Apple fumbles and apologizes -- Google goes underwater

Parent Cafe
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<p>[While</a> Apple Apologizes, Google Maps the Ocean Floor - Technology Review](<a href=“http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429434/while-apple-apologizes-google-maps-the-ocean/]While”>http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429434/while-apple-apologizes-google-maps-the-ocean/)</p>

<p>There’s no one left to defend Apple Maps. Even CEO Tim Cook has issued a formal apology for the app’s issues, which include irrelevant search results, transplanted state capitals, and melting bridges. Apple Maps has no routing for public transportation, instead redirecting users to a third-party app like HopStop. .</p>

<p>Underwater mapping might not be that useful for most iPhone5 owners, but still, it shows how far Google is pushing ahead with its mapping technology.</p>

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<p>Gee, I just can’t wait to get those underwater maps:)</p>

<p>Now, if I could just get an apology from both Mapquest and Google Maps. They list our street as “street” but it’s really “drive”…and when you do routing for our address, both vendors take you up a very steep dirt road. Believe me, there are many paved roads to this house!</p>

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<p>Now, if I could just get an apology from both Mapquest and Google Maps. They list our street as “street” but it’s really "drive</p>

<p>Over in Microsoft land- ( where I grew up), you better have your address correct if you want to find it, as there may be “streets”, “drives” and “places” that are otherwise numbered the same.</p>

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<p>Google employs approximately 1,100 people for the purpose of providing free maps and turn by turn directions to people. Rather than doing the logical thing and relying on Google’s expertise, Apple is so spiteful that it has to spend millions of dollars developing an inferior mapping service. This is a perfect example of Apple – you get what they tell you you will have. I prefer the Android open software platform. And the best Samsung smart phone is better than the iPhone 5.</p>

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<p>Apple wanted to provide turn-by-turn directions and Google didn’t have that for iOS and they weren’t going to provide them without concessions such as ads. Google also gains a tremendous amount of data from Apple’s customers that use Google Maps. So business-wise, Apple was faced with two difficult choices.</p>

<p>Apparently their maps product works better as people use it. I assume that people go to places and that Apple updates their database if they don’t have certain places on their own. So waiting to release their product may have cost them mapping accuracy too.</p>

<p>I have an iPhone 5 and have used it for mapping this past week. I normally use a Garmin Nuvi but the Nuvi won’t show you the whole route without going through a lot of trouble and it will give you an orientation that isn’t that useful when you aren’t precise on where you want to go. I will say that the Garmin is outstanding in getting you from point A to point B if they are both known but it can be a pain when you know a better route or have information that it doesn’t have. So we used Apple maps on the iPhone 5 to get the big picture so that we could make big picture adjustments to where we wanted to go and how to get there. BTW, we did this last year too on a trip though we used an iPad that time. We used the Garmin for near-term navigation and an iPad to see the big picture - this allowed us to look at attractions in the area so that we could drop in and do something. The Garmin isn’t very good at this sort of thing.</p>

<p>I understand that some people have problems with Apple Maps. But I’m sure that lots of people use them without problems.</p>

<p>The mapping area is interesting. Bing, Nokia-Microsoft-Oracle, MapQuest, Garmin, Google, and TomTom seem to be the biggest players. Maybe I’m missing a few - there’s Magellan but I don’t know if they have their own maps or they use another source. Apple could just purchase services from the other providers - their go-it-alone approach is something that we’ve seen before when they are threatened and it has worked out well for them in other areas. They bought two chip-design companies and produce the best ARM chip in the industry right now with the A6. They could just have gone with industry standard designs but they came up with their own custom design that has better performance and power-savings characteristics than their competition.</p>

<p>My dream combination would be Apple and Garmin where Apple gives you an 8 GB chunk of memory dedicated to Garmin Maps for your part of the world and updates those maps for free. That way, you don’t need to use mobile data to navigate - all of the maps are stored on your device and you don’t break the bank on data plans.</p>

<p>I bought a Samsung Smart Phone and the iPhone 5. I prefer the iPhone 5. Best is a relative and sometimes personal term.</p>

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<p>BCEagle, in reality there’s only two and a half sources of map data in the US. One is Navteq (aka Nokia) out of Chicago and the other is TeleAtlas out of the Netherlands. The half is the people who do their own using public domain data (Tiger maps) or other sources. </p>

