Well actually regardless of that, Apple is a brand that people trust, and of course there are times that Apple might fail and we criticize because we trust they can do a better job.
To me it's much better that "this product is shit" than "ah it's apple, what do you expect?".
The other day I got my iPhone 5 on the mail, but it wouldn't activate because of a SIM card error. So, I get it the car, look up the closest Verizon store on Apple maps using my old iPhone, and drive there.
I end up at a run down strip mall with no Verizon store in sight. So, I load up Google maps is Safari, and it finds and takes me to an actual Verizon store about 3 miles away.
So yes, people are having actual problems with Apple maps.
This type of stuff happened with Google maps too, but everyone seems to forget that. A year or so ago in Houston I was following Google maps to a theater and ended up in the middle of some suburban neighborhood.
Let's just all remember that the old maps app was not flawless.
Using the Google Maps app, this never happened to me in hundreds and hundreds of routes.
Using the ios6 maps app for the first time, to locate a verizon store to go and order my iphone 5, it failed to find a Verizon store I knew was there from previous research. I had to settle for mapping the street and finding the store myself.
I'm not saying the old maps app didn't do that to you, just that the rate of that sort of occurrence, given the evidence I've seen, was much lower in ios5 maps than it is in ios6.
I can't compare against iOS 6, because I haven't updated my phone. But I did indeed have Google drop me off in the wrong place several times. I had it send me into the suburbs of Bellevue looking for a Home Depot that didn't exist. Last week it sent me 4 blocks away from the restaurant I was looking for (and told me it was on the wrong side of the road, a common issue with Google Maps).
I still think the new Maps has notable issues from everything I've read, but Google-based Maps was by no means perfect.
There very well can be a communications cascading effect as well. How many people complaining right now about iOS 6 Maps are doing so because their friends are. Just as it's cool to be the one with the new iPhone 5, it's also cool to be one of the one's that is late to the appointment because your Maps app told you to take a left instead of a right. You're one of the crowd, and you have something different.
Maybe they should have released Maps as a downloadable app. Maybe they should have waited another year. Maybe they should have... They didn't and outside of transit* there is nothing that is absolutely terrible about the app. It's immature, sure, but it's not the worst thing to happen to the international community since the invention of the atomic weapon.
* If you know any objective-c and are complaining about the lack of transit options, contact your local public transportation authority and develop an app on your own.
In London I am used to check the Maps app almost everyday. Problems I had so far:
- I am still waiting to get a correct location when searching by post code.
- Searching by the street name sometimes gives me that same street name somewhere in the USA even with the GPS on and map centered on my current location.
- I was in Holborn centered on my location, searched for a Nando's, it told me to go up that same street. Turns out it was down, wrong location for that Nando's.
- It is much more difficult to differenciate between an underground and a rail station since they look almost the same unlike Google Maps or Bing Maps.
I have been using Google Maps mobile web app and the Bing native app with good results. Still a step backwards because both are much slower than the old Maps.
So yes, people are having real problems.
Small edit: I don't trust the new maps data anymore, that's the biggest problem though.
I live in the United Kingdom, and can say that the new maps are a vast downgrade. Central London seems OK, but outside that there are numerous problems. Off the top of my head areas that I have visited lately have no high detail satellite, satellite photos with clouds or points of interest in the wrong place or not existing at all.
This isn't some hypothetical problem, this is going from maps I use all the time with success, to maps that have become vastly less useful.
This is not just an "end user" problem it is a developer problem. Our "hyper local" app looks (and is) terrible on iOS6 but runs just fine on iOS5 (with Google mapping).
iOS was the choice for the lead mobile platform but with iOS6 take up levels running high we may have to switch to Android to be able to demonstrate all of our ideas.
Although the app's lack of proper search and laughable location plotting, my chief issue with the new Maps is the aesthetic, which I consider to be unequivocally inferior to Google Maps.
I find it harder to read. In particular, it's a lot harder to distinguish icons for useful things like train/tube stations from icons I don't care about like wine bars.
As a developer, you can include whatever map tiles you want in your application - if Apple Maps are bad for you, you can just switch to Google or Bing or whatever. Don't blame or abandon the platform for what is within your capability to change.
In the situation described, the mapping was switched out beneath a developer without them even updating their software. Yes you can work around it but I don't blame someone for thinking that sucks.
Wouldn't you have noticed that three months ago when you downloaded the beta after WWDC? If you were displeased, you could have worked around MapKit. Sure, you shouldn't have to, but I wouldn't blame Apple for making your app "terrible" when you've had plenty of time to make it not that way.
We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up.
Google already did all of this. It's just that Apple wouldn't let them include those features on iOS. This is rather blatant lying.
I believe it is blatant lying because they went out of their way to prevent their customers from having those features, even though they were readily available on other platforms through their established partner. It's also rather dishonest to say that they had to build something new from the ground up. They had other options (namely Google), which would have served their customers better.
They had to if they considered that what Google was asking was unreasonable. For all we now Google might have asked for things Apple was not comfortable giving them, starting with user data and all the way up to co-branding.
Actually, from everything I've read, it appears Google refused to allow Apple to implement those features (see, for example, http://allthingsd.com/20120926/apple-google-maps-talks-crash...). Google wanted to keep those features exclusive to Android maps.
Google could have been asked to provide the same features, but there must be concessions Apple would have to give Google. These trade-offs, when evaluated by Apple, were not something that served their customers better. You can disagree with that, but it doesn't mean they are lying. And if it isn't obvious they are lying, it certainly isn't blatant.
To get what they wanted without trade offs, without hidden compromise of their customers, they had to leave their partner. A partner, mind you, who had shown they will put better products (GMail app, Map app) on their own platform (I like both those apps on Android, and GMail on iOS is a joke).
By building their own from the ground up, they also prevent this from happening again with another external partner who wishes to gain some leverage over the richest company in the world.
I'm not apologizing for the decision, or the quality of maps. And while I love to stigmatize liars, this accusation waters down the insult of blatant lying.
Multiple independent sources have confirmed that their contract with Google prohibited Apple from implementing turn by turn. That's why Apple chose to roll their own app. If you're going to accuse someone of lying, it would be a good idea to have the facts on your side.
10.2 Restrictions on the Types of Applications that You are Permitted to Build with the Maps API(s). Except as explicitly permitted in Section 8 (Licenses from Google to You) or the Maps APIs Documentation, you must not (nor may you permit anyone else to) do any of the following:
(a) No "Wrapping." You must not create or offer a "wrapper" for the Service, unless you obtain Google's written consent to do so. For example, you are not permitted to: (i) use or provide any part of the Service or Content (such as map imagery, geocoding, directions, places, or terrain data) in an API that you offer to others; or (ii) create a Maps API Implementation that reimplements or duplicates Google Maps/Google Earth. For clarity, you are not "re-implementing or duplicating" Google Maps/Google Earth if your Maps API Implementation provides substantial additional features or content beyond Google Maps/Google Earth, and those additional features or content constitute the primary defining characteristic of your Maps API Implementation.
(b) No Business, Residential, or Telephone Listings Services. You must not display any of the business listings Content provided by the Maps API(s) in any Maps API Implementation that has the primary purpose of making available business, residential address, or telephone directory listings.
(c) No Navigation, Autonomous Vehicle Control, or Enterprise Applications. You must not use the Service or Content with any products, systems, or applications for or in connection with any of the following:
(i) real time navigation or route guidance, including but not limited to turn-by-turn route guidance that is synchronized to the position of a user's sensor-enabled device.
(ii) any systems or functions for automatic or autonomous control of vehicle behavior; or
(iii) enterprise dispatch, fleet management, business asset tracking or similar applications. If you want to engage in enterprise dispatch, fleet management, business asset tracking, or similar applications, please contact the Google Maps API for Business sales team to obtain a Google enterprise license. (If you are offering a non-enterprise implementation, you may use the Google Maps API(s) to track assets such as cars, buses or other vehicles, as long as your tracking application is made available to the public without charge. For example, you may offer a free, public Maps API Implementation that displays real-time public transit or other transportation status information.)
Those features in Android's Google Maps only exist because they don't have to follow the TOS.
Apple isn't exactly a random API user. Until you find written copies of the agreement between Google and Apple, don't claim any of that even applied to them.
That's the simplest explanation, though. These other conspiracy theories about Apple wanting to withhold features from its customers and catch Google with its pants down are nothing more than mindless speculation.
So on the surface we have Apple very aggressively attacking everything android related. Then when they switch from Google Maps, suddenly we start speculating that maybe it all was Google's fault...
No, not Google’s fault. Google has every right (and I mean moral as well as legal) to deny Apple access to their maps. I think there is nothing wrong with that. Yeah, it might be Google’s fault, but not in the sense of a moral fault.
I don't think I realized what an actual issue this is... Cook isn't speaking to people who have been following this debacle since the beta, he's speaking to people who think the only way to get location info is through the "maps" button on their phone.
Let's hope, for the sake of those people at least, Apple can get some better data.
“With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.”
That’s a proper apology. No dodging, no sidestepping, no shifting of the blame. We screwed up, we are sorry for the problems that caused, we are doing everything we can to fix this.
It's very well written, but I don't doubt that the entire message came directly from the PR department. Anyway, the proof is in the pudding, as they say, so let's see what they do.
Uhm, sure. I’m not sure what your point is, though. Of course Tim Cook has people to help him write that. Of course he didn’t just walk into his office, wrote this and sent it off without consulting anyone. Do you think the PR department is incapable of writing apologies?
You can only apologize for a mistake, if you think Apple made a mistake then you dont know Apple very well.
If you consider this a mistake(which it is), you must consider it a very highly calculated one. They knew what they were doing, apologizing for something they knew would happen is very disingenuous.
"We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused", that being them falling short on there standards.
So basically they are sad that there customers don't like the product Apple knew was under par, instead of being sorry for knowing releasing an under par product.
"We are sorry you don't like the product we knew was bad but released anyways"
A band-aid on bad situation made from some high level bad choices. Though for all we know this could be a 100% calculated move (minus the maps icon), but at the end of they day they are still putting there customers below something else(i will not speculate on what there reasoning is).
What I want to know is -- why did they release the app in the state that it was in vs partnering with someone like Microsoft?
Let's assume that Apple's contract with Google was ending soon, and that Google had failed to deliver features for Apple (turn by turn, etc), meaning Apple wanted to go a different direction.
Sure, Apple then started buying up mapping companies, building their own product, but they must have known they were on a tight schedule. My question is -- why didn't they partner with Microsoft to use Bing maps?
