Why doesn’t “Look Around” cover more areas?
justinobeirne.com
justinobeirne.com
To ensure that Apple was applying the best image blurring technology possible, Apple conducted an entire year of test drives through the US and Europe in 2015, where it did not publish any of the imagery collected during these drives but used it instead to improve Apple’s technology such as image blurring techniques on such objects as faces and license plates.
This might explain some part of the delay between the earliest data collection and publication.
Look Around is so much better than Google. But Apple Maps is still far behind Google Map in terms of accuracy.
Apple said it was being used for Maps: https://web.archive.org/web/20150610193011/http://maps.apple...
I'm under the vague impression that Justin O'Beirne works in this space, so this isn't just a hobby. Can anyone confirm?
Edit: this article (https://www.businessinsider.com/google-maps-vs-apple-maps-ke...) describes him as "a map expert who helped work on Apple Maps." This article (https://medium.com/all-consuming/the-most-overlooked-touchpo...) describes him as "Head of Cartography at Apple."
That tells me he no longer works at Apple. If he did, why would he need to speculate about Apple's internal processes based on what they publicly release? This article (https://www.justinobeirne.com/a-summer-of-google-maps-and-ap...) from 2017 even has him noting hits from Apple's website and tracking how long it took them to correct gaps he outlined.
Those two articles I linked were dated 2016 and 2017. Looking at his website, before that time it seems like he was mostly writing about Google Maps. So maybe he wrote about Google when he was at Apple, then started writing about Apple when he left.
There are probably a lot of teams working on different aspects of the maps, so he wouldn’t automatically be privy to everything because he’s worked on one aspect of the product.
His style is way too many illustrations and a few lines of text in between. Feels buzzfeedy. Sorry, just not for me.
I’d rather see how the they came to their conclusions than read a bunch of bullet points.
Obviously it's a free world to disagree, but if I were his editor I'd tell him his blog posts are ineffective because it's rambling, and if he presents it more concisely, more people would appreaciate it.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18358902 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653
Do you also think these were bad / annoying to read?
(The reason I ask is because I started a newsletter at the beginning of the year and have been trying to emulate his style. But if people genuinely hate it, then I obviously don’t want to follow it. :))
Upvotes might not mean much, maybe other information addicts saw a dense page and "ooh, endorphins, upvote".
After a certain point it just got exhausting to follow. Reading is simple, but looking at images so I can agree with the conlusion he made tasks the brain.
Oh, the moat article even has footnotes that scrolls to the end of the page and you then have to click back... god damn, how!!!
If he was in a conference room presenting a slideshow (each image being a slide), how long would his presentation be? At what point does he lose the majority of the audience? At least with slides people usually point out what they want you to pay attention to, and they don't do 7 slides of examples for one point (like the "look, Google Maps has outlines of buildings!" in the moat article).
And an earlier one than that got 1960: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653
So clearly some people like this style of article (myself included).
2017's article from the same author [1] about Goggle Maps' use of photogrammetry and other building scanning techiques was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting HN submissions ever (its comment section[2] is also worth a read).
[1] https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653
Really? The quote sounds grandiose, but what "interesting questions" does it raise, aside from "it's not perfect" (who would have thought) and "what else might be missing?"?
I also noticed that the images don't distort as much around the edges of the screen when rotating the view as compared to Google Streetview.
A big expansion in vehicles might be motivated by trying to have fresh imagery for most of the country.
The POI issue could just be that they just don't have a good POI database (because they all have problems).
That said, Look Around You is hilarious.
I also felt it was building towards something really interesting.
Perhaps it could have used less examples.
This one has a ton information of information, but still fail to satisfy because it has a low point/information ratio. It just rambles on with data points and examples.
AFAICT, the points made are:
* Apple switched from vans to subarus for data gathering. (IOW, they changed their data acquisition equipment.)
* Their new equipment must be better, because Apple seem to have thrown away all data they acquired with vans.
* Yet, they still lack tons of labels and mis-label / mis-place many buildings / store etc.
* Apple seems to be processing data faster than they used to.
Take-away: you're better off with google street view.
On his front page, this article appear in this section:
> Research + Updates
> Material for future essays + updates to earlier essays
It honestly reads more like notes than an article.
On the contrary, that was in the traditional map.
The author’s actual point came after that: that Look Around didn’t have the same data quality issues, proving so free of such errors the author speculated whether they’re using manual labeling.
>"Nor did it explain why, a week later, most of Southern Canada (a predominantly English-speaking region) also shipped without POIs"
is followed by a snapshot of Quebec City (the french-speaking capitol of the french province) as evidence.
It looks like Apple threw away all data collected by their first (van-based) Look Around driving effort in the US. All released imagery is from their most recent Subaru-based re-driving of the US.