“Unbeknownst to me, I’ve been feeding geographical information into Google’s mapping database for years — searching for addresses, sharing my location, checking for traffic jams on Google Maps,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “Google, for its part, has been scraping that data for every nugget of intelligence its computers can extract.”
“Apple, by building its much-loved (and now much-missed) iPhone Maps app on Google’s mapping database, has been complicit in this Herculean data collection exercise since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007,” P.E.D. reports. “In Saturday’s New York Times, Op Ed columnist Joe Nocera asks: ‘If Steve Jobs were still alive, would the new map [sic] application on the iPhone 5 be such an unmitigated disaster? Interesting question, isn’t it?’ No Joe, it’s not an interesting question. It’s the No. 1 cliché of the post-Jobsian era.”
P.E.D. reports, “Besides, the decision to pull the plug on Google’s mapping database at the end of what was probably a five-year contract had to have been made while Jobs was running the company. ‘Not doing its own Maps would be a far bigger mistake,’ says Asymco’s Horace Dediu, who addressed the issue at length in last week’s Critical Path podcast. ‘The mistake was not getting involved in maps sooner, which was on Jobs’ watch. Nokia saw the writing on the wall five years ago and burned $8 billion to get in front of the problem. The pain Apple feels now is deferred from when they decided to hand over that franchise to Google at the beginning of iPhone.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Maps works ok for me.
What’s even better is that you can get Siri to get directions, launch maps as then maps automatically starts your route.
Simply brilliant.
Yes there’s some bugs, I’ve been using the Tom Tom app for afew years and that’s a very good map app but that even makes mistakes.
I’m using maps as my default map app to get used to it. Tom Tom will stay on the iPhone though as a backup just incase.
Do I miss google maps?
Not at all, even if apple hadn’t done their own map app I still wouldn’t miss google maps.
I’m looking forward to the map updates from apple in the near future, it’s gonna be a great app and you can bet your life that Tim cook phones Tom forestall the day after iOS6 launch saying “get your team on this now”.
I have a couple issues with Maps ….. First, wrong address, my own home address is wrong ……
Second is the image quality – which is lower than before ….
Both issues make my job a little tougher, yes there are workarounds but those take time, time is most important to me when I am in the field …. Just the other day we repaired a roof about one minute before a huge storm busted loose, one minute ….. So time is very important …..
We know Apple will improve …..
It’s antennaegate all over again. Apple comes out with a new product, a minor flaw is found and blown out of proportion and then AAPL drops in so the investors snap it up and make a tidy profit in a few months. Nothing new here.
If the five year contract with Google has ended, how come I’ve still got the Google maps app on my original iPad?
Err, because you downloaded it before it expired……maybe.
That’s fucking bullshit & you know it. Apple deprecated Google maps on iOS 6 not because of licensing issues but because they wanted to go thermonuclear on Google which is the stupidest business decision ever.
IOS 6 will wait until I get Street View via a Google app or Apple does its own.
Have you all noticed that iPhoto STILL uses Google Maps for its Places feature? Considering iPhoto was updated just days ago, Apple didn’t got rid of it in his desk app.
Most of the commenters here reflect the sad fact that Apple, in spite of key figures like Ive and Gassée, is the least internationally minded of the major developers in the computer, and now mobile space. They develop for the US market and still roll out everywhere else (ask a Canadian friend) as a bit of an afterthought. In the UK we have waited years for features such as the iTunes store to get fit for use.
So the iMaps process and initial klutziness is not a surprise.
There is, I think, little wrong with the basic new mapping app, but the linked data (judging by comments here except in California and Boston) is woeful, whether bought in or developed by algorithm. Apple need to crowdsource corrections and improvements from their fans, and put a human editing authority in each and every country they claim to cover.
This could turn out to be Apple’s new way of bonding with and reconnecting with its core users. I suspect that thousands of users would be ready to spend a few minutes a day filing local corrections, a sort of Apple maps wiki.
If they want to do this, they must also look at making the process of reporting errors from the iPhone easier. Has anyone here tried to move a pin to its correct location – a restaurant to the other corner of a city block for example?
Works fine for me. Just to have Google out of my hair is well worth it!
It’s a miracle…I drove to Panama City Friday using the new Apple maps and it took me right where I wanted to go. SHOCKER! Love em! Go Apple. You did what you needed to do.
Google maps has had my address wrong for years now…at least Apple maps gives me a way to correct it. Typically with Apple, they will fix things much faster than Google could.
If I was Apple, I would offer a “send in your correction” promo week and be automatically entered to win a product of Apple’s choice.
It would fix several hundred thousand slightly off addresses like mine in a weeks time.
The fun part about all this is the different categories of need. I’ve seen some saying “never use maps, why are you all so torqued about this?” to “Google maps are bad as no turn by turn or this or that” to “map data will eventually get better”.
For those that don’t have a direct immediate need of good maps, don’t use it day-to-day, or the features override the data in priority with belief that data will improve over time and Google maps makes data errors too, its certainly understandable that this group won’t see the Maps app issue as a big failure or concern. Rightly so.