Microsoft gets a huge win in that suddenly 40 million people are using their service. Apple gets a win in that they have a pretty comparative product out of the gate to Google Maps, and it gives them time to build up their own service.
But instead, Apple released maps that had 1/3rd the quality of the maps they had before. Where's the logic in that?
Part of the rationale for cutting ties with Google Maps seems to have been to avoid being reliant on a major competitor for core functionality. Partnering with Microsoft would simply have been trading one competitor for another. Presumably this is the same reason they didn't partner with Nokia either.
It could be the Goldilocks problem for Apple with their own - supposedly - high bar for quality that made them end up with their own vastly inferior product. I imagine we'll see some scoops on the inside baseball in a few weeks.
They don't want to partner with anybody. All that would do is recreate the problem they faced with Google: losing control and sooner or later negatively affecting user experience as New Partner Co. begins to favor its interests over whatever future interests Apple may or may not have.
Far better to rip the band-aid off now, tune the dataset over time, and ultimately emerge with a better overall experience that you now control completely. Already the system-wide integration of mapping is far superior in that regard. That just wasn't going to happen with Google or any other partner which would forever live as a walled garden of an App.
Inaccurate mapping data is, after all, a (relatively) finite problem.
> Inaccurate mapping data is, after all, a (relatively) finite problem.
Not if you live in the area that has very low resolution maps. IMHO "finite problem" is an antithesis to accurate maps. Mapping requires constant improvement. For example roads in the area where I live have been modified 3 times in last 5 years.
Just curious: is that "known as a fact" now? I'd imagine that means that their own data center for iCloud is running Windows Server, too. Which doesn't really seem any less likely in today's world than Linux servers but it would be interesting just in terms of how much you could blow Apple fans' minds if you could travel back 15 years and tell them that.
EDIT: I'm wrong, as pointed out below; Azure isn't just for Windows Server.
Mapping isn't a finite problem. If you read about the Coastline Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox), every map is based on abstraction. You can get more and more detail but there will always be parts that are simplified and abstracted. It's like trying to get to the door by going half the distance each time. Eventually, it'll be a small distance (and not a big problem, which is generally the case for Google Maps) but you'll never completely solve it.
Well, they had two choices in front of them. Suck it up and partner, or suck it up and risk this situation.
Whilst I'm sure they'd have gotten a 1-year licensing agreement with Microsoft I can only guess it'd come with a steep price tag on. Plus they'd just been burnt by dealing with a third party. Plus (again, sorry), they need to have the Maps application being used by people worldwide to improve the quality. It doesn't get better with time, it gets better with users moaning.
FWIW, I've read elsewhere that Google has had 1000 contractors in India cleaning up map data for 5 years. People using it isn't going to clean it up with "moaning". Apple is going to have to throw a LOT of resources at fixing this.
More people moan the more likely it is Apple will throw resources at it. It needs people using it and complaining to show where the data isn't working.
From trying it there does seem to be a reasonable level of detail.
I don't of course just mean the bug reports, I mean every email going into customer support, every snarky comment directed at Apple and so on. It'll encourage them to dig deep, hopefully.
There's a "report issue" button if you hit the bottom right corner of the map. It allows you to drop pins where issues are and gives free text fields to enter information.
I suspect that cutting the google deal short was intentionally done leave Google flat footed with no map app on iOS. Simply put it cuts google out of that market for a while leaving Apple the only major player on their device.
While it isn't perfect being the only big map player in that system means that over time customers will just accept that is their only option, and those with problems will see improvements. By the time Google releases a map app many customers may already be committed to the default experience.
Some folks may continue to make comparisons between the two and switch back, but the majority may not and thus an easy win for Apple where if there were a competing Google Maps they would face a far steeper challenge even with time to improve their own product.
As for partnering with MS I think Apple simply wanted to go on their own considering that they were already were severing a partnership over maps.
> leaving Apple the only major player on their device.
> over time customers will just accept that is their only option
As Tim Cook mentioned, there are already map apps available for Bing, MapQuest and Waze, and turn-by-turn navigation apps from all the major players. Google announced that they have not submitted their own maps app for iOS.
Unless, perhaps rightly, you're considering Google the only major player. More reason for Apple to switch now.
I disagree with the cutting the deal short. The Maps app was in beta for months, was announced in April and I bet that Google knew it was coming even before the official announcement.
Quite frankly, Google has had plenty of time to be working on a Maps application for iOS. It's not like they have to reinvent the wheel with this, they have iOS development teams and experience with mobile mapping applications.
I think that Google willfully chose not to have a product ready. It's a good explanation when you realize they had months of lead time, and when you factor in all of the CEO "I don't know nothing' about no app" comments.
Google's business interests are weird here. They presumably were getting _paid_ by Apple for maps integration. Do they really want to say "Sure, stop paying us, and for free we'll make sure to provide an app of our own to your customers that's just as high quality?" On the other hand, Google is certainly otherwise often in the business of providing free apps to people that they try to get as many people as possible to use on other people's devices (I mean, Android. On the other hand, even though Android is theoretically free, i think every device maker that uses it has a paid contract with google). It's pretty unclear what Google's interests and plans are when it comes to this stuff.
That's a good point. Certainly the average iPhone user is now learning the value of a good mapping app vs the value of a crappy mapping app. If they launch their free map app a few weeks after iOS6 launch, they've taught Apple and a lot of people a lesson...
Google is in the strange position of wanting to get a piece of hardware into the hands of every person while at the same time having services that they want everyone to use because that is how they make their money.
They are constantly biting their own hand because making any service Android specific limits it's use and making services available on competing hardware limits their own hardware penetration.
Since Apple makes all their money on hardware they just don't care. They focus on making the best hardware they can and then build software on top of it. Jobs for the longest time didn't even want to put iTunes on Windows but eventually relented when people were buying iPods for their Windows PCs.
Word has it they're working on the iOS app and have been frantically doing so.
I don't see any advantage in willfully delaying. They only shaft potential lost users in doing so. I doubt any many folks folks are dumping their iPhone due to the maps and all Google does is loose contact with customers in the process and give Apple a chance to fill the void.
Maps become exponentially better the closer they get to accurate.
Even if Apple has, let's say, 90% of the map data/information that Google does, the minute you are sent to the wrong location, or to a store that doesn't exist, or try to get transit directions and can't, or get routed via the most convoluted route possible to your destination, the Maps app has failed.
I keep hearing from iphone users that phrase almost verbatim: "Turn by turn navigation is awesome though".
If it's so awesome, why didn't you buy a standalone GPS or an Android phone over the last few years? Because it's nifty but for most iPhone users this is not a must-have feature. Which is why Apple can get away with shipping a crap maps app.
Do any of those work with Siri? That's the big value for me. When the new Maps work it is pure magic (sorry for the iMeme but it really is).
-Looking straight ahead, grab phone and hold down Home button.
-Siri chirps
-"I need directions to foo"
-"Here are directions to foo"
-"In X miles turn Y on N"
The only time I touched the phone was to hold down the Home button. Never once looked away from the road. It's amazing.
A quick test on my Android phone (Desire HD running 4.1) shows that Google Now works the same way. Voice search always existed on Android, but it was certainly less polished around 2.2. Can't tell how it worked before as it never understood my accent, but then again, neither does Siri.
Edit: Two presses if you want audio instructions. Google Now opens maps which doesn't do audio instructions apparently rather than navigation which does. There's a button for navigation in the maps app.
Maps is a smartphone killer app - I remember my friend being able to map (in a rudimentary displkay) nearby restaurants on a 2004 windows mobile phone and thinking how awesome that was. Just like I was amazed when the iPhone completely blew away the competition in 2007.
However, is it a mission-critical app? What percentage of the userbase actually needs maps on a day to day basis? What did you do in 2005 when your GPS completely failed? You call the destination... it's not like you don't have a phone in your hand. Failing that, you ask a nearby stranger.
I presume Apple went ahead because Maps is likely less important to their userbase than, say, the Music app and definitely less critical than the browser.
> However, is it a mission-critical app? What percentage of the userbase actually needs maps on a day to day basis? What did you do in 2005 when your GPS completely failed?
It's not "mission-critical," but by that criterion neither is any part of iOS that's not talk and text and maaaybe basic web browsing. Mapping is surely one of the bigger raisons d'être for smartphones, otherwise people might as well buy an S40 Nokia.
I know, right? They're about 80% as good as Google maps for me. They do all the same things, but admittedly I haven't done obscure turn by turn (then again, it didn't do turn by turn at all before...).
From a user's perspective (which is what I am in this context, as are the rest of us) it's a sixth-generation product that's a substantial step backwards from the fifth generation.
From a reality perspective, Apple Maps is a first-generation product.
And while you may have considered it a "fifth generation product", Google Maps went virtually untouched between iOS 1.1.3 and iOS 5.1. Although its map data was very accurate, its feature set was sorely lacking when compared to Google's map app on Android.
I sympathize with people who have encountered inaccuracies, but that hasn't been my experience so far. Hopefully, this will get worked out and we'll end up with a map app that is both accurate and has a competitive feature set.
I'd say it's much worse than 1/3rd the quality. It's absolutely terrible! The data for London, where I live, is full of misspellings; at least one tube station is missing (Monument, in the heart of the financial district); and it fairly often seems to use an arbitrary street name as the name for an entire district. I wouldn't trust it to navigate me anywhere!
Easily 1/3 the quality. What good is a map if it is incorrect? An incorrect map isn't 1/3 worse than a correct one, it's just worthless. Actually worse than worthless since with no map you at least know when you're lost. Apple's maps are riddled with errors and inaccuracies and thus it's not usable (to me at least). I won't set off to a destination with a map I don't trust, so for me the difference between the two is a map I can use and a map I cannot use.
I'm glad nobody told that to Google when they were getting started.
Even in 2010, 5 years after they launched, they got the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica wrong. This rendered Google Maps worthless. They should have just shelved the whole project right then.
Don't even get me started on Waldseemüller. So much worse than worthless!
There are two companies that have done the legwork to acquire a really really good database of mapping information:
* TeleAtlas, which is in bed with Google
* Navteq, which is owned by Nokia, which has a deal to provide maps to Bing
So now maps is one of the few areas where both Google/Android and Microsoft/Nokia have a blatant advantage over Apple. Why would they want to give that up?
Err... What? Teleatlas is owned by TomTom who is currently in bed with ...Apple!
What Google does have is that they partner with whomever has the best available information in the area of interest (check out the copyright info when you scroll around the world on google maps on the web) and augment that with streetview, Yellow Pages, crowdsourced info from Android, etc (and vetted by hand)
Thank you for this input that seems obvious, but appears to be overlooked by most in this thread.
