“Apple is advancing its data accuracy efforts with Apple Maps, according to a new report from iGeneration,” Benjamin Mayo reports for 9to5Mac. “The report details a new website app program where freelancers can sign up and get paid a small fee each time they correct/verify a Point-of-Interest or placemark in Apple Maps.”
“Similar to a Mechanical Turk system, people in the program can get paid about 54 cents per task, with a maximum of 600 tasks per week,” Mayo reports. “In late 2016, reports indicated Apple wanted to deploy flying drones for ground truth efforts to keep Maps updated and accurate. The iGeneration article from today indicates another way that the company is trying to catch up to Google Maps, with sheer human manpower.”
“According to the report’s source, Apple is going to ramp up its deployment of this service later this month,” Mayo reports. “It appears the company has been refining the verification rules for the last year and is now ready to hand out tasks en masse.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, now, if you’re sick and tired of seeing that mistake, you might be able to get paid (a bit) to fix it yourself! Apple Maps could get even better very quickly once this is up and running.
Long. Time. Coming.
A route I will be driving this afternoon goes over a bridge on US 79 that has been open for almost a year that Apple has not gotten right despite repeated feedback from myself and others. About a month ago they finally added the new roadway and bridge, but have it mismarked by still showing the old bridge and route – which is closed- as the proper and open route.
Considering how many people have iPhones, there have by now been hundreds of thousands of GPS signals of cars and trucks driving at highway speed through a Wildlife Refuge – quite an amazing feat. I sent Apple GPS marked photos and videos showing the problem, sent them screenshots of Google and Apple maps of the problem side by side (Google had it right). They still do not have it right. I know of many others. You would think they monitor GPS data versus the road plots on their maps to catch discrepancies, but I guess that is not as important as designing a new Watch Band.
I thought all Apple Map data came from Tom Tom. Shouldn’t Tom Tom be the ones checking GPS data and what not to fix their map data?
TomTom is currently still the data provider for ground routes, yes. I’ve been saying for *years* that TomTom has to step up their game, otherwise Apple has to dump their asses for being too slow.
It’s downright embarrassing for a map to not show a new bridge for most of a year, and the same thing happened where I live; to travel between two points now connected by the new bridge was, according to Apple/TomTom, 15 minutes of extra driving.
Lack of real-time road closures due to special one-day events is another problem area for Apple Maps, which tried routing me right through the middle of the racing line. Google Maps correctly noted the road closures and routed me through the nearest detour. This issue is all on Apple for not letting (verified) crowdsourced data in faster, and has nothing to do with TomTom.
Apple could have competed to purchase Waze and stepped up their game. 😛 Now they have to start their reporting ‘community’ from scratch.
One idea that may help the homeless, give them cheap, refurbished iphones to participate and make some income.
Tom Tom does not have a portal to submit corrections, but Apple does via the Apps on Mac and iOS.
So there’s a possible problem/lag between Apple and Tom Tom to update map data?
Apple should just buy a dedicated map company and maybe that will get things done quickly and correctly.
I believe they have bought a couple.
Not to mention the partnership with Tom Tom.
Just from personal experience, I’ve never had a problem with Apple Maps except for one “problem” when looking for a FedEx and it showed the old location after they moved to the other side of the road about a month prior, but it was fixed soon afterward. Google Maps has never been accurate for me and got me lost more than i’d like to admit. There was a round-about put in place of a normal intersection, and Apple had it updated within a month but it took Google over a year to show it.
I hear the experience outside the US region makes Apple Maps a 2nd choice for many users.
Apple Maps is terrible in Poland, perhaps Western Europe is better, I suspect the relatively small iOS market share users are mostly using Google Maps, it’s my go to for near 100% accuracy, while Apple Maps is a coin toss. BTW WTF is Apple Maps doing suggesting locations thousands of miles away from me! This shouldn’t be a problem with location services on.
54 cents per task is about 2/3 of what iTunes pays for a download of a music track, and more than 250 times what Apple Music Pays for a stream
Apple could look at Open Street Maps community for some ideas on how to do it. Apple Maps in southwest europe (Portugal and Spain) are good but the POI are not.
As long as Apple Maps continues to come up short, I’ll be using Waze. My favorite feature: speed limit/speedometer display. Of course, the traffic reports from both the DOT and real time crowdsourcing put a lot of distance between the two as well. And what became of feature that, from Apple Maps, displayed options to switch to your favorite navigator after locating your destination in Apple? I can understand suppressing this option if your product is without peer, but let’s get real, folks. (Or are we now all living in Trumpworld? Tim? Speak up!)