On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switch

by joshus • 14 years ago

35 57 14 years ago

arpit• 14 years ago

I dont get why Maps releases are tied to OS releases. If the Maps api to other apps doesn't change, why can't maps be updated as other apps are?

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

Any big feature change makes for a good slide or two in the keynotes. They get once or twice a year to make a big impression on the press - dribbling out updates to core apps in the meantime would remove the buzz.

amirmc• 14 years ago

It's certainly made a big impression, though perhaps not the kind they were after. Revealing something in a keynote talk leads to more scrutiny so making a big deal out of something that isn't ready doesn't seem wise to me.

ghshephard4• 14 years ago

Maps are operating system features that any application can rely on being present. Their are OS APIs that require that the mapping infrastructure be present.

recoiledsnake2• 14 years ago

Can't the APIs stay constant while the supplied data/backend gets changed? After all, isn't that the whole point of having a public API so that the implementation can be changed without changing the calling apps?

lacker• 14 years ago

Map data will certainly be updated constantly, not even requiring an update to the app. Any time there's a road closure or the map changes in some way, it needs to be reflected live. So I wouldn't be surprised if other aspects of the map are updated server-side as well.

ejdyksen2• 14 years ago

If I'm reading this right, does that mean when the contract expires, Google stops serving map tiles to iOS clients using the Google Maps client?

That would mean the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, and the original iPad (none of which support iOS 6) will lose all mapping ability starting next year. Unless, of course, Apple backports their maps app to iOS 5 (and even that wouldn't help original iPhone users--if there are any left).

notatoad• 14 years ago

You're reading Gruber's assumptions correctly. Whether those assumptions are accurate or not is another matter entirely.

I can't imagine apple would have ever negotiated any deal where their maps simply stopped working when a contract expires.

philwebster• 14 years ago

Check the footnote. Devices using still Google Maps will most likely function without a change for a few years, but Apple won't be allowed to sell/activate more phones using Google Maps.

ejdyksen2• 14 years ago

Yeah I just saw that.

I'm sure the deal takes into account legacy devices, but I wonder how long that extended support would last.

swang• 14 years ago

Gruber essentially tiptoes around the main problem. The iOS 6 map app was released before it was polished up to what people expect from Apple. "Oh Apple had to release it now or else Apple would have to release in a non major release!" Are you kidding me?

The alternative being to release a terrible version that tarnishes their brand, that is way better alternative

ryanb• 14 years ago

His main suggestion is that Apple couldn't get enough data to make it good without launching the app, and they had to go ahead and release it at some point. The software works quite well - it's the dataset that's inferior.

cheald5• 14 years ago

Apple's been keeping logs of iPhone users' positions for ages. And they could have just sucked data out of user behaviors of the existing mapping solution if they needed something in a map context.

This smells of revisionism.

rphlx• 14 years ago

Apple could have rolled out their map-app gradually to a few hundred thousand "specially selected" beta users before totally dropping Google Maps in iOS. Given Apple's religious following - many users would have probably paid to participate. It was unnecessarily risky and basically a product-management-screwup to force-convert everyone simultaneously.

recoiledsnake2• 14 years ago

They could've tried licensing far better map data from Navteq/Nokia like Amazon recently did for the Kindles by using some of their 100 billion dollar stash. Amazon did not try to roll out its own maps with half baked data. Whether Nokia would have been willing to license to Apple is a different question.

codeka• 14 years ago

They could have rolled it out as a standalone app first, with the clear goal being that they want users to try it out and report issues. There's no reason the first version had to replace the google-backed one.

I'm sure there'd be thousands of people willing to give it a go, and people would be much more forgiving of errors if it wasn't the only option.

wizzard• 14 years ago

Gruber is trying to make it out to be this chess game of when to release the new map app, but never addresses the main issue: Was it ready?

I guess if you're crowdsourcing map data the only way to start improving it is to get it out there. But don't act like it's all mind games and strategery and say that Google knew that Apple knew that Google knew that Apple was going to drop Google for maps. Reading the past couple of posts was exhausting and doesn't comfort me at all when my phone tells me to drive into a lake.

nivloc4• 14 years ago

I'd say it was, or at least as ready as it could have been. Problem is that everyone is behind Google on Maps. They're on Mars, everyone else is playing with baking soda and vinegar at Cape Canaveral.

