. They chose to release it anyway. Either they were fine with it shipping in what amounts to beta status or there's a disconnect between their mapping team and the executives at the company.

Apple just new it's core cultist would initially bitch about it but would accept it regardless. Same with the purple flairing.