Get the Fainting Chair
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
"I don’t understand why so many reviewers bend over backwards to grade these things on a curve. If Google or Nokia Maps had the problems and deficiencies the Apple Maps have, these same reviewers would (rightly) trash it, and declare (again, rightly) that Google had finally lost its touch.
These aren’t “beta” maps. They’re bad maps. It’s that simple. It’s true that their presentation seems closer to Google-caliber than their data, but improving the data is the hardest part of making maps like these. By the time Apple releases “a serious update or three” the entire market will have changed. The truth is, Apple has released a would-be Google Maps competitor that pales compared to Google Maps. Just say it.
The mass market doesn’t buy, and doesn’t want to buy, products based on what they might become months from now if these companies somehow dramatically improve the software. They buy products for what they are today, out of the box. Google and Nokia are Apple’s industry peers. These are the big leagues, this is The Show. They’re charging customers real money to buy these things. They should be judged by the same standards."
Of course, he wasn't actually talking about Apple maps then so he didn't try quite so hard to see it from their point of view.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/04/21/mccracken-beta-h...
But, OK, everyone! Turn off your brains! It's a Gruber article; all we're going to talk about is Gruber!
Here is a hint: you can read this entire article, believe everything Gruber says, and still believe Maps is a debacle.
His options #1 and #3 are a false and (and misleading) dichotomy. (#1 being continue as is, and #3 being cut the cord)
Of course apple wants to ship its own mapping stuff once it can. But there's no reason it can't continue as-is until their own stuff is done.
So Gruber's claiming some kind obviousness here which is based entirely on the fiction that there was no middle ground. Based on his analysis of decisions made by people he can't even name and certainly doesn't know, he so confident in this that he insinuates that Google (and of course Apple) would have come to the same conclusion, thus that Google is lying about being suprised.
I think that's reading waaaayy to much into all this. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Of course google expected apple to do this at some point. The surprising part is that they did it so early, when their own stuff is hardly done, when the alternative (wait a little longer) has so few apparent downsides.
It's the "Apple has made a terrible irresponsible mistake" stuff that confuses me.
Incidentally, where are you that Apple's maps don't work for you? I'm in Chicago and they work better for me than the old one did.
Edit: What were your problems with Google maps in Chicago? I remember it was kind of stupid sometimes (e.g., it would tell me to take the pink line 3 blocks and transfer instead of just walking three blocks and getting on the red line), but I don't remember them being inaccurate.
In addition, I often feel that public transit and walking directions go hand-in-hand. I would be willing to see someone try to separate them, but I'm skeptical of the user experience.
> THE USER DOESN'T CARE.
Source: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477#c129
> NOT MY POINT.
"They could just have done so and so", as if we are privy to any inside information.
I really hate it when people choose to make up arguments with no solid ground when there are plenty of criticisms to be made.
Again: isn't that a good thing?
I do wonder if this is an opportunity for Microsoft to sell a complete platform experience while Apple is taking a breather.
Disclaimer: I just recently started working for MSFT in a position not at all related to Windows Phone. I also don't own a Windows Phone.
Apple knew this was going to happen, and did it anyways. It is therefore part of a strategy.
One problem, though: It sucks that, in order to make a move that makes economic sense, you have to break stuff for your users. And not just break. REALLY break.
Gruber talks about the options Apple had, and one is "wait one more year having less features than their competitors". Well, that sounds exactly like what Apple would do in the past, in order to have a better user experience. You know, the infamous "customers don't want this or that" that Jobs would always say when they didn't have something ready.
I completely understand how it makes business sense for Apple to develop it's own mapping product, but that doesn't mean that they have to release software that is missing huge chunks of functionality. There seems to be this false dichotomy that Apple had two options: "release a product that is nowhere near ready to ship," and "rely on Google forever." There is a third option, which is "develop maps secretly, do the first two 90%'s of the work, then drop Google maps." Many on HN have argued that maps can't improve until they are used. That is doubtlessly true for some aspects: POIs, especially businesses, aren't going to be added until Apple maps gain mind-share, and there will be errors in the data that Apple bought until someone bothers to tell Apple to correct it. I can forgive Apple for that. But those are the things belong to the third 90% of the work.