<p>In theory, any nav software can use anyone’s data if it has been compiled to the proper (usually proprietary) format, but in practice, you stick with what works. The hard work is not the map data but the libraries you use to access the data and get work done. The libraries do things like geocoding, reverse geocoding (gps coordinates from / to address), map-drawing, map-matching, POI searches, route calculation, guidance, and many other functions. </p>

<p>Apple’s issue could be the data especially if they rolled their own, or the libraries, or the application coding. It’s not like they’re immune from screw-ups. My TomTom knew every Chinese restaurant in Washington DC but could not find Arlington National Cemetery using fairly obvious search criteria. In Puerto Rico all it had was post offices… </p>

<p>Add to that the chaos of real time information providers for traffic and weather and it gets quite crowded…</p>

<p>I applaud Apple for going DIY but having gone thru the path myself I wish them well. It is not an easy path (pun intended)…</p>

<p>Figure it’s going to take a couple years for them to get it right. Microsoft took considerably longer than that but Bing maps are pretty good. If you want a no brainer good navigation on a phone, get a Nokia :). I’ve had offline maps on Nokia phones for many years, and they work pretty well.</p>

<p>I am guessing Apple may be thinking of Location Based Services (LBS) down the road, so that’s why the are DIY’ing… there’s business reasons to stick or not stick with Google and they certainly have the money to DIY, but it’s not going to be easy either way.</p>

<p>By the way, Nokia does allow downloading map data (check Nokia Drive). The big issue is that the user interfaces for any smartphone are not very good and that kills the user experience. In a pinch my Samsung Focus (windows 7.5) works great but nothing like my TomTom.</p>

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<p>One of my BILs works in Nokia mapping and I’ve met two layers of management above him and it was interesting talking to them - they were complaining about how hard it was to hire people even though they were not doing that well overall as a company. It was puzzling to me why their groups were in growth mode while they were losing marketshare. Selling their mapping stuff to/with Microsoft and now Oracle seems to explain why they are growing when a lot of the rest of the company is shrinking.</p>

<p>So is Google doing their own thing or are they using one of these other two sources? Are they using these services for road information and adding StreetView, 3-d stuff, overlaying image data, providing information inside buildings, etc? A lot of this stuff seems like it adds a lot of data to basic map information.</p>

<p>On downloading data - I’d like all of North America loaded - same as on my Garmin. Why wouldn’t Nokia just load all of the data onto your smartphone, assuming you have enough space. Google maps allows you to set the amount of memory to allocate for map caches. But it’s still just a cache.</p>

<p>I love my Garmin but you have to use it with some common sense or have an idea of the bigger picture and that’s why I like a combination of Garmin + mapping program (Apple Maps or Google Maps are fine - I have both on my iPhone).</p>

<p>I miss the way Garmin did things in my old iQue 3600. You could get the big picture or the small picture as it always had a 2-D view of things. The modern approach is a 3-d view of where you are going next so you feel like a mouse in a maze.</p>

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<p>All this technical discussion is riveting, but brought back to its simple denominator, it remains that Apple laid a huge egg. </p>

<p>The latest iPhone is an improvement but the loss of the beautiful google applications is a strategic blunder. It is a given that customers will be a LOT more cautious in upgrading the phones or making the mistake of installing a new software on an aging device. </p>

<p>Ios6 is a big yawner.</p>

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<p>For some people.</p>

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<p>It’s a tactical problem in that they didn’t execute better than they did but it was strategically the correct thing to do.</p>

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<p>This is my first smartphone and I find the iPhone 5 to be a very nice device and I quite like iOS 6.</p>

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<p>I read an article which said that Apple Maps uses 1/5th to 1/7th the bandwidth that Google Maps uses because Google’s iOS implementation uses bitmap graphics while Apple’s implementation uses vector graphics which are a lot more efficient for zooming in and out. I can confirm the difference in bandwidth usage.</p>

<p>Google uses vector graphics in their Andoid version though so thus was yet another area where Apple was at a disadvantage in using Google’s app.</p>

<p>It is looking more and more like Apple made the right decision. But the could have done a better job on implementation.</p>

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<p>off-board navigation systems download ‘tiles’ and redraw the map locally. If Google downloads pre-made bitmaps it’s not a very good idea bandwidth wise. </p>