It also strikes me that Apple Maps do not have a web interface (unless I'm wrong). In my experience, anytime something I care about in my neighborhood is misplaced on Google Maps, I use the web interface to correct the location. Without this ability, I imagine that it could take Apple a long time to reach parity with Google Maps.
Microsoft's #1 enemy right now would most likely be Google -- Balmer has been waging a war on the online front with Bing, and so far, has been losing pretty badly.
As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend -- partnering with Apple would boost their Bing Maps market share into double digit percentage growth, all the while taking Google's map market share down. Even if you know the relationship won't last long and that in the end you'll have another competitor in the space, the rewards far outweigh the risks.
It's far better to take down the king and fight for the throne than to always be a peasant.
Exactly. All the big players are in competition with each other. Amazon and Google are at loggerheads over Android. But Amazon and Apple are competing in the online media delivery market too (Google is playing there too, but is a distant fourth right now to those two and Netflix). Microsoft doesn't care about Amazon, but wants a piece of the mobile OS market and the internet search world. And there are a hundred other smaller software companies and hardware OEMs trying to catch the stuff that drops out of the hands of the big folks.
There really aren't any major "alliances" right now. It's a mess.
Nokia is having a bit of a cash flow problem, and an additional maps deal would probably be welcome income to give it a bit more margin to try and recover.
I've not seen any problem with the information about roads or directions, rather every error that I've seen is connecting a business or place name to a physical location on the map. Which is quite confusing, because Yelp will have the proper location for a business of interest, but the new iOS Maps will place it at the same address but in a different municipality, or something crazy like that. I'm not sure what problems others are experiencing, though...
Those companies do not have good data for Asia, afaict. There are many other companies and data sets that would need to be integrated to provide even something resembling what Google has today with it's Maps service.
Now that they've already queered the deal with Google it's too late, but playing Google and Microsoft against each other they could have gotten sufficient leverage from at least one of them.
"But if the old agreement between Apple and Google expired in the first half of 2013 (which, again, my own sources familiar with the matter agree to be the case), that means the deal was set to expire halfway through the expected year-long life cycle for iOS 6. If Apple had stuck with Google Maps for another year they would have been forced to renegotiate with Google in a situation where both sides at the table would know that Apple either (a) had to agree to whatever terms Google demanded to extend the deal; or (b) would be forced to swap the mapping back-end of iOS 6 midway through its development cycle."
That reads like an autistic kid or maybe OCD adult with a 'special interest' in trains explaining why a train crashed: "Company A always bumped the letter of the model number when releasing a new engine. Company B designated upgrades to their brakes by doubling the current model number. You can hardly blame Company C for upgrading the engine without upgrading the brakes when in the past Company C has always kept the numeric form of the engine model number + brake model number mutually co-prime."
I just want to know where "just works" went. Why should a consumer have to worry about contracts between corporations when all they want to do is use their phone to catch a bus, just like they have been doing for years?
To be fair: it's never worked like that. If you spent the 90's on anything but windows (or the 70's on anything but IBM), you saw the same nonsense. The best you get are brief moments of purity, where the growth of a new platform or environment is so fast that it makes more sense for all the parties to collaborate instead of compete. So in the first 4 years of the "post-iPhone smartphone" world it was nice, just like it was in the early days of the internet.
It's a maturing market now, and not so nice. We have to wait for the next disruption now.
I get that the real world doesn't work like that, but I feel like that is the reality that I was sold by their marketing. It is incredibly disappointing that they cannot see it realized.
I think Apple came to the conclusion that the iPhone is entrenched and will sell tens of millions regardless of not having new design, features like NFC or great maps. The "just works" mantra is easy to get lost when the iPhone is now a cash cow(like how Windows stagnated after Windows 95 till before Windows XP). I guess the focus is now on iTV or whatever else that's being cooked up while milking the cash cows for what they're worth.
Reminds me of Avis' slogan: We try harder because we're number two.
He's extremely popular but also manipulates truths to tell fabrications and outright lies. I think anyone who behaves in such a manner is actively harming society by discouraging intelligent discourse. This type of behavior is seeping into many facets of life both big (politics) and small (mobile phones). He's basically FoxNews for Apple.
LOL, I agree. I subscribed to his RSS feed a while ago, and I flick through his headlines with amusement. He seems to get very offended if people diss Apple, and then happily reblogs similar nonsense aimed at Android or Windows 8 - classic partisan confirmation bias.
Occasionally he also posts something which is not "apple politics" which is interesting, so for now he stays on my list of subscriptions.
Did you read the entire article? I thought it made sense.
Google is adding features to it's own mobile OS maps app while withholding those features from it's competitor. Google offered to include the features in exchange for ads and customer data, two things Apple has always tried to minimize. Apple historically defaults to accepting the pain of adopting new technology too early as opposed to too late.
I was referring to the `they had to switch now rather than in 6 months due to a version number dance they are mystically locked into for no explained reason`.
Gruber is using a weird empiricism to defend everything Apple does. `They were locked into it because that is the pattern!` For instance, why couldn't they have released the new maps with the upcoming iPad mini release, buying a little more time?
Historically doing something one way doesn't mean you have to rush out a turd just to keep up a meaningless pattern. You also don't have to step over every crack in the sidewalk to avoid bad joo joo.
Gruber uses these little patterns in version numbers, release dates, etc. to make predictions about Apple releases and drive traffic to his blog. He has gotten so obsessed with them that he has flipped the entire utility of them and now uses them quasi-prescriptively in proclamations of what Apple has to do or had to do.
Patterns in numbers are just something he mentions on the side. I don't really read him for the predictions, but he's pretty good in that department. The headline is obnoxious, but the content is spot on.
I find it odd that many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates. There's nothing stopping two willing parties from updating an existing agreement at any time - as long as they can both agree. No senior exec at Apple would have ever said "Oh, dang it - if only the date was in a different location we'd be doing a different strategy"
Yes jp but you've picked an extreme example. It was clear that was a monumental sweetheart deal. Netflix was never going to end that one day early because whatever came next was going to be multiple times higher. Apple could have, most likely did, say "Well we really want turn by turn and voice and you won't allow it. We need to bring those features to our phone. We have two choices - go out earlier than we want with our Maps or extend this agreement until XYZ date and give both sides time to continuing negotiating this." Google comes up with an amount and Apple decides which is the better choice. The date is a "forcing factor" to drive a commercial conclusion but not the immovable object that forces you to go out earlier than you want. Make sense?
Thank you, I have been wondering what drove apple to act so stupidly.
I can easily envision Tim Cook doing this. The whole world is watching, and there is major ego on the line. The last thing on earth he'd want is for wall street to see that google had him by the balls.
Not that Jon Gruber is guarenteed to be right, but it certainly has the ring of truth.
Edit: Of course, if wall street were really paying attention, they'd see that apple behaved this badly because Google in fact had them by the balls. Thank god they're not the sharpest tools in the shed over there.
Every time I read something from aforementioned blog, I finished with a feeling of disappointment. No insights, no deep thought process, just plain apple-fanboyism.
Let me guess—you don't read aforementioned blog at all, do you?
I don't see much apple fanboyism if any, but plenty of antiappleism and antigrubersim, which most often is based on zero research and analysis, just parroting some latest anti-Apple fad.
I think bhavin is saying that Gruber's blog posts are Apple fanboyism. I'm not sure how you could deny that they are at least generally favorable toward Apple.
If it has come to Apple issuing a public apology for shipping a partly-baked replacement for an important core app, the old version of which they are still licensed to distribute for another year...
Why not put iOS 5 Maps in the App Store, and pull it down next summer?
It is really not 1/3 the quality. It has errors, without question, but so did Google Maps when it first launched. To partner with another company and then, in a few years again switch to their own maps and start over or partner again with yet another company doesn't make sense.
It's an unfortunate situation, but not something that can't be gradually fixed. There are several features I prefer actually. The city I live in is broken into subdivisions I wasn't previously aware of. It looks nicer. And the yelp reviews are useful, perhaps even a good way for businesses to quickly become featured on maps.
I have to be honest, none of the people I know who have purchased the 5 have complained much about maps, they realize its not as good as google but they feel the other features more than make up for it.
You haven't used iOS 6 Maps in non US/EU countries. The OSM map data in Asia is much less accurate. There is no Yelp outside of the US. Think global. iOS 6 Maps is worthless in Asia.
Apple is using AutoNavi (not TomTom) for its map data in China (which Google is using as well). Here's a blog post from someone who lives in China describing why he likes iOS 6 maps more than Google Maps.
Even here in Dublin, Ireland it is pretty hopeless. The zoo is now in the centre of a shopping district in town (rather than a few km outside), and loads of smaller roads are missing / have the wrong names. There is pretty much no point searching for anything...
> The city I live in is broken into subdivisions I wasn't previously aware of.
Mine too, but because Apple is incorrectly naming the subdivisions with random POI. Like a small condo building becoming the name for a whole neighborhood. It seems random and almost entirely incorrect.
It would be nice if they approved Google's Map application for the time being as a great alternative. The lack of that option is what is holding me back in iOS 5...
Is there any indication there is a Maps app from Google awaiting approval? I thought the consensus was that Google is scrambling to build one now. This sounds like speculation.
The reports I've read indicate that Google are still working on their iOS Maps App so I don't believe there is anything for Apple to simply approve right now.
> While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by
> downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest
> and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their
> websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their
> web app.
I was quite surprised they listed competitors. Is this an unusual move or a normal/expected thing to do in a case like this?
Hardly the same. It starts off by essentially saying "b-but everyone else does it!", and nothing even remotely close to "we fell short on this commitment" or "We are extremely sorry".
Jobs wasn’t good at apologizing. That doesn’t mean he was unable to recognize and correct errors – but before there was a solution to some problem, he had a very hard time acknowledging the problem or even apologizing for it in public.
So while he might say “Yeah, what we had sucked, but our new thing fixes all these problems!” he wouldn’t really do the same so openly in times when there is no clear solution in sight.
Well yes but it takes guts to sign off a letter by your name because it will always be out in the open. Come to think of it, Jobs signed out "Thoughts on Flash" with his name but this is not quite the same. Still searching!
Considering that Apple knew that every single aspect of its software will come under scrutiny, Releasing the software in this state indicates callous attitude towards the users.
Do I believe that the software will improve? Yes.. eventually. I know in enterprise software provides like IBM tend to ship hardware with incomplete software and rely in service packs to complete the functions.And if Apple thinks that the same model will work for Consumer products, then they are plain wrong.
