Apple promises maps app will 'improve'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19672981

by marklabedz • 14 years ago

26 43 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

Tichy2• 14 years ago

"working hard to make the customer experience even better"

A fine example of Apple speech.

roam• 14 years ago

Seriously? Nine out of ten companies will turn "make it suck less" into "make it even better". Apple dropped the ball, Apple does some very questionable things, but please stop this idiotic bashing, whether it's targeting Apple, Microsoft, Google or even RIM. Just stop it.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

How about a straight "we will fix it"? Maybe it is Marketing 101, but I found it noteworthy how consequently Apple executes it.

talkingquickly• 14 years ago

"and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get"

Based on what I've read about the problems and their causes so far, usage volume doesn't seem to addresses any of the problems except for increasing the likelihood errors will be spotted.

The fundamental problems seem to be around the way multiple data sources have been combined and in its current form I can't see how usage volume would improve this in any way??

It may well contribute to POI data and so make it 'better' but that isn't really what the complaints are about.

jws3• 14 years ago

The only problem I see here in the middle of the US is the sparse and wrong POI data. The tools to report fixes are on the Maps app already. If they have an automated system for processing these it could be fixed very quickly.

People should remember that Google has that POI data because the crowd entered and maintained it. The same dynamic will work for Apple.

Mass transit isn't an issue here, but I hope they get it to work before I go to Manhattan again.

taligent3• 14 years ago

Actually most of Google's POI data comes from established companies e.g. Yellow Pages.

For whatever reason Apple has chosen not to seek out the same partnerships. Maybe they will get round to it. Maybe they are hoping for a true crowdsourced solution.

fpgeek3• 14 years ago

Mass transit depends on your definition of "work".

If you're fine hunting down third-party apps for all of your mass transit needs then you're fine. Quite possibly better than fine since some of those third-party apps cover places the bigger players have trouble with.

If you'd like a baseline set of important cities that work out-of-the-box and want to avoid third-party transit apps as much as possible...

archangel_one• 14 years ago

"as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get."

That's a nice non sequitur, but doesn't really answer how they're going to solve this problem. They say they're working hard on it, but the scale of the data here means that you can have people working hard for months and not fix even 1% of the errors. "The cloud" isn't going to magically solve them itself.

taligent3• 14 years ago

Pretty simple. Apple can do what Google does. Buy/license data from third parties.

You didn't think Google created all of it did you ?

fpgeek3• 14 years ago

Um, that's what Apple is already doing. So far, it isn't working.

Google started doing more than that quite some time ago. They even stopped using TomTom / Tele Atlas (one of Apple's bigger third-party data suppliers) in 2009. Does basing a lot of your map data on a source that Google rejected years ago sound like a way to stay competitive?

Moreover, one of the things I've seen mapping experts say today is that integrating a variety of data providers can make the maps problem harder instead of easier.

BitMastro2• 14 years ago

You also forgot "and put a lot of effort and many years of research and human-curated content".

Of course they can do it, but can they do in a short time? Probably not.

hyperbovine• 14 years ago

Google Maps is seven years old. Do you really think people are going to wait around until 2019 for Apple to fix this?

This is a rare but genuine example of (the modern) Apple completely fucking up; it surprises me that some people are so unwilling to acknowledge the fact.

roc• 14 years ago

They're going to solve it the same way anyone would. By spending a lot of time -- and making their vendors spend a lot of time -- addressing issues as they're identified.

And the 'cloud-based' nature of the app isn't entirely irrelevant, as it means that fixes will be available to everyone as soon as they're made. Users won't ever have to worry about running updates for their map application to get the latest fixes.

jarcoal2• 14 years ago

This is such a silly comment. They will shovel truckloads of cash and labor at it, that's how it will get fixed.

masklinn• 14 years ago

Duh? Couldn't exactly get worse now could it?

glesica• 14 years ago

The interesting question here, to me anyway, is whether this whole debacle is a sign of a real problem at Apple, or whether it was just an "oops" (like the iPhone antenna).

The conventional wisdom (for the past decade or so) has been that Apple doesn't release "beta" products. Google and MS do, but not Apple. However, this is clearly such a product (they must have known it wasn't as good as what it was replacing).

So either Apple is changing (which would be understandable, but still interesting) or this was just an error in judgment somewhere in the chain of command (which itself would be a real change, at least from the Jobs era).

taligent3• 14 years ago

Or (c) you actually don't know as much about Apple as you think. Apple has routinely released 1.0 products that contained major flaws in one way or another.

It's just that Apple polishes those flaws so they aren't as glaring. And they've been doing this since the very beginning of Steve Jobs' second reign i.e. OSX.

rmc• 14 years ago

It's just that Apple polishes those flaws so they aren't as glaring.

Actually, I'd say one of the things is that Apple often release radically new things, so yes there are bugs, but it's so new and different, with much other advantages, that people overlook the bugs, or comparing it with existing offerings is an apples & oranges comparison.

In this case, maps like Apple are releasing are not new. We've had Google Maps et al. for years, so people have come to know what a maps app can do. Apple's offering is not radically different from Google Maps, there's nothing new here. It's completely fair to compare Apple's Maps with OSM or Google Maps, and in that comparison Apple is far behind/

mikeash• 14 years ago

I agree, badly flawed new products are hardly something unusual in the Apple world. What makes Maps such a big deal is that it's not a 1.0 to the users, but rather a 6.0 that's a huge regression from 5.0. Yes, underneath it's basically a new product, but users don't care about that, they just care that the last version was a whole lot better.

fusiongyro2• 14 years ago

Were you there for the Motorola ROKR? What about the idiotic $200 iPod speaker attachment? The original Apple TV?