If anything, this piece at Daring Fireball just reinforces the idea that Apple has a problem somewhere in the chain of command. It really seems like there's nothing that would have prevented Apple from waiting another 6 to 12 months to announce it's mapping product, except that someone drastically underestimated how difficult it would be to compete with Google. Frankly, I think that's why iOS 6 doesn't have transit directions--the only thing you can do with a late product is drop features or push back the ship date.[2]
I really do welcome all the things that Apple is trying to do maps in iOS 6, and I think they will have a good product in a year's time (or maybe two). That does not, however, mean that I want or will accept broken maps on my phone in the interim.
[1] Apparently this is everyone in Japan, a dude in Portugal, and many people who use public transit to get around in big American cities. For some, the addition of turn-by-turn is a bigger gain than the loss of public transit and street-view.
[2] This is also why I can't see the third-party transit thing as a viable solution. The end-game is that Apple will bring transit in-house the same way they did with the rest of maps. Actually, maybe it's a brilliant strategy on Apple's part to pick really good team to do transit directions. Embark seems to be doing a good job, but they seem to be focusing on just a few transit systems in big cities, with no inter-city transit. Hopefully Apple will acquire them and provide the resources to have really complete coverage.
All of the big boys are angling to be in the game (don't forget Bing maps).
I may keep a folded paper map handy whilst traveling abroad, however, for the foreseeable future.
It makes sense for Apple to seek liberation from Google's chokehold on Maps, and to make plans to deploy this when it was ready. So, out of his extremely malformed recounting of Apple's available options, choice #3 is the best in the long term, but it's not the best choice right now, when Apple's in-house version is leading people down dead-ends into wooded areas when they're almost out of gas (http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31930446388/neithe...) and doing similarly perilous things all the time. This should be blatantly obvious to everyone.
iPhone would continue to thrive even with less featureful maps support. The addition of Latitude would not be an invasion of privacy as Gruber suggests, because it's off by default and in fact when I try to enable Latitude (on road trips, so family can track progress) I typically have a hard time finding it. While neither option 1 nor option 2 is ideal for Apple, both were plausible, reasonable solutions until their in-house maps solution was ready. This, again, should be obvious.
It is immensely irresponsible to rip out something as critical and relied upon, not just for convenience but for safety, as Maps and replace it with a half-baked, disastrously incomplete lookalike. I totally sympathize with Apple wanting out of Google's grip, but we need to be serious here. They released far, far too early, and their draconian and self-serving policies for App Store inclusion have left customers (in some cases literally) stranded.
Apple did a bad thing with this maps release. I would call Google right up and strike a deal to push an OTA update that put the old maps back right away if I were them.
> Please, this guy.
> He defends Apple as if it were a deity.
> I don't think I've ever seen a truly substantial
> criticism of Apple come out of him.
Do we really believe that Apple is infallible?
No.
>No, he does not.
He sure seems like he's doing it to me. This whole post is about how Apple Maps aren't really what they seem, and it's OK that Apple did this because what else was Apple supposed to do? Just let Google have something they want? Make a compromise when ideal options aren't tenable? Ha! The Great and Powerful Apple could never stoop to such levels, reserved for mere-mortal companies. The Great and Powerful Apple operates on a different plane, above reproach, incomprehensible to normal minds. While we may never fully understand The Great and Powerful Apple until the next life, we must trust that they have our best interest at heart, and always do the best thing, like replace functional mapping software with a ridiculously under-prepared conflagration that would have people drive off cliffs. This may seem foolish to us, but the wisdom of The Great and Powerful Apple sometimes appears as foolishness to men.
I used to have a Droid Incredible and the navigation in iOS6 is far better in my opinion. The GPS seems to be a bit more accurate and the map UI just seems cleaner as well.
Difficult decision.
The POIs do suck and some labels are seriously out of place. Also, search sometimes tends to send you to weird places. Those are serious inexcusable issues, but the whole turn-by-turn part is pretty great and the actual maps are pretty comprehensive (at least in Germany).