I was talking with a friend of mine last night on the iPhone. She was complaining that her iPhone was working poorly, and she was frustrated with it. I asked if she had updated to iOS 6 yet, since sometimes a restore cycle can clear things up. She told me, no, she wasn't, because she heard maps were terrible. I said, "did you hear they are terrible, or have you used them and think they're terrible?" She said she heard only. Interestingly, though, she said she had been using turn-by-turn with "a voice telling her when to turn." I asked her to go to Settings and check, and sure enough, she had updated and actually liked new Maps.
I don't deny that new Maps aren't at the level that GMaps were, but they're not really that terrible, either. Unless you required a feature that is gone now (transit, which I don't), then it's really not so bad, at least in my experience, and has improved since the betas.
>Unless you required a feature that is gone now (transit, which I don't), then it's really not so bad
I think this is another example of the biggest general complaint about apple Maps, that it's too US-centric. Here in Europe a mapping program that can't do transit is a joke.
Un-fucking-believable. The CEO of Apple has come right out and admitted that Maps is sub-par, and the Apple fans are still trying to pretend that the problems are not real.
Sure the problem are real - for other people. But not for me. When I upgraded, I expected maps to suck. To my surprise, moving the map around was smoother, it was easier to read, and the display for directions are better.
I also think that's why Apple released it: there are genuine improvements in some areas, but they underestimated how important the missing features are to some people. For some people, the transit features are the reason to use Maps, so it's obviously inferior for them.
Well, nobody is saying that Maps is awful for everybody. A lot of people are, however, saying that Maps is awful for roughly nobody, and that the complainers are either Apple haters, influenced by the media, never actually tried the app, etc.
"I don't deny that new Maps aren't at the level that GMaps were, but they're not really that terrible, either. Unless you required a feature that is gone now (transit, which I don't), then it's really not so bad, at least in my experience, and has improved since the betas."
How much clearer does it need to be? He comes out and says, right there, that the parts that aren't outright missing are fine. This is not my experience, nor is it the experience of many other people I've talked to.
But that is my experience, and was exactly what I said up top. For how I use Maps, the new version is better in every way; I'm actually quite impressed with the animation of scaling and moving around on the map, and with the clarity of features (roads, parks, rivers, etc.).
Yes, you are talking about your experience, and that's fine. eddieroger, however, was talking about everybody's experience, and claiming that the new Maps is just fine, for everybody, unless you need one of the features that's outright missing. That is simply false.
I have yet to hear someone complain about Maps other than missing features - both personally, and observed through chatter online. So his comment gels with everything I know. I'm curious to learn about people complaining about something other than missing features, so if you can point me to them or say what your experiences are, I'd like to know.
1. Check out the location of my new house. Apple's data is years old and predates the whole development. The area is new, but not THAT new. Google and OpenStreetMap both have it fine.
2. Use it to navigate to a park I'd never been to before. Get told "you have arrived" while going under an interstate overpass. Find a driveway to pull off in, spend about ten minutes screwing around with the park's web site verifying the address, finding a better map, etc., finally figure out that the app sent me about half a mile in the wrong direction down this road. Google, of course, has the correct location for the address.
3. Use it to navigate to a restaurant I'd never been to before. "You have arrived" happens in front of a tiny strip mall with no restaurants. Wander around the area for a while and finally find it. Later on I check to see what happened, and it's pretty incredible. Maps had been opened with a link of the form, Restaurant@latitude,longitude. Stripping off the "Restaurant@" portion gives the correct location. With the restaurant name in it, Maps ignored the lat/lon and preferred its POI data, which was just plain wrong.
At that point, I gave up on the thing. Note that this is not the sequence of bad experience that were interspersed with good ones. These are the only experiences I had in using the thing, aside from two trivial tests navigating to and from day care which I do almost every day anyway.
Many other people I've talked to report similar experiences. Addresses are misplaced, POIs are misplaced, stuff is mislabeled or severely out of date, etc.
That sucks. Looking at what you said and others in the thread, it sounds like the biggest problem is the data. I've done a bunch of spot-checks of locations near me, but I'm in the NYC area. I assume the NYC area would get a lot of attention for map data.
(By the way, the above is response is much more constructive than saying "un-fucking-believeable" in response to someone who is not aware of problems.)
The quality of the maps are not universally good or bad. It's a very local issue. If you have good map data in your area then you may have a great experience with Maps. If you have bad map data in your area you will have a terrible experience.
Of course. I've yet to encounter anybody who says that Maps is universally bad for everybody. But many Apple fanboys insist that Maps is universally good, except for a very few outliers, like eddieroger did.
On the contrary - her experiences with Maps were under the assumption she had not been upgraded at all. Her pleased experience transferred to the new maps, based on the expectation that they were still Google provided. She didn't magically decide that the maps were great.
Apple has built a reputation of only releasing products that were absolutely completed and quality controlled. From my understanding, the company ethos has been that any defect, no matter how small, would result in the product being delayed.
Speaking from my own perspective, admission or not, I think it's the break in that expectation that has me disappointed.
I don't know how to respond to this other than "lol".
Apple often releases products that many consumers would consider "incomplete". The only difference is that Apple never admitted to being wrong ever. Their branding depends on being seen as shiny software company-upon-a-hill. That's the only difference here, they admitted to making a bad decision. Their little spat with google just made this an unusually bad one; one that they couldn't paper over.
You will notice that the name at the bottom of this Apple letter is different than the name that appeared at the bottom of previous Apple letters. This change may have some connection to their new willingness to admit having made a mistake.
That's the key, when you said "many" consumers would consider past products incomplete: it's quite subjective whether to call a product complete or incomplete. They would never admit to wrongdoing because there'd always be some way for them to argue otherwise.
As I mention in my other follow-up comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4586212, the difference in this case is that the product is objectively incomplete: the data itself is measurably bad.
No, when I said "many" I was trying to avoid this conversation right here. We know software is never done, its not a thing you can finish, you can only stop. I tried to nip this in the bud because don't we all know that I could sit here and use the same exact handwaving to justify the status of the new maps app?
Maybe from a hardware point of view, but not from a software point of view. Case in point, iTunes is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever had to use. They could have made it so much easier to add music, etc, but it is probably the worst piece of software that I'm FORCED to use.
In order to add an mp3 onto my iPhone I need to: start up iTunes and wait for it to load; plug in my iPhone to my iMac; find the song and drag and drop it into iTunes; click on Sync, and then wait for Sync to finish everything. If I haven't synced my iPhone in a while, then it could take 10+ minutes, since it has to backup, copy new Applications, etc.
What it should be is: plug my iPhone into my Mac; my iPhone should show up in Finder or on the Desktop; Find my mp3 and drag and drop it onto my iPhone icon; unplug my iPhone. I have no idea why I need to interact with iTunes at all.
As witnessed by the other comment below yours, I have heard people refer to iTunes as a good piece of software in the past. (I am, incidentally, not one of those. I hate iTunes with a passion). The point being, this is a subjective measure.
Does a bad UI make software like iTunes "incomplete"? Again, it depends on your perspective. Missing, or bad data, as is the case in this instance, seems to be a bit less contentious, as can be seen in the quasi-unanimous anger towards the new maps.
Having some standards and providing a working maps app before release would be my definition of "how to do it", but maybe I'm missing something here.
Obviously Apple knew their solution was shit, but they released it anyway, hoping people wouldn't mind too much. That was their choice and now they have to deal.
Crazy thing is according to TomTom there is no problem in the actual map data they provided. (I think they're right. I've driven across Europe without major problems using TomTom. There were no complaints about the TomTom App according to the 4.5 star reviews). According to TomTom, Appel combines their data with data from other sources and Apple has a problem combining/rendering the data...
I don’t think turn-by-turn (what TomTome provides) is the problem. That seems to work like a charm (at least it does for me). I get excellent TomTom-level quality here in Germany, plus the great (best of breed) traffic info from TomTom.
For me, search and POIs are slightly dysfunctional and some labels are out of whack – both of that, however, doesn’t seem to have any impact on my turn-by-turn experience. So I can believe that TomTom is not to blame here.
It also could suggest that the .1 version will be a significant upgrade if the underlying date's good but it's being parsed wrong/deprioritized for OSM data/etc.
Better than if the underlying data is wrong, anyway.
I haven't really heard many complaints about the quality of the road data. Like that turn-by-turn is telling you to go the wrong-way down one way streets, or make a turn that isn't allowed.
(In contrast, I've had Waze tell me to turn left off of an interstate highway onto an underpass road. Because no one had set that as a disallowed turn. That's bad map data.)
From a purely competitive standpoint, this is why Google should be releasing their Google Maps app immediately, and if Apple drags their feet, they should launch a lawsuit to force them to do so.
First off, it would probably be a really good PR move for Google.
Second, if Apple dragged their feet in terms of approval and Google sued them, it might force some changed in terms of how anti-competitively the App store behaves. I could totally see the Justice Dept or FTC stepping in the way they did with Microsoft.
Lastly, if Google added their maps app, it would immediately supplant the Apple app, and a lot less people would use Apple Maps. This would give Apple less data to make their maps better, and keep them at a competitive disadvantage for years.
PR move wise, they've already won the PR battle. Everybody who owns an iPhone 5 or everyone who has considered buying an iPhone 5 now knows that Google (and now Android) has a superior maps offering. By offering a Google Maps app on the iPhone, it just gives customers one reason less to stick with Android.
It will be hard for Google to prove the anti-competitiveness of the App store. It would be quite interesting though - Android has the ability to use different App stores, while Apple certainly does not. It sounds unfair, but I wonder if a court feels the same way.
Pretty sure Apple will be at a disadvantage for years regardless. They've never been a data company as it is, and there's no reason to believe that they could suddenly go out and put together their own maps like Google has done. Better maps does not necessarily equate to having more usage data either.
> Everybody who owns an iPhone 5 or everyone who has
> considered buying an iPhone 5 now knows that Google
> (and now Android) has a superior maps offering.
No. First of all new maps is feature of iOS6 which is no in hands of more than 50% of iOS users not feature of iPhone 5.
Second, there are other places in the world where new maps app is as good or better than old one was. And we finally got turn-by-turn navigation.
> They've never been a data company as it is
They've never been mobile phone makers before iPhone too, remember? "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in".
Let's not forget their map-related acquisitions and partnership with companies in the field.
I buy that the maps is a feature of iOS6, but remember that iOS5 doesn't run on the iPhone 5 (AFAIK). This means that the maps feature becomes part of the purchasing decision.