Apple fucks up a lot. They're just great at making people forget within 6 months.

armandososa• 14 years ago

It's not the same to release a new crappy product and replace a perfectly fine product with a crappy one for millions of happy customers.

rm999• 14 years ago

Apple probably knows they are making a big sacrifice in the shorterm for a (hopefully) longterm benefit. The problem is the two major all-in-one map providers, Google and Microsoft, are building their own mobile ecosystems and directly competing with Apple. Apple is/was at risk of anti-competitive behavior from both; in fact, that may be exactly what happened.

fluidcruft• 14 years ago

I don't know. It seems to me that a lot of Apple decision makers live in a single geographic location. It would be difficult for them to get an overall feel. Perhaps that specific area was focused on and improved drastically recently and they mistook that as an indicator of worldwide quality.

dev_tty01• 14 years ago

Press "Report a Problem" just above the Print button and report the issue to get it fixed. This is a better response than all the whining. Google Maps had many, many issues not long ago and they did get things cleaned up. Same situation here. I am finding Apple Maps to be very solid, but I did notice a small issue, which I reported.

nicholassmith2• 14 years ago

Here's the thing, despite the relentless mockery and snappy tumblrs (which is pretty funny) the Maps app will get better, and probably quickly. Google Maps haven't always been awesome, where I lived about 2 years ago wouldn't show up on GMaps as it thought it was a building site.

Apple had a choice, no maps or some maps. I've been running the GM for a week or so now, and I can say over the course of a week the search and directions quality has improved noticeably in my area of England. I know it sucks they've crippled it but we can either complain about it, or report the errors and hope Apple iterates fast on it.

cfontes• 14 years ago

That's obvious it cannot get any worst than it is now.

This new map app was such a lame move that I cannot understand how did apple shipped the iOS6 with it, if you have a nice person you can call it an early Beta.

kabdib• 14 years ago

I wonder if we're starting to see the "absence of Steve" effect?

As in, "Well, it wasn't okay before, but we've fixed a lot of stuff, and ...", and the filters that would have prevented it from shipping are losing their effectiveness.

It's easy to be blind about the quality of your project, or get ship-fever and think that you /have/ to get it out the door by (insert date here) or the End of the World will occur.

Then again, it might have gone out anyway. Who knows?

melling• 14 years ago

Probably not, but "the absence of Steve" effect will be brought up for years to come any time Apple stumbles. Steve stumbled too.

friendly_chap• 14 years ago

I guess what else could they say.

tomkin2• 14 years ago

One day Apple apologists will have to draw a line in the sand – does Apple care more about users, or more about ego-laden competitive angst? When Apple limits people – they do it for business, when they allow freedom they are doing it for the users.

Sorry, but ripping out a familiar, tried and true application and replacing it with one far inferior is not for the users. It would be different if they had been more diplomatic and said to Google, "we're doing our own stuff, so, maybe you want to launch at the same time so people won't be all pissed off with our version 1.0?". That would be for the users and Apple could still have their own Maps and improve it beyond Google's capabilities within time. People would switch because it was better.

I have all Apple products, but as a fan I sit on the fence when the logic doesn't make sense.

Judson• 14 years ago

The thing is, we just don't know what the circumstances were. If you want, you can assume that Apple was the one who pulled the plug on Google's Maps app, but the same thing happened with the YouTube app, and wouldn't you know, Google released a new YouTube app through the app store, with ads.

A version of the story, that is at least as likely as Apple taking away Maps.app (which could arguable be the most used non-telephone app on the iPhone) and replacing it with something that isn't as good - Google wanted to put ads in the app, something more than "sponsored pins" or whatever they had been doing (aka, display ads).

tomkin2• 14 years ago

It's true to say that my version of the story is probably not accurate in any sense. My main point is that Apple has pulled the rug away from it's users. YouTube is a great point, too. I upgraded iOS and all of a sudden it was gone. No "oh, by the way you totally gotta download this app manually now if you want it".

If Google is making crazy demands, then they need to be outed. The company that does no evil shouldn't mind disclosing the parameters of their licensing. I can accept Apple's version of Maps with an explanation. As a paying user of their ecosystem, I deserve an answer as to why I have been given something inferior. Telling me to keep quiet, or wait for some milestone isn't good enough.

nicholassmith2• 14 years ago

Unless you have specific insider information that hasn't leaked onto the internet, we don't know anything about why Apple has moved onto their own mapping data instead of Google's data, past "their licensing agreement expired and wasn't renewed". Google might have put some crazy ridiculous demand out there that no one would take. Apple might have thrown a tantrum and pulled Google completely and said "ner ner ner". I'm not apologising for Apple, the Maps need a lot of work, but we have no clue about the internal policy and licensing negotiations that took place so we can't just assume it's out of hubris.

pooriaazimi• 14 years ago

It's rather hard to judge right now. We have so much little information. What if Google asked Apple a billion dollars for another year of ad-free YouTube and Maps?

I'm not saying what they did was the best thing they could've done. I'm just saying there might have been other factors involved.

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

What a lof of drama. Apple knows the maps they use now are inferior, that's obvious.

The point is: their contract with Google ended and they had to come up with something. I find it interesting how everybody is blaming Apple when the core issue is that Google retains a monopoly on cartography data. If you wanted to create anything with a map you would be on the mud too, since Google doesnt contribute to OSM.

What will probably happen is that Google will release their own map, with ads. Tge same situation of the YouTube app.

Apple promises maps app will 'improve'

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