Re: your reply below. Well, that I believe. It had better be since it's had those years to perfect itself. And I can understand why people would be unhappy with the switch away from Google Maps on iOS - if it were as good as that on Android. Which is wasn't, and sounds like would have been an ordeal to make it so. Google didn't make the app, Apple did. Why put the effort into perfecting the Google Maps app, when they could put that same (more obviously) effort into perfecting their own?
If I crafted a questionable replica of Windows 3.11 and went out and installed it on a hundred million computers that had been running Windows 7, would you defend me because Microsoft had to go through growing pains, too?
"Apple Maps" is late to the party, and forgot its clothes. Why be surprised at the response?
What one's have you heard are better? China? The one that some blogger thought Google wasn't using the better data source that Apple used, except it turned out they were and it was basically placebo?
Sure, that's limited, but it isn't all bad.
I have been wondering, though, whether there has been any effort to quantify exactly how bad iOS 6 Maps really are.
I mean: if this topic were about anything else, HN denizens would be quick to lecture us about how all the complaints are coming from a self-selected sample, not a random one, and how the examples are cherry-picked - not necessarily representative, and how the plural of anecdote is not data.
While there are clearly a lot of errors (and some of them very funny) the world is a very, very big place.
So I wonder how bad is "bad", really? What unit(s) of measurement would one use to quantify it? I imagine you would need a different unit of measurement for each kind of error: one for the melted bridge, one for not finding the Starbucks down the street, one for having an airport in the middle of a field...
Apple is actually responsible for building the app, which is why so few of the many advancements that have come to Google Maps on Android
at http://fury.com/2012/06/wills-and-wonts-at-WWDC-2012/
which no-one else seems to be mentioning (the implication seems to be that google made the ios app crappy on purpose, which the above seems to contradict).
I highly doubt user privacy was one of the reasons Apple chose this path. Does anyone have any corroborating evidence for this claim? I can imagine they did not want to share user data in order to retain a competitive advantage but I have trouble believing it was in the interest of preserving user privacy.
Wouldn't every map app maker cry foul and whine (perhaps with the mouths of lawyers) about Apple using their incumbent (pronounced "monopoly" by lawyers) position to put them out of business?
By launching with sad POI data[3] they enter the map market as the underdog, or at least that cute three legged dog. Virtual immunity from an antitrust meme on the internet. In a couple months they could have a "look how great they are now" meme instead.
Remember what Coca-Cola's president, Donald Keough, said about introducing "New Coke" just to have it reviled and drive people more firmly to Coca-Cola Classic: The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart.
EOM
[1] POI is arguably the easiest part of mapping if you have tens of millions of people to enter corrections.
[2] Clouds over Scotland is fixed by writing a couple checks to imagery companies and running your source blender program again.
[3] Without exception, the POI location failures I'm seeing are because the data is wrong in Yelp. Reporting to Apple didn't yield a quick response, reporting to Yelp got it changed in Yelp, but it is still wrong in Maps. It remains to be seen how frequently Apple will update.
Maybe for Apple Inc, but a better Google Maps app (#2) isn't a "heavy price" for the user.
Based on the publicly-available information, it's not clear that Google did any such thing. They might have refused, or Apple might not have liked their terms, or Tim Cook may have held a seance to get advice from the ghost of an angry Dijkstra, or a hundred other scenarios of varying plausibility. It's hard to say.
I did not find it hard to read the WSJ article he cited. You did. That's fine. But that does give you license to invent new facts.
I didn't say that at all, and you don't have the excuse of not having access to the entirety of my publicly-available comment. I don't consider it implausible that Google refused, I simply have no basis for believing that over other plausible scenarios.
I'm done replying now, since you don't seem to be getting it.
Just because something takes a modicum of effort to obtain doesn't mean it's "unavailable." You can either pay a modest sum for the Wall Street Journal or just go to a library and read it there. It is readily available. If you choose not to read it, you don't then get to pretend the evidence therein does not exist.
Google was willing to add in more functionality but only if Apple would give them an increased amount of branding. Apple didn't want to answer to Google so they decided to build their own.
may have been willing and to let apple access. The application itself was never under Google control, only under Google API restrictions.