Would love to see the number of iPhone users in the markets where the new maps app is as good or better. I would go further and say this doesn't matter. A map application is only useful if it works all the time, and if you have the confidence that it will always work.
They had not made a phone before, but they were still a consumer hardware company. I don't think its fair to say that they can now just become a legitimate mapping company. NAVTEQ, TomTom, Google, etc, have spent hundred of thousands of man hours developing those expertise.
There's a difference between "They're not going to just walk in" before they've tried and "They're not going to just walk in" after they've tried and slipped on a banana peel. One is a prediction, the other is a statement of fact.
They've won the current PR battle, but if they build a Google Maps for iOS, they will win the next PR battle.
If Apple is reluctant to approve a Google Maps app, and Google claims that they have the app ready and waiting but Apple won't approve it, customers will be pissed. This would put even more pressure on Apple.
Google could absolutely prove anti-competitiveness of the App store, by simply releasing the app that existed on iOS5. If it's the exact same app, with no new features, Google could ask the question why it was good enough for iOS5, but not iOS6. If Apple is restricting its availability simply because Apple has their own maps app, it could definitely be shown as being anti-competitive, and if the DOJ or FTC started to investigate this, Apple would be in heaps of trouble. Apple would be stupid to risk getting a decision forced down their throats by the government, a la Microsoft.
The one thing that Google may be doing is waiting until after Thanksgiving or Christmas in order to release their new App. They might be letting the bad press over Maps could hurt sales of iPhone 5, and then releasing an app after January.
I guess I'm just failing to see what Google has to gain, and I feel that they have more to lose.
Right now they have gained a key competitive advantage in the minds of consumers. Even iPhone fanboys will have a hard time arguing that Google does not have a better maps app.
What will they have to gain by proving the App store anticompetitive? Google will not make any sort of money from the app anyways.
By releasing a Maps app for iPhone, Google will basically giving away for free what Apple had been (likely) paying them for before. How does that make sense?
Nobody knows if apple is paying them and it all seems like it was free for Apple (but would have been renegotiated in 2013). Google makes money from users using google maps, not by apple paying google to use google maps.
Even if some iPhone 5 buyers are annoyed it will be a couple of years before most of them get another phone. By that time this issue will probably be resolved. The marketing hit is to people who upgraded older devices like the 3GS. These users could be looking to buy a new phone in the next six months and Android just became slightly more attractive.
First, for a lot of countries, we're still in the return period for the iPhone 5. Second, even if they couldn't return it and are stuck with a contract, dissatisfied iPhone 5 owners can still sell their almost brand new phone and get something else (and that wouldn't be good for the iPhone 5 or iOS in the long run).
I think the best strategic move for Google is to wait. They should allow the Maps issue to continue to tarnish the iPhone 5 launch for another month or two, then release their own Maps app that will capture the marketshare of iPhone power users (the people Apple actually needs who would send in problem reports). This would let the dark cloud remain over the iPhone 5 long enough to tarnish it in most peoples' minds, but not long enough to let Apple to get any substantial data improvements from it.
Actually, I now agree with this. Like I said below, they might be delaying it to hurt iPhone 5 sales, as you mentioned. This probably makes more sense from a competitive standpoint, and then using the time to build an even better app (with 3D according to the article) and then releasing it in January after the damage has been done. I guess there's only a small chance Apple will be able to make the Maps significantly better in 3 months.
I disagree. Android is a means to an end- getting control over the user's mobile experience, and extracting data from that. While the obvious preference is for everyone to be using Android, that will never happen. So an iOS Maps app will give Google advertising, as well as location tracking, etc. etc.
There's a more important gamble in play at the moment:
Maps are not Siri, they're not a shiny aluminum cover or impressively slim industrial design: they are one of the core features that people own smartphones for. Would you really get a smartphone that had totally broken maps?
So there's a race: how much can Google steal Apple's thunder before Apple can build a reasonably competitive maps application? I suspect Google is considering how much permanent damage they can score to Apple's marketshare through this debacle.
I see this a few times on here about DOJ or FTC stepping on to Apple like Microsoft, and I think it's pretty off base.
In order for that to happen a few things need to occur. First, the government needs to prove that Apple has a monopoly. Here are some numbers from NPD on smartphone marketshare domestically: https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/pr...
Windows 95 57.4
Windows 98 17.2
Windows NT 11
Mac OS 5
DOS 3.8
Linux 2.1
Windows 3.11 1.1
Unix .8
OS/2 .5
Others 1
So at that time Windows accounted for roughly: 87% of the market! And then beyond the government determining they had a monopoly, they had to show that Microsoft was abusing it's monopoly in anticompetitive ways. They concluded they were through agreements with OEMs and others to keep other software off the machines. Basically OEMs would install Windows and IE, and not make deals to install Netscape or other software. And part of that decision also had to do with the fact that in 1998-2000 as broadband was nascent in much of the country, getting new software wasn't exactly as easy as a 5 minute or less download.
And even still there are legitimate criticisms of the US DOJ case against Microsoft.
Finally though, it doesn't seem to me that this could be done by DOJ/FTC at all. Apple doesn't have a market monopoly. Since it is a device that they produce hardware and software for, and have from the beginning asserted full control over the app store, and other market alternatives (often cheaper) readily exist, I wouldn't expect any action.
I didn't make a comment on previous behavior of Apple, or whether or not Apple has a monopoly. I was saying that Google could force Apple's hand in terms of how they behave in approving or rejecting apps, if Apple acts in an anti-competitive way with respect to a Google Maps app. If Apple doesn't play it right, it could draw the ire of the DoJ or FTC, which they definitely do not want.
If they don't allow a Google Maps app on the iPhone App Store, or if they drag their heels in approving the app, especially given all the outrage from the customers, I believe this is clearly anti-competitive behavior.
Once Google has one available, if Apple doesn't readily approve it, I think a very, very strong case could be made that they are holding back Google's app in order to help their App gain traction. Since only Apple has the power to approve or reject apps from the App Store, if that isn't the definition of anti-competitive, I don't know what is.
Right - but my point is that simple anti-competitive behavior is not necessarily running afoul here.
IT would be anti-competitive, but for the FTC to be involved the case needs to include monopoly abuse or stopping hard-driving competition. Since Google is available through Android and other competitors, and is not blocked from the web-browser, I don't think a legal case can be made. But would love opinions as to why that might not be the case.
EDIT: At least in the United States, perhaps in other jurisdictions it could be an issue?
At Orange, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. Except when we feel that someone else is doing it better in which case we strive to eliminate the obviously superior product from our walled garden.
With the launch of our shitty Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers but we are doing everything we can to make shitty Maps better, except to provide you what you want right now, a working map.
We launched shitty Maps initially with the first version of Orange. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better shitty Maps including features such as really bad directions, never understands your voice integration, Flyover the wrong location and vector-based maps.
In order to do this, we had to create a new version of shitty Maps from the ground up, and though its not ready for prime time we are so worried about our competition that we dumped them prematurely from our walled garden and forced this abomination on you.
There are already more than 100 million Orange devices using the new shitty Maps, with more and more joining us every day. And you know that this is because we reduced your choice to our inferior product, which is what we have the right to do since we own your phone and you don't.
In just over a week, Orange users with the new shitty Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations and some actually did find a few locations. The more our customers use our Maps the sooner we will make another billion dollars and we greatly appreciate the fact you have no real choice now that you have our phone in your pocket.
While we’re improving shitty Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the Orange Store, but good luck finding them as we also created a new nightmare in our Apps store that makes replacing our shitty apps more difficult than ever. We know that the huge majority of Orange users won't have a clue as to what we mean by bookmarking, and of course that is just fine with us. Just use our maps anyway, just like we planned.
Everything we do at Orange is aimed at making our products the only product you use. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until EVERYONE in our walled garden is tired of the BS and gets an Android.
Satire is a contribution. Where those in power fail the truth test, satire has served since the dawn of print, to cast the light of truth on the half truths of the powerful.
Please do not post subjective opinions stated as fact. Personally I found it amusing. The upvote/downvote system will effectively aggregate these subjective opinions and display the comment appropriately.
Your post, however, just comes across to me as trollish.
Pretty ironic that I reached 500 karma with the post that you call "trollish". Now I can downvote both the original shitty satire and your silly accusations!
This is pathetic. I'm surprised no one has hit them up with a false advertising claim over their phone not providing what they wanted (directions, in many cases transit directions)
I've not heard a single person using apple maps say "this is good", every single person states its a downgrade. Apple need to get their act together and realize what they've done is lost a major set of consumer confidence here and should do everything in their power to set the situation right.
I for one was about to do the switch from Android to iphone with the iphone 5 coming out. After seeing apple maps, i've decided that i'll probably just buy the new Nexus when it comes out. Maps are the most important app on my phone besides the dialer and text messaging...not having maps thats anything less than what i've got today is simply not something i'm willing to negotiate.
Google will and should do nothing, this is all completely in their favor at this point. IOS might just have taken its first fatal blow.
For what it is worth, IOS maps has more recent satellite images and more recent road maps from the centre of the city where I live than maps.google.com (the data from maps.google.com will happily show a continuous road that, nowadays, is only an entry to a parking garage)
The IOS 5 app has what looks like the same satellite data as maps.google.com, but even older road topology (it lacks the detour you need to not end up in that garage)
So, from the (tiny) part I checked, IOS 6 has better maps than IOS 5. It may be worse on average, but how would a user objectively evaluate a map app that covers the world?
Happier? No. For my uses, both apps are adequate. I do not use maps apps often, and I if do, it is the old-fashioned way: look at the map before I leave, possibly make a screen dump to make sure I'll have some map avaiable on the road, and use that screen dump if necessary to get where I need to be. I will, at some time, miss street view, though.
Reading discussions, I also learnt and verified that iOS 6 location search is lousy (I think it doesn't know enough about statitics, or doesn't have enough statistical data (yet?). If one searches for, e.g. 'central station', it will happily return hits such as 'Starbucks central station' or 'the X hotel, central station' in favor of the actual train station. It should know that, when in doubt, it should go for the most often sought for hits)
Happier? No. For my uses, both apps are adequate. I do not use maps apps often, and I if do, it is the old-fashioned way: look at the map before I leave, possibly make a screen dump to make sure I'll have some map avaiable on the road, and use that screen dump if necessary to get where I need to be. I will, at some time, miss street view, though.