Apple would have to acquiesce to Google on a lot of fronts to get better maps features (that are a major improvement in many places), and get stuck working on something that could never compare in perpetuity. Launch or die, right?

zmmmmm• 14 years ago

Problem with this analysis is that if the replacing maps on iOS6 was always going to be this year then it just compounds the culpability of Apple for shipping it half baked with no fallback. ie. in trying to assuage the criticism of Apple for shipping maps too early (what I read as the main point of his piece here), Gruber only begs the question of why they weren't better prepared for it.

nivloc4• 14 years ago

Maps are hard.

The original Google Maps was pretty bad. Mapquest beat it much of the time. There was one road in my hometown, and none in many countries.

Google devoted enormous resources to acquiring data (petabytes worth), processing it, correcting it, to give us the product we have today.

Even though Apple acquired some neat companies that made data look good, they obviously underestimated how much data was required to make it useful. No amount of QC could have prepared them, frankly.

The upside is that Google has been fairly closed with their map products. They're miles ahead of Apple, who will need every partner they can find to close the gap. Hopefully it will give the data providers a bit of leverage to get refinements back out so it can be used in endeavours other than showing where the nearest pizza joint is.

cheald5• 14 years ago

> Technically, they could roll such a thing out in a 6.1 or 6.2 update, but major changes — and I think everybody can agree this has been a major change, for users and app developers alike — should be delivered only in major new OS updates.

Well, I personally can't wait for OS XI, since by that criteria, Apple apparently hasn't released a major OS update since OS X yet.

Version numbers schmersion numbers. Ship it when it's ready.

mattparcher• 14 years ago

(I understand that you’re probably being somewhat sarcastic, but for the sake of semantics…)

It’s pretty clear by the amount of change (and Apple’s marketing efforts) that each OS 10.#.0 release is a "major" OS update, on par with the relative significance of each iOS #.0 release.

But Gruber may have over-generalized here. Indeed, Apple has added major new features in iOS .# updates, e.g. AirPlay and AirPrint in 4.2, or the Personal Hotspot feature in 4.3.

What they haven’t done is change key functionality in a point update, let alone introduce regressions. (In fact, before this incident, I’m struggling to recall Apple ever removing/crippling existing functionality.) If they were going to perform a full Maps switch-out, maybe they felt that now would be the best time, if only because there is so much positive press out there to temper the backlash.

Edit: Regarding removed features, I was mostly thinking of Apple’s record with iOS. As gurkendoktor points out, they have certainly removed ("simplified") functionality in Mac OS X, often creating great frustration.

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

> In fact, before this incident, I’m struggling to recall Apple ever removing/crippling existing functionality

Mac OS X has had plenty of that. You buy a Mac Mini with a remote so you can use Front Row, and bam, Front Row's gone. But that is probably why Mac users are a lot more careful with updating their systems than iOS users are/were.

cheald5• 14 years ago

My tongue is firmly in cheek, yes. I'm poking fun at the silliness of attaching some holy meaning to version numbers.

My point is that version numbers for end-user software are borderline meaningless; they're marketing fodder. Just look at Chrome and Firefox, for example. Firefox didn't suddenly start improving 10x faster than it was before, but they changed their versioning scheme in a marketing play to compete with Chrome's ever-inflating version, as the casual user assumes that Chrome 37 must be much better than Firefox 6 because its major version is so much bigger.

Apple could either ship a regression in a new major, or ship a less broken regression in a new minor. In either case, there's going to be a regression. Regressions are unfortunate anytime they have to happen, but the assertion that you could only replace Google Maps with an in-house solution in a major is just silly post-hoc justification. You can't avoid disappointing users except by not shipping a regression at all, but you can lessen it by shipping a less-broken product.

As an aside, I can think of at least one other major breaking change/regression in a point release - the total swap in functionality of the lock/mute switch in iOS 4.2. There are also things like dropping support for older devices in point releases (4.3 dropped support for the iPhone 3G) that make the argument look even weaker; device deprecation is generally the sort of thing that is sacredly reserved for major releases, yet Apple seems to have had no problem doing it in a point release, and we're supposed to believe that yet somehow Apple wasn't willing to replace an app in a point release just because it isn't a major?

ghshephard4• 14 years ago

This is one of those articles, that after you read it, you face palm, and go, "Of course."