<p>All this, tho, points how correct Nokia was to go off-board :). The entire US is 2GB, maybe 2.5 or 3 with POI’s, if you exclude fru-fru like 3D buildings…</p>

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<p>Garmin has always been off-board and they’ve offered their systems since the early 1990s. Yeah, Flash memory is fairly expensive but I think that companies should let consumers decide as to how to use it.</p>

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<p>My pet peeve with Google and their OS - because they want to take a dig at Microsoft, they stopped supporting protected .wma files which is the dominant format for audio books. Our libraries probably have 5 wmas for every mp3, but they won’t play on droids - only on Apples.</p>

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<p>I’m pretty sure pretty much all GPS systems have some setting somewhere that lets you change it to a standard 2D map. I know I prefer mine that way, as well as making North always pointing up on the map. It helps a lot more with figuring out WHERE I’m actually going, and lets me be less reliant upon the GPS.</p>

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<p>FYI there are apps for Android that store the maps on your SD card (or internal phone storage, whatever you prefer). I use CoPilot. It’s been a lifesaver a handful of times in remote areas with no cell service, like the hollers of NE Kentucky coming home from a college visit to Ohio using a “back way”. I believe the app was $5 and it works very well with nothing but a GPS signal, which I only lose underground. Since Droids don’t have a fixed amount of storage - you can always buy a bigger SD card - storing map data on the phone makes sense.</p>

<p>I use Google Nav most of the time though, because as a Virgin Mobile customer, I have unlimited data. I find that app not only useful for the big picture (route, what’s around, alt routes, etc) but the “turn right in 50 feet” stuff as well. I can make north always on top and easily zoom in and out to see more of what’s around me (and you can show layers like gas stations and such so you can see what’s at the next freeway exit, for example). Lately I use the traffic feature a lot.</p>

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<p>@dad of 3 - [Wma</a> player Apps - Android](<a href=“http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/wma+player]Wma”>http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/wma+player) - you can get (free) apps to allow you to play wma files.</p>

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<p>I haven’t paid much attention to the Maps fiasco but noticed son excited about them. He posted this link.</p>

<p><a href=“http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/08/03/inside_apples_new_vector_based_maps_in_ios_6[/url]”>http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/08/03/inside_apples_new_vector_based_maps_in_ios_6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I haven’t been able to find a 2D mode in the Garmin Nuvi. It is a dedicated device; not a phone. </p>

<p>On Qmaster files, Microsoft has demanded royalties on file formats before. Apple and Microsoft have cross-licensing agreements which is why you don’t see them suing each other.</p>

<p>You can probably find a bulk conversion program to convert your enable files to mp3.</p>

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<p>Google sells the Galaxy Nexus smartphone and the Nexus 7 tablet, both running JB. Neither have SD slots. Not all Android devices provide expandable storage. The relatively small amount of memory on these two devices (which are very popular) is an area of complaint. My feeling is that Google is pushing their new cloud storage (you get a certain amount of storage for free and then they charge you for more) as a revenue source. So you can store your music or video library on their cloud storage and download what you want to your device when you want it. It obviously depends on a strong broadband pipe so that you don’t have to wait for a while for your content to arrive.</p>

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<p>I am surprised when I hear that drivers tapping or doing other things on their phones while they are driving. I mount the Garmin on the dash and it’s a little more than an arm’s length away and moving to touch something at that distance means that you have to take your eyes off the road and focus on something fairly small for a few seconds. Do most people here pull over to do this sort of thing? I can imagine that it’s as distracting as making a manual phone call.</p>

<p>The Garmin has voice recognition so I don’t have to touch the device to give it commands. I don’t even have to look at the device when giving it commands.</p>

<p>I generally prefer to go with either AT&T or Verizon due to their coverage networks and there are still many places where you don’t have data coverage. I have both the iPhone on AT&T and a Verizon MiFi and do run into areas where AT&T and Verizon aren’t available. The MiFi can be a little more helpful than a phone as I can use my laptop to do planning that would be harder to do on a smartphone.</p>

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<p>Which model Garmin do you have BCEagle? I have an older Garmin, and it has the option tucked away a few menus deep. I remember hunting for a while to enable it on the one I bought my dad a year or two ago, as well.</p>