Reading discussions, I also learnt and verified that iOS 6 location search is lousy (I think it doesn't know enough about statitics, or doesn't have enough statistical data (yet?). If one searches for, e.g. 'central station', it will happily return hits such as 'Starbucks central station' or 'the X hotel, central station' in favor of the actual train station. It should know that, when in doubt, it should go for the most often sought for hits)
I found this week the true extent of how terrible the new iOS Maps is, when I needed to find a hospital. We needed to go to the ER in the middle of the night, and were stuck waiting at a particular hospital that was nearest to us.
I knew there was another, better hospital with a better reputation down the freeway (perhaps 5 miles) and wanted to call to ask what their wait time was. I searched "hospital" and the nearest one provided was 25 miles away. I knew where the one I wanted was and it was no where to be found on iOS Maps.
I also searched for "emergency clinics" in various naming forms, knowing of the ones I would try first… and again, came up empty of all the ones that I knew existed.
I now have a shortcut to Google Maps on my home screen and will only use iOS maps for turn-by-turn directions. I was very frustrated to begin with that night, and Apple disaster of a Map app didn't help.
I can't believe Apple is essentially saying, "Whoops, my bad, here try some other stuff while we fix out mistake." It is really kind of surreal. But good on them for being candid.
I almost lost it when they said to add Google maps as a web app. That seriously made me groan out loud.
I think this is a case where user testing with Apple employees or a trusted focus group failed. For something like maps, which is inherently focused on widely diverse geographies, road setups, and use cases, having just a few hundred testers (most of them in the Bay Area) won't reveal the problems for 99%+ of iPhone owners who live somewhere else.
It would've been nice to see OpenStreetMap get some mention though, as users who think OSM sucks can improve it and indirectly improve iOS maps at the same time.
I would like to know more about this. It's completely not mentioned in the conversation (not just Tim's apology) at all. I know the new app incoroprates traffic data from Waze but they don't talk about OSM involvement at all.
511 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadThe alternatives are almost the same as when it launched. Even having those. How many are having real problems or just hating because is the new fad?
To me it's much better that "this product is shit" than "ah it's apple, what do you expect?".
I end up at a run down strip mall with no Verizon store in sight. So, I load up Google maps is Safari, and it finds and takes me to an actual Verizon store about 3 miles away.
So yes, people are having actual problems with Apple maps.
Let's just all remember that the old maps app was not flawless.
Using the Google Maps app, this never happened to me in hundreds and hundreds of routes.
Using the ios6 maps app for the first time, to locate a verizon store to go and order my iphone 5, it failed to find a Verizon store I knew was there from previous research. I had to settle for mapping the street and finding the store myself.
I'm not saying the old maps app didn't do that to you, just that the rate of that sort of occurrence, given the evidence I've seen, was much lower in ios5 maps than it is in ios6.
I still think the new Maps has notable issues from everything I've read, but Google-based Maps was by no means perfect.
How much of this is the self-selected sample of those who are irritated enough to complain? Data is not he plural of anecdote.
Maybe they should have released Maps as a downloadable app. Maybe they should have waited another year. Maybe they should have... They didn't and outside of transit* there is nothing that is absolutely terrible about the app. It's immature, sure, but it's not the worst thing to happen to the international community since the invention of the atomic weapon.
* If you know any objective-c and are complaining about the lack of transit options, contact your local public transportation authority and develop an app on your own.
- I am still waiting to get a correct location when searching by post code. - Searching by the street name sometimes gives me that same street name somewhere in the USA even with the GPS on and map centered on my current location. - I was in Holborn centered on my location, searched for a Nando's, it told me to go up that same street. Turns out it was down, wrong location for that Nando's. - It is much more difficult to differenciate between an underground and a rail station since they look almost the same unlike Google Maps or Bing Maps.
I have been using Google Maps mobile web app and the Bing native app with good results. Still a step backwards because both are much slower than the old Maps.
So yes, people are having real problems.
Small edit: I don't trust the new maps data anymore, that's the biggest problem though.
This isn't some hypothetical problem, this is going from maps I use all the time with success, to maps that have become vastly less useful.
iOS was the choice for the lead mobile platform but with iOS6 take up levels running high we may have to switch to Android to be able to demonstrate all of our ideas.
I do believe that vector graphics are far superior to GMaps' tiles.
Google already did all of this. It's just that Apple wouldn't let them include those features on iOS. This is rather blatant lying.
To get what they wanted without trade offs, without hidden compromise of their customers, they had to leave their partner. A partner, mind you, who had shown they will put better products (GMail app, Map app) on their own platform (I like both those apps on Android, and GMail on iOS is a joke).
By building their own from the ground up, they also prevent this from happening again with another external partner who wishes to gain some leverage over the richest company in the world.
I'm not apologizing for the decision, or the quality of maps. And while I love to stigmatize liars, this accusation waters down the insult of blatant lying.
10.2 Restrictions on the Types of Applications that You are Permitted to Build with the Maps API(s). Except as explicitly permitted in Section 8 (Licenses from Google to You) or the Maps APIs Documentation, you must not (nor may you permit anyone else to) do any of the following:
(a) No "Wrapping." You must not create or offer a "wrapper" for the Service, unless you obtain Google's written consent to do so. For example, you are not permitted to: (i) use or provide any part of the Service or Content (such as map imagery, geocoding, directions, places, or terrain data) in an API that you offer to others; or (ii) create a Maps API Implementation that reimplements or duplicates Google Maps/Google Earth. For clarity, you are not "re-implementing or duplicating" Google Maps/Google Earth if your Maps API Implementation provides substantial additional features or content beyond Google Maps/Google Earth, and those additional features or content constitute the primary defining characteristic of your Maps API Implementation.
(b) No Business, Residential, or Telephone Listings Services. You must not display any of the business listings Content provided by the Maps API(s) in any Maps API Implementation that has the primary purpose of making available business, residential address, or telephone directory listings.
(c) No Navigation, Autonomous Vehicle Control, or Enterprise Applications. You must not use the Service or Content with any products, systems, or applications for or in connection with any of the following:
(i) real time navigation or route guidance, including but not limited to turn-by-turn route guidance that is synchronized to the position of a user's sensor-enabled device.
(ii) any systems or functions for automatic or autonomous control of vehicle behavior; or
(iii) enterprise dispatch, fleet management, business asset tracking or similar applications. If you want to engage in enterprise dispatch, fleet management, business asset tracking, or similar applications, please contact the Google Maps API for Business sales team to obtain a Google enterprise license. (If you are offering a non-enterprise implementation, you may use the Google Maps API(s) to track assets such as cars, buses or other vehicles, as long as your tracking application is made available to the public without charge. For example, you may offer a free, public Maps API Implementation that displays real-time public transit or other transportation status information.)
Those features in Android's Google Maps only exist because they don't have to follow the TOS.
How the hell do you know that Google would have allowed them to use all of that for reasonable terms? You do not. You are just clueless.
Let's hope, for the sake of those people at least, Apple can get some better data.
"We are extremely sorry"
That’s a proper apology. No dodging, no sidestepping, no shifting of the blame. We screwed up, we are sorry for the problems that caused, we are doing everything we can to fix this.
If you consider this a mistake(which it is), you must consider it a very highly calculated one. They knew what they were doing, apologizing for something they knew would happen is very disingenuous.
So basically they are sad that there customers don't like the product Apple knew was under par, instead of being sorry for knowing releasing an under par product.
"We are sorry you don't like the product we knew was bad but released anyways"
A band-aid on bad situation made from some high level bad choices. Though for all we know this could be a 100% calculated move (minus the maps icon), but at the end of they day they are still putting there customers below something else(i will not speculate on what there reasoning is).
Let's assume that Apple's contract with Google was ending soon, and that Google had failed to deliver features for Apple (turn by turn, etc), meaning Apple wanted to go a different direction.
Sure, Apple then started buying up mapping companies, building their own product, but they must have known they were on a tight schedule. My question is -- why didn't they partner with Microsoft to use Bing maps?
Microsoft gets a huge win in that suddenly 40 million people are using their service. Apple gets a win in that they have a pretty comparative product out of the gate to Google Maps, and it gives them time to build up their own service.
But instead, Apple released maps that had 1/3rd the quality of the maps they had before. Where's the logic in that?
Far better to rip the band-aid off now, tune the dataset over time, and ultimately emerge with a better overall experience that you now control completely. Already the system-wide integration of mapping is far superior in that regard. That just wasn't going to happen with Google or any other partner which would forever live as a walled garden of an App.
Inaccurate mapping data is, after all, a (relatively) finite problem.
Not if you live in the area that has very low resolution maps. IMHO "finite problem" is an antithesis to accurate maps. Mapping requires constant improvement. For example roads in the area where I live have been modified 3 times in last 5 years.
They run iCloud on Windows Azure, why not run their map service using Bing Maps data?
EDIT: I'm wrong, as pointed out below; Azure isn't just for Windows Server.
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/linux/
You could use them from any OS that has a HTTP stack. Apple are probably using just this.
Whilst I'm sure they'd have gotten a 1-year licensing agreement with Microsoft I can only guess it'd come with a steep price tag on. Plus they'd just been burnt by dealing with a third party. Plus (again, sorry), they need to have the Maps application being used by people worldwide to improve the quality. It doesn't get better with time, it gets better with users moaning.
I don't of course just mean the bug reports, I mean every email going into customer support, every snarky comment directed at Apple and so on. It'll encourage them to dig deep, hopefully.
While it isn't perfect being the only big map player in that system means that over time customers will just accept that is their only option, and those with problems will see improvements. By the time Google releases a map app many customers may already be committed to the default experience.
Some folks may continue to make comparisons between the two and switch back, but the majority may not and thus an easy win for Apple where if there were a competing Google Maps they would face a far steeper challenge even with time to improve their own product.
As for partnering with MS I think Apple simply wanted to go on their own considering that they were already were severing a partnership over maps.
> over time customers will just accept that is their only option
As Tim Cook mentioned, there are already map apps available for Bing, MapQuest and Waze, and turn-by-turn navigation apps from all the major players. Google announced that they have not submitted their own maps app for iOS.
Unless, perhaps rightly, you're considering Google the only major player. More reason for Apple to switch now.
Quite frankly, Google has had plenty of time to be working on a Maps application for iOS. It's not like they have to reinvent the wheel with this, they have iOS development teams and experience with mobile mapping applications.
I think that Google willfully chose not to have a product ready. It's a good explanation when you realize they had months of lead time, and when you factor in all of the CEO "I don't know nothing' about no app" comments.
They are constantly biting their own hand because making any service Android specific limits it's use and making services available on competing hardware limits their own hardware penetration.
Since Apple makes all their money on hardware they just don't care. They focus on making the best hardware they can and then build software on top of it. Jobs for the longest time didn't even want to put iTunes on Windows but eventually relented when people were buying iPods for their Windows PCs.