Unfortunately, the users of the iPhone aren’t a homogeneous group. Among us is the group where the Map app for a variety of reasons may be as essential a day-to-day item as phone calling or email or whatever else and the map data may be much more important than new features or functions…when I type in an address it needs to go to the right place first time whether there is a turn-by-turn capability or not. This group can include students going to their first job interview, small business people in the field that go to different client locations for the first time every day (delivery, appraisal, home inspection, delivery, home care, cleaning, etc), people on vacation, visiting, or moving to a new location and trying to find their way around, etc. And the variety of available map data for more than addresses along with the variety of ways to easily get to that data (i.e. link directly from email info to map) and alternate means to examine the data to verify where you are going (satellite pic with good detail, streetview type functions, etc) and not having to pop into a Web browser or a variety of secondary apps (sometimes even more than one) to use maps to find a place only increases this growth in dependence on the reliability of map data to “find” where you want to go and it working properly and neatly (as in Apple’s “it just works”). This group has adopted to this way of doing things, so its not frivolous to them whether it works or not…they need it to work “now” and to continue to work “now” since its been working fine since “then” and they’ve structured their way of working/playing/traveling/etc to that capability just the same as so many have structured the way they socialize to integrate social networking media into their daily lives. Some can put down social media, but you can’t deny it or turn it off suddenly with it being so prevalent, it is what it is.
And to take the social media example one more step, there are those that structure their business, advertising, interactions, scheduling, etc around that…well, the same goes to businesses that just like the old “presence in the phone book” idea, have structured themselves to be visible where the majority of map and location searches happen, in this case between Android and the old iOS pre-6, was Google.
So keep those groups in mind and now picture Apple walks in and basically says “hey, we have a new functionality/capability for maps for you but in the process the data is going to suck big time in many areas and your collective experience is going to move it up from, lets say, 10% error to 70-90% depending on area in getting the address right the first time. And by the way, you no longer have half decent satellite images or street view or equivalent to help resolve questionable address results, etc”.
So to take one section of this group as an example, you are a small business person that works in the field and you can’t find your clients anymore…you’re gonna be ticked if you upgraded you software as your device has now become a brick in terms of the functionality you need and use everyday, and you’re gonna hold off upgrading your device even if you didn’t upgrade your software on your old one.
Take this further, you are now waiting to see what Apple does in response to this bricking of your functionality. If you managed to keep your old device on iOS 5 you still have the old functionality, but now depending on Apple’s moves you may or may not consider upgrading devices in the near future. If you upgraded your device’s software or bought the new device, now you are in an urgent response point where if Apple doesn’t move quickly, you are having to return the device or buy a new one like Android fast to replace that missing functionality.
One more step only, promise. Now take this group that lives and breathes this functionality to the same level as some do social media, and they are facing a frozen software ecosystem where they can’t upgrade ever or they lose their maps, or they have had or are having to trend to another device from another ecosystem like Android, Winphone, etc. A large % of this group probably uses more than one device from the same ecosystem (for Apple that might mean iOS devices, Macbooks, iMacs, etc). This group tends to prefer a nice tidy ecosystem of compatible devices that don’t requrie a lot of work to keep them talking to each other…if they have to replace one device, over time they are going to trend to replace other devices along the same decision lines.
This too could be a long term hurtful trend to Apple. Apple already lived through this one with iCloud that I lived through in a small business user sense…you could use it in iOS but it did not play well with the Mac OSX or Windows environment for continuity of use and info right out of the box. So people in this same group looking for cloud solutions went elsewhere with their decisions where there were more cohesive architectures (MS Office/Hotmail/Skydrive, Google equivalent, Dropbox plus any email service and office apps, etc) and they relegated iCloud to the same status as Apple Maps flyover…neat, but not much use beyond a little bit of novelty. And this group tends to not to wait a year or to look back at that functionality a year later as they may have waited patiently for it to first come out the first time and expected Apple’s “it just works” to apply…when it didn’t, time to move on, no second chances as we need it to “just work” in the now, not the far future because we have decisions to make on what we are going to use full-time in the “now” after waiting to this point of time when the later became “now” once already.
Confusing isn’t it? LOL…but the essence is if you need something to just work in the now, promising it will work later and by the way your old functionality no longer works in the now is a great way to send people elsewhere without any intention of returning because they have started down another path and have no interest in reversing course yet again after trust is broken.
Anyway, all of this to say its one concern no one seemed to be addressing…those that live by a certain type and level of functionality that is taken away…guess what, they have to move on and aren’t likely to wait around for the later as they can’t afford to if that functionality impacts them too severely in the now.
I know where I’m going already – apple maps shows traffic accidents in NYC – google doesn’t. Google has 3 routes to hockey that is are all highway, tunnels or bridges – apple has 3 that take highway or surface roads. 2 of the google routes are just dead wrong – they would take 15-30 minutes extra depending on traffic. The apple routes are all correct and they allow me to direct the driver to a surface route through williamsburg/greenpoint to long island city that help avoid traffic pileups when the highway route 278 runs into the long island expressway – 495. what is more valuable – your time or a few 3D stitching fails?
Now we know why the android people are so internally thwarted – it’s not about actually getting places… it’s about sitting over their parents garage and trolling apple boards.
I like Apple, I hate this new Apple maps sorry… I will wait for a google maps app.
This is funny in the meantime ->
&width=620&height=&signature=869d04fa5d886820f4c571989ddbc648
I like the new Maps app and find it works fine in the SW US. In many places better than Google even. In places where it doesn’t, it will improve. Google improved over time and so will Apple’s Maps. Lets get on with making it better rather than complaining.
Whatever
What I want now, is Apple Maps for my iMac!!
Apple maps works great for me. Apple. Love.
For no reason other than “for the hell of it”, I just now pulled up iOS 6 Maps and then the Google Maps Web app, and had them both show me where I am, here at work. Both showed me the correct location, but Google had the road named wrong. Google gave the road the name of the traffic circle to the south.
So Google has flaws too. I honestly didn’t expect to find an example that easily.
——RM