“Nearly a year after Apple introduced its own Maps service in iOS 6 with Flyover 3D satellite views, Google is expanding its own online Maps to support similar 3D satellite imagery, with the same sorts of buckled roads and visual distortions Apple was castigated for last summer,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider.
“Unlike Apple’s iOS 6 Maps, which target relatively low powered mobile devices, the new 3D features in Google Maps that were introduced last week require a modern PC running a web browser with a supported version of WebGL hardware accelerated rendering,” Dilger reports. “That limits Google Maps’ photorealistic 3D features to users of Chrome or Firefox on a Mac or Windows PC.”
Dilger reports, “Mobile users will have to settle for grey 3D building models or use the increasingly outdated Google Earth, which unlike Apple Maps’ Flyover feature, is not integrated with the search and directions of Google’s mobile Maps apps… A year after Apple launched iOS 6 with Flyover, neither Google nor Nokia have a similar, integrated 3D visualization feature for their own mobile platforms.”
“Despite its years of experience in 2D digital mapping, Google’s year late, non-mobile 3D Maps product is riddled with the same kind of glitches that Apple scrambled to address after the release of its own new Maps was greeted with contempt and derision. And users don’t have to scour the planet to find undulating roads and smeared buildings in remote areas,” Dilger reports. “AppleInsider reader Vesko Kateliev shared Google Map’s image of Midtown Manhattan, where roads turn into waterfalls and parked cars slide up the side of of a building as if trying to escape from a rolling wave of energy twisting buildings and bulging roads into the air.”
Read more, and see the melting buildings and buckled streets, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Surely, we’ll see the same sort of prolonged media frenzy over this as we did when Apple’s Flyover first debuted, right?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Chris” and “Mike D” for the heads up.]
Google is doomed
Because Apple uses “vector graphics” using less much less memory. Google will have to start from scratch to catch up or will not be available on mobile any time soon.
Google’s Maps have used vector graphics for a long time. The Google Maps app for iPhone uses vector graphics. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to rotate the view, for example.
or domed?
The power of giving away free shit. Nobody complains. I’m convinced that the most attractive thing to many people these days is free shit. It trump all logic.
Where’s the outrage?! Google fscked up! They blew it! Stick with Apple, that you can trust.
Yeah but it’s invitation-only — essentially a beta product in testing (I know, I know, that’s googles thing.). Apple Maps were never called beta, and quite to the opposite, were hailed as the best maps ever in the history of the universe. That’s why people got so upset.
This.
If Google pulled their existing, best-in-class Maps application and replaced it unilaterally with the 3D-scorched earth, I’d be mad, yo.
But they didn’t do that. Stop defending bad decisions.
People would’ve been mad whether Apple maps was called beta or not. Look at how they burned Siri at the stake every chance they got. Look at the outrage over the name of the 4S upon it’s release because it wasn’t called a ‘5’. People got mad about Apple maps because it’s an Apple product that had flaws (overly exaggerated flaws in my opinion). Here we are with Google (the most widely praised name in mapping) releasing something that has the same flaws that Apple maps had and no one’s having a meltdown. People ridiculously expect perfection from Apple (and Apple only) and when they can’t deliver this perfection, they’re scorned.
I wonder if the cars on the side if the building have the right of way?
I always yield to falling cars.
Only if Tom Cruise is leaping from one to another, while screaming “It’s Witwer, it’s Witwer!”
#googlegate hello ? anyone ? (crickets)
How does that taste, Google?
Ha ha!
At this point the new Google Maps is optional–in fact you have to request it. The old Maps is still default. An option iOS 6 users didn’t have.
Google insulates themselves from criticism in these situations by their consistency in offering glitchy products for over a decade.
Never thought about it like that, but it makes sense. They perhaps find safety in the fact that people expect them to release crap from time to time?
Of course they wont receive flak MDN – they’ll just say that the product is in ‘beta’…
Too bad Apple didn’t say it was in beta.
They did with Siri, but a shit storm of criticism still rolled over the Internet.
Aren’t ALL of Google’s products in beta?
see the Google distortions vs Apple side by side with context on Pinterest:
image 1: http://pinterest.com/pin/269160515202217433
image 2: http://pinterest.com/pin/269160515202217434
image 3: http://pinterest.com/pin/269160515202217435
I think we should wait till ios 7 arrive , apple maps on ios and mac osx will be awesome guys . And that hurts googlers !!!
They already are.
Niiiiicee!!
But the press won’t crucify them for it like they did Apple, just watch. This will be a mere blip on the radar rather than a mob crowd of outraged people.
Completely different rollout scenario. Completely different reaction.
“Google today introduced a product that’s poor. People just kept using the existing great product. Film at 11.”
Still find Street View an excellent tool.
Would love Apple to match or exceed it.
Google has been melting bridges since early 2011: Google Earth’s Surreal, Melted Bridges
It’s “beta”. All of Google’s products are beta quality, it’s the only thing Google knows how to do, and their products reflect that.
Our Lady of the Perpetual Beta.
I am expecting to see prolonged coverage if this on CNBC and I also expect to see Google’s stock to tank because of this horrendous maps app.