Word has it they're working on the iOS app and have been frantically doing so.
I don't see any advantage in willfully delaying. They only shaft potential lost users in doing so. I doubt any many folks folks are dumping their iPhone due to the maps and all Google does is loose contact with customers in the process and give Apple a chance to fill the void.
It's a first generation product. By putting it out there and getting actual user feedback, this should accelerate the development.
Even if Apple has, let's say, 90% of the map data/information that Google does, the minute you are sent to the wrong location, or to a store that doesn't exist, or try to get transit directions and can't, or get routed via the most convoluted route possible to your destination, the Maps app has failed.
Turn by turn navigation is awesome though. Once they've worked out the kinks I'm sure this experience will be better overall.
If it's so awesome, why didn't you buy a standalone GPS or an Android phone over the last few years? Because it's nifty but for most iPhone users this is not a must-have feature. Which is why Apple can get away with shipping a crap maps app.
-Looking straight ahead, grab phone and hold down Home button. -Siri chirps -"I need directions to foo" -"Here are directions to foo" -"In X miles turn Y on N"
The only time I touched the phone was to hold down the Home button. Never once looked away from the road. It's amazing.
Edit: Two presses if you want audio instructions. Google Now opens maps which doesn't do audio instructions apparently rather than navigation which does. There's a button for navigation in the maps app.
However, is it a mission-critical app? What percentage of the userbase actually needs maps on a day to day basis? What did you do in 2005 when your GPS completely failed? You call the destination... it's not like you don't have a phone in your hand. Failing that, you ask a nearby stranger.
I presume Apple went ahead because Maps is likely less important to their userbase than, say, the Music app and definitely less critical than the browser.
It's not "mission-critical," but by that criterion neither is any part of iOS that's not talk and text and maaaybe basic web browsing. Mapping is surely one of the bigger raisons d'être for smartphones, otherwise people might as well buy an S40 Nokia.
And while you may have considered it a "fifth generation product", Google Maps went virtually untouched between iOS 1.1.3 and iOS 5.1. Although its map data was very accurate, its feature set was sorely lacking when compared to Google's map app on Android.
I sympathize with people who have encountered inaccuracies, but that hasn't been my experience so far. Hopefully, this will get worked out and we'll end up with a map app that is both accurate and has a competitive feature set.
Even in 2010, 5 years after they launched, they got the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica wrong. This rendered Google Maps worthless. They should have just shelved the whole project right then.
Don't even get me started on Waldseemüller. So much worse than worthless!
Why go through Microsoft when their data is Nokia based anyway?
* TeleAtlas, which is in bed with Google
* Navteq, which is owned by Nokia, which has a deal to provide maps to Bing
So now maps is one of the few areas where both Google/Android and Microsoft/Nokia have a blatant advantage over Apple. Why would they want to give that up?
What Google does have is that they partner with whomever has the best available information in the area of interest (check out the copyright info when you scroll around the world on google maps on the web) and augment that with streetview, Yellow Pages, crowdsourced info from Android, etc (and vetted by hand)
It also strikes me that Apple Maps do not have a web interface (unless I'm wrong). In my experience, anytime something I care about in my neighborhood is misplaced on Google Maps, I use the web interface to correct the location. Without this ability, I imagine that it could take Apple a long time to reach parity with Google Maps.
As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend -- partnering with Apple would boost their Bing Maps market share into double digit percentage growth, all the while taking Google's map market share down. Even if you know the relationship won't last long and that in the end you'll have another competitor in the space, the rewards far outweigh the risks.
It's far better to take down the king and fight for the throne than to always be a peasant.
There really aren't any major "alliances" right now. It's a mess.
"But if the old agreement between Apple and Google expired in the first half of 2013 (which, again, my own sources familiar with the matter agree to be the case), that means the deal was set to expire halfway through the expected year-long life cycle for iOS 6. If Apple had stuck with Google Maps for another year they would have been forced to renegotiate with Google in a situation where both sides at the table would know that Apple either (a) had to agree to whatever terms Google demanded to extend the deal; or (b) would be forced to swap the mapping back-end of iOS 6 midway through its development cycle."
http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switc...
Gruber is a known shill who writes 50 shades of gray for Apple-fans.
It's a maturing market now, and not so nice. We have to wait for the next disruption now.
Reminds me of Avis' slogan: We try harder because we're number two.
And I fear you may be right. This is not something Jobs would have allowed.
Occasionally he also posts something which is not "apple politics" which is interesting, so for now he stays on my list of subscriptions.
Google is adding features to it's own mobile OS maps app while withholding those features from it's competitor. Google offered to include the features in exchange for ads and customer data, two things Apple has always tried to minimize. Apple historically defaults to accepting the pain of adopting new technology too early as opposed to too late.
Gruber is using a weird empiricism to defend everything Apple does. `They were locked into it because that is the pattern!` For instance, why couldn't they have released the new maps with the upcoming iPad mini release, buying a little more time?
Historically doing something one way doesn't mean you have to rush out a turd just to keep up a meaningless pattern. You also don't have to step over every crack in the sidewalk to avoid bad joo joo.
Gruber uses these little patterns in version numbers, release dates, etc. to make predictions about Apple releases and drive traffic to his blog. He has gotten so obsessed with them that he has flipped the entire utility of them and now uses them quasi-prescriptively in proclamations of what Apple has to do or had to do.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/09/28/told-you-so
Show me another blogger that was warning Apple they needed to get maps right back in May. That's why he gets page views.
The recent issue between Netflix and Starz will show you why it is a major focus.
As much as we'd like to ignore people/business issues, sometime they trump tech and social networking issues.
I can easily envision Tim Cook doing this. The whole world is watching, and there is major ego on the line. The last thing on earth he'd want is for wall street to see that google had him by the balls.
Not that Jon Gruber is guarenteed to be right, but it certainly has the ring of truth.
Edit: Of course, if wall street were really paying attention, they'd see that apple behaved this badly because Google in fact had them by the balls. Thank god they're not the sharpest tools in the shed over there.
If it has come to Apple issuing a public apology for shipping a partly-baked replacement for an important core app, the old version of which they are still licensed to distribute for another year...
Why not put iOS 5 Maps in the App Store, and pull it down next summer?
No, closer to 6 months.
EDIT: Blog post from someone living in China extolling the virtues of iOS 6 maps http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2012/9/24/ios-maps-and-china....
http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2012/9/24/ios-maps-and-china....
Mine too, but because Apple is incorrectly naming the subdivisions with random POI. Like a small condo building becoming the name for a whole neighborhood. It seems random and almost entirely incorrect.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/25/us-google-iphone-i...
I was quite surprised they listed competitors. Is this an unusual move or a normal/expected thing to do in a case like this?
[1] http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/
[2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/02Letter-from-Apple-...
So while he might say “Yeah, what we had sucked, but our new thing fixes all these problems!” he wouldn’t really do the same so openly in times when there is no clear solution in sight.
Do I believe that the software will improve? Yes.. eventually. I know in enterprise software provides like IBM tend to ship hardware with incomplete software and rely in service packs to complete the functions.And if Apple thinks that the same model will work for Consumer products, then they are plain wrong.
I was talking with a friend of mine last night on the iPhone. She was complaining that her iPhone was working poorly, and she was frustrated with it. I asked if she had updated to iOS 6 yet, since sometimes a restore cycle can clear things up. She told me, no, she wasn't, because she heard maps were terrible. I said, "did you hear they are terrible, or have you used them and think they're terrible?" She said she heard only. Interestingly, though, she said she had been using turn-by-turn with "a voice telling her when to turn." I asked her to go to Settings and check, and sure enough, she had updated and actually liked new Maps.
I don't deny that new Maps aren't at the level that GMaps were, but they're not really that terrible, either. Unless you required a feature that is gone now (transit, which I don't), then it's really not so bad, at least in my experience, and has improved since the betas.
I think this is another example of the biggest general complaint about apple Maps, that it's too US-centric. Here in Europe a mapping program that can't do transit is a joke.
Google Maps never had any transit info in Germany. It never was a joke, it always was awesome (even if always fraught with problems and errors).
I also think that's why Apple released it: there are genuine improvements in some areas, but they underestimated how important the missing features are to some people. For some people, the transit features are the reason to use Maps, so it's obviously inferior for them.
How much clearer does it need to be? He comes out and says, right there, that the parts that aren't outright missing are fine. This is not my experience, nor is it the experience of many other people I've talked to.
1. Check out the location of my new house. Apple's data is years old and predates the whole development. The area is new, but not THAT new. Google and OpenStreetMap both have it fine.
2. Use it to navigate to a park I'd never been to before. Get told "you have arrived" while going under an interstate overpass. Find a driveway to pull off in, spend about ten minutes screwing around with the park's web site verifying the address, finding a better map, etc., finally figure out that the app sent me about half a mile in the wrong direction down this road. Google, of course, has the correct location for the address.
3. Use it to navigate to a restaurant I'd never been to before. "You have arrived" happens in front of a tiny strip mall with no restaurants. Wander around the area for a while and finally find it. Later on I check to see what happened, and it's pretty incredible. Maps had been opened with a link of the form, Restaurant@latitude,longitude. Stripping off the "Restaurant@" portion gives the correct location. With the restaurant name in it, Maps ignored the lat/lon and preferred its POI data, which was just plain wrong.
At that point, I gave up on the thing. Note that this is not the sequence of bad experience that were interspersed with good ones. These are the only experiences I had in using the thing, aside from two trivial tests navigating to and from day care which I do almost every day anyway.
Many other people I've talked to report similar experiences. Addresses are misplaced, POIs are misplaced, stuff is mislabeled or severely out of date, etc.
(By the way, the above is response is much more constructive than saying "un-fucking-believeable" in response to someone who is not aware of problems.)
GASP
How many of the users don't require accurate, up-to-date map data in a map application?
Speaking from my own perspective, admission or not, I think it's the break in that expectation that has me disappointed.
Apple often releases products that many consumers would consider "incomplete". The only difference is that Apple never admitted to being wrong ever. Their branding depends on being seen as shiny software company-upon-a-hill. That's the only difference here, they admitted to making a bad decision. Their little spat with google just made this an unusually bad one; one that they couldn't paper over.
As I mention in my other follow-up comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4586212, the difference in this case is that the product is objectively incomplete: the data itself is measurably bad.
No, when I said "many" I was trying to avoid this conversation right here. We know software is never done, its not a thing you can finish, you can only stop. I tried to nip this in the bud because don't we all know that I could sit here and use the same exact handwaving to justify the status of the new maps app?