I feel stupid not having come to the same assessment after hearing about when the dates were set.

mcantelon2• 14 years ago

What he doesn't answer is why they chose to ship a half-backed map implementation rather than continue to pay licensing fees until they got it right. It's not like Apple's starving for cash.

guywithabike• 14 years ago

> rather than continue to pay licensing fees until they got it right

It's not like you just buy the data at Wal-Mart -- you have to negotiate licensing terms with Google and the terms that Google wanted were, reportedly, onerous.

nivloc4• 14 years ago

That's pretty much what the entire article is about, no?

zaphar2• 14 years ago

This still doesn't explain why they didn't ship it in iOS7 then. If it wasn't ready and they only want to ship such things in major versions then hold it till the next major version. It wasn't ready. And bug reports aren't the solution to get it ready either. They needed better expertise and better quality data to start with.

Steko• 14 years ago

How does it not explain it? Maps deal expires 6/13; iOS 7.0 launches 9/13. What do you ship from 6/13 to 9/13?

zaphar2• 14 years ago

New maps deal to get you up to 9/13.

arrrg• 14 years ago

Ok, can someone help me? I’m quite confused. Apple’s maps have undeniable problems. Pretty big ones in some cases.

But are they really unusable? From my perspective it seems as though Apple’s maps are merely inferior, not unusable. Some aspects are even better than they were before (on iOS), some (very few) are better than Google Maps (traffic info in Germany is quite impressive).

Everyone here seems to take it as self-evident that the maps are unusable. I don’t get that. To me it looks like a slight (again, depending on use case) regression in the short term.

I also don’t get the deification of Google Maps. I remember they weren’t that great in Germany only two or so years ago. I still encounter mistakes regularly. Google Maps are awesome despite those flaws.

nivloc4• 14 years ago

Apple's maps are really good. Google's maps are much better, generally, though.

There are places where Apple has an advantage over Google, but Google has been pouring resources into Maps for a long time.

Garmin, TomTom, Navteq, etc. won't be nearly as good as Apple or Google because they aggregate sources.

They aren't unusable, and are better than if you rely on a dedicated GPS. But they can still be improved. Apple doesn't seem to be weighting proximity for search as effectively as Google (unsurprisingly).

Honestly, Apple is the new #2, but they've got a mountain ahead.

thewileyone• 14 years ago

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Gruber. IOS6 Maps still suck balls.

Yhippa2• 14 years ago

Who cares about the timing? The maps experience, even with turn-by-turn, feels worse than what I had in iOS 5. I hate it when companies deliberately make things worse.

ap3• 14 years ago

really ? I'm liking the turn by turn directions in ios6 a lot and to me the update was worth it just for that. I still have the mobile google maps on there if I need to search anything.

Apple Maps feel very snappy and I like the Yelp tie-in.

But I have never used the transit options so I can't say I'm missing it. If I had to use it I figure I could just jump over to web based google maps.

Curious to know what don't you like about the new apple maps that can't be solved by the web based google maps ?

Yhippa2• 14 years ago

To be fair I've only used it for about a week-and-a-half now. If you give it a specific address it works pretty well for the most part. One thing I love compared to my Galaxy Nexus is that under the lock screen the next direction will turn the screen on.

Another thing that works better is integration with Siri. I felt that on Android there were a few more hoops to go through to do things like "drive to home" or "drive to Bob's Chicken Shack".

The things I don't like are the lack of detail on the maps currently. I don't use the satellite layer so it looks really sparse and I feel like I'm driving to big abstract blobs.

To be honest this is pretty good for a first try. Getting native turn-by-turn that works 95% of the time is pretty impressive.

georgebarnett• 14 years ago

While I'm not a fan of the new iOS maps, I'm reasonably happy that Apple chose to break the relationship with Google rather than throw my privacy under a bus to get a contract extension.

b0sk• 14 years ago

Remember he usually calls half-cooked products or apps as "turd"s.

norswap• 14 years ago

tl;dr : Apple screws up. The totally-oh-so-unbiased Gruber defends them anyway. For the rest of us who don't give a rat's ass, life continues.

On the Timing of Apple’s Map Switch

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