What it should be is: plug my iPhone into my Mac; my iPhone should show up in Finder or on the Desktop; Find my mp3 and drag and drop it onto my iPhone icon; unplug my iPhone. I have no idea why I need to interact with iTunes at all.
What? You either drag and drop, or purchase with one click from the store. It could not possibly be easier.
Does a bad UI make software like iTunes "incomplete"? Again, it depends on your perspective. Missing, or bad data, as is the case in this instance, seems to be a bit less contentious, as can be seen in the quasi-unanimous anger towards the new maps.
Obviously Apple knew their solution was shit, but they released it anyway, hoping people wouldn't mind too much. That was their choice and now they have to deal.
This is not dealing.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/21/tomtom-apple-maps-...
For me, search and POIs are slightly dysfunctional and some labels are out of whack – both of that, however, doesn’t seem to have any impact on my turn-by-turn experience. So I can believe that TomTom is not to blame here.
Better than if the underlying data is wrong, anyway.
(In contrast, I've had Waze tell me to turn left off of an interstate highway onto an underpass road. Because no one had set that as a disallowed turn. That's bad map data.)
First off, it would probably be a really good PR move for Google.
Second, if Apple dragged their feet in terms of approval and Google sued them, it might force some changed in terms of how anti-competitively the App store behaves. I could totally see the Justice Dept or FTC stepping in the way they did with Microsoft.
Lastly, if Google added their maps app, it would immediately supplant the Apple app, and a lot less people would use Apple Maps. This would give Apple less data to make their maps better, and keep them at a competitive disadvantage for years.
PR move wise, they've already won the PR battle. Everybody who owns an iPhone 5 or everyone who has considered buying an iPhone 5 now knows that Google (and now Android) has a superior maps offering. By offering a Google Maps app on the iPhone, it just gives customers one reason less to stick with Android.
It will be hard for Google to prove the anti-competitiveness of the App store. It would be quite interesting though - Android has the ability to use different App stores, while Apple certainly does not. It sounds unfair, but I wonder if a court feels the same way.
Pretty sure Apple will be at a disadvantage for years regardless. They've never been a data company as it is, and there's no reason to believe that they could suddenly go out and put together their own maps like Google has done. Better maps does not necessarily equate to having more usage data either.
Would love to see the number of iPhone users in the markets where the new maps app is as good or better. I would go further and say this doesn't matter. A map application is only useful if it works all the time, and if you have the confidence that it will always work.
They had not made a phone before, but they were still a consumer hardware company. I don't think its fair to say that they can now just become a legitimate mapping company. NAVTEQ, TomTom, Google, etc, have spent hundred of thousands of man hours developing those expertise.
If Apple is reluctant to approve a Google Maps app, and Google claims that they have the app ready and waiting but Apple won't approve it, customers will be pissed. This would put even more pressure on Apple.
Google could absolutely prove anti-competitiveness of the App store, by simply releasing the app that existed on iOS5. If it's the exact same app, with no new features, Google could ask the question why it was good enough for iOS5, but not iOS6. If Apple is restricting its availability simply because Apple has their own maps app, it could definitely be shown as being anti-competitive, and if the DOJ or FTC started to investigate this, Apple would be in heaps of trouble. Apple would be stupid to risk getting a decision forced down their throats by the government, a la Microsoft.
The one thing that Google may be doing is waiting until after Thanksgiving or Christmas in order to release their new App. They might be letting the bad press over Maps could hurt sales of iPhone 5, and then releasing an app after January.
I was under the impression that Apple was the one that wrote that app, and they just sourced all the map data from Google.
Right now they have gained a key competitive advantage in the minds of consumers. Even iPhone fanboys will have a hard time arguing that Google does not have a better maps app.
What will they have to gain by proving the App store anticompetitive? Google will not make any sort of money from the app anyways.
By releasing a Maps app for iPhone, Google will basically giving away for free what Apple had been (likely) paying them for before. How does that make sense?
http://www.quora.com/How-much-does-Apple-pay-Google-to-use-t...
Very valuable.
Maps are not Siri, they're not a shiny aluminum cover or impressively slim industrial design: they are one of the core features that people own smartphones for. Would you really get a smartphone that had totally broken maps?
So there's a race: how much can Google steal Apple's thunder before Apple can build a reasonably competitive maps application? I suspect Google is considering how much permanent damage they can score to Apple's marketshare through this debacle.
In order for that to happen a few things need to occur. First, the government needs to prove that Apple has a monopoly. Here are some numbers from NPD on smartphone marketshare domestically: https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/pr...
Apple: 31 percent Samsung: 24 percent HTC: 15 percent Motorola: 12 percent LG: 6 percent
So right there, it's a tough case to make that Apple has a dominant market monopoly as compared to Microsoft in 1998.
Here's a CNET article I found quickly from 1999, one year-ish after the DOJ brought their case: http://news.cnet.com/Windows-95-remains-most-popular-operati...
Windows 95 57.4 Windows 98 17.2 Windows NT 11 Mac OS 5 DOS 3.8 Linux 2.1 Windows 3.11 1.1 Unix .8 OS/2 .5 Others 1
So at that time Windows accounted for roughly: 87% of the market! And then beyond the government determining they had a monopoly, they had to show that Microsoft was abusing it's monopoly in anticompetitive ways. They concluded they were through agreements with OEMs and others to keep other software off the machines. Basically OEMs would install Windows and IE, and not make deals to install Netscape or other software. And part of that decision also had to do with the fact that in 1998-2000 as broadband was nascent in much of the country, getting new software wasn't exactly as easy as a 5 minute or less download.
And even still there are legitimate criticisms of the US DOJ case against Microsoft.
Finally though, it doesn't seem to me that this could be done by DOJ/FTC at all. Apple doesn't have a market monopoly. Since it is a device that they produce hardware and software for, and have from the beginning asserted full control over the app store, and other market alternatives (often cheaper) readily exist, I wouldn't expect any action.
If they don't allow a Google Maps app on the iPhone App Store, or if they drag their heels in approving the app, especially given all the outrage from the customers, I believe this is clearly anti-competitive behavior.
Once Google has one available, if Apple doesn't readily approve it, I think a very, very strong case could be made that they are holding back Google's app in order to help their App gain traction. Since only Apple has the power to approve or reject apps from the App Store, if that isn't the definition of anti-competitive, I don't know what is.
IT would be anti-competitive, but for the FTC to be involved the case needs to include monopoly abuse or stopping hard-driving competition. Since Google is available through Android and other competitors, and is not blocked from the web-browser, I don't think a legal case can be made. But would love opinions as to why that might not be the case.
EDIT: At least in the United States, perhaps in other jurisdictions it could be an issue?
With the launch of our shitty Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers but we are doing everything we can to make shitty Maps better, except to provide you what you want right now, a working map.
We launched shitty Maps initially with the first version of Orange. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better shitty Maps including features such as really bad directions, never understands your voice integration, Flyover the wrong location and vector-based maps.
In order to do this, we had to create a new version of shitty Maps from the ground up, and though its not ready for prime time we are so worried about our competition that we dumped them prematurely from our walled garden and forced this abomination on you.
There are already more than 100 million Orange devices using the new shitty Maps, with more and more joining us every day. And you know that this is because we reduced your choice to our inferior product, which is what we have the right to do since we own your phone and you don't.
In just over a week, Orange users with the new shitty Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations and some actually did find a few locations. The more our customers use our Maps the sooner we will make another billion dollars and we greatly appreciate the fact you have no real choice now that you have our phone in your pocket.
While we’re improving shitty Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the Orange Store, but good luck finding them as we also created a new nightmare in our Apps store that makes replacing our shitty apps more difficult than ever. We know that the huge majority of Orange users won't have a clue as to what we mean by bookmarking, and of course that is just fine with us. Just use our maps anyway, just like we planned.
Everything we do at Orange is aimed at making our products the only product you use. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until EVERYONE in our walled garden is tired of the BS and gets an Android.
Your post, however, just comes across to me as trollish.
(Just kidding, of course.)
Maybe you missed the part where they linked to an entire section of the store titled Map Apps.
I've not heard a single person using apple maps say "this is good", every single person states its a downgrade. Apple need to get their act together and realize what they've done is lost a major set of consumer confidence here and should do everything in their power to set the situation right.
I for one was about to do the switch from Android to iphone with the iphone 5 coming out. After seeing apple maps, i've decided that i'll probably just buy the new Nexus when it comes out. Maps are the most important app on my phone besides the dialer and text messaging...not having maps thats anything less than what i've got today is simply not something i'm willing to negotiate.
Google will and should do nothing, this is all completely in their favor at this point. IOS might just have taken its first fatal blow.
The IOS 5 app has what looks like the same satellite data as maps.google.com, but even older road topology (it lacks the detour you need to not end up in that garage)
So, from the (tiny) part I checked, IOS 6 has better maps than IOS 5. It may be worse on average, but how would a user objectively evaluate a map app that covers the world?
If you're honestly happier with this product then thats cool, but i'm not.
Reading discussions, I also learnt and verified that iOS 6 location search is lousy (I think it doesn't know enough about statitics, or doesn't have enough statistical data (yet?). If one searches for, e.g. 'central station', it will happily return hits such as 'Starbucks central station' or 'the X hotel, central station' in favor of the actual train station. It should know that, when in doubt, it should go for the most often sought for hits)
Reading discussions, I also learnt and verified that iOS 6 location search is lousy (I think it doesn't know enough about statitics, or doesn't have enough statistical data (yet?). If one searches for, e.g. 'central station', it will happily return hits such as 'Starbucks central station' or 'the X hotel, central station' in favor of the actual train station. It should know that, when in doubt, it should go for the most often sought for hits)
I knew there was another, better hospital with a better reputation down the freeway (perhaps 5 miles) and wanted to call to ask what their wait time was. I searched "hospital" and the nearest one provided was 25 miles away. I knew where the one I wanted was and it was no where to be found on iOS Maps.
I also searched for "emergency clinics" in various naming forms, knowing of the ones I would try first… and again, came up empty of all the ones that I knew existed.
I now have a shortcut to Google Maps on my home screen and will only use iOS maps for turn-by-turn directions. I was very frustrated to begin with that night, and Apple disaster of a Map app didn't help.
I almost lost it when they said to add Google maps as a web app. That seriously made me groan out loud.
Kudos for that.
Kudos for that.
It would've been nice to see OpenStreetMap get some mention though, as users who think OSM sucks can improve it and indirectly improve iOS maps at the same time.