“Using Apple’s new maps system could be potentially life-threatening, police in Mildura, Australia, have warned, after a number of people trying to find the town of 30,000 people have become hopelessly lost in scorching temperatures,” Charles Arthur reports for The Guardian.
“One man was stranded for 24 hours last week in temperatures of up to 46 degrees centigrade, and at least three more have had to be rescued after following the directions given on Apple’s new maps, which locate Mildura far from its actual position,” Arthur reports. “‘We’ve had at least four documented cases,’ senior sargeant Stephen Phelan told the Guardian. ‘The map puts it at least 70 kilometres from where it should be. We have had people bogged down in sunset country.'”
“The Mildura police have now issued a warning on their website,” Arthur reports. “Getting lost in the park around Mildura is potentially deadly: ‘There’s no water, and you can get bogged down in the sand,’ explained Toby Prime, a reporter on the local Sunraysia Daily. ‘Temperatures go up to 46 degrees and there’s no water.’ …The warning from police means that Apple’s maps have moved from being an embarrassment, for which a number of managers were fired, to a seriously damaging problem for the company. If similar problems were to emerge in the US it could open Apple to expensive lawsuits.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tom Bamford” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Heckuva job, Scottie!
No matter what Apple does, no matter how much better they make Apple Maps, it will now always “suck” in the minds of a large segment of the population… The fool(s) responsible for preparing Maps for release and then releasing it with obvious issues (overblown as they are) and therefore tainting Maps forever should face severe consequences. As in: Pink slip(s)… Apple seems to have learned nothing from the Newton: First impressions mean everything. Apple’s Maps have been Newtonized. All that’s missing is the Doonesbury strip. – MacDailyNews Take, September 28, 2012
Related articles:
Apple promises to fix Maps glitches by rearranging earth’s geography (with video) – December 6, 2012
Apple’s Eddy Cue racing to overhaul Maps – November 28, 2012
Apple to Maps manager Williamson: Get lost – November 27, 2012
Days after Tim Cook’s apology, Apple’s Maps shows improvements – October 12, 2012
Tim Cook open letter: We fell short with new Maps app; we are extremely sorry – September 28, 2012
does anyone take responsibility for their own actions any more?
Certainly I pray no harm comes to anyone but for the love of God…
More money than brains? Natural selection? (I’m going to hell for that one)
If Google Maps or any other app performed as badly as Apple Maps would Apple fanbois be as lenient? I doubt it. Regardless of the lack of preparation by these Austrailian nimrods this is a major embarrassment for Apple.
Well said. Apple Inc. is a profit making machine and while folks can love them, these same people should know that Apple has made huge mistakes in the past and this is one of them. Call it what it is. Apple was not ready for the map world end of story and to blame a single person is silliness. The maps app did not roll out to the end users without buy in from a whole lot of folks at Apple Inc.
It is a monumental flop as is Siri as either app is truly 10% ready for primetime. Windows Vista anyone. 🙂
Ever heard of La Jolla, California; Rogers, Minnesota; Wickliffe, Ohio; Woodstock, Virginia, Imperial Beach, California; and Sunrise, Florida? No? At one point (2010), neither had Google Maps! http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/22/google.lost.sunrise.florida/index.html
“does anyone take responsibility for their own actions any more?”
http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia/
When the president touts the life of Julia and how she’d barely survive without government…
NEED. YOU. ASK!!!
A LESSON IN IRONY.
The food stamp program administered by the U.S Department of Agriculture is proud to be distributing this year the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever to 46 million people.
Meanwhile.the National Park service administered by the U.S. dept of the interior asks us Please do not feed the animals. Their stated reason for this policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not take care of themselves
Really? More proof you still can’t get a life.
OK and how many casualties have been caused by using Windows since 1995 ?… issue a warning.
…no more so than Australian DJs.
Forget the damage caused by first impressions, this is far more serious than vanity, people’s lives are apparantly at risk. Apple, please focus on areas of potential danger and get Apple Maps fixed, no more delays, no more excuses. Bring back the famous Apple attention to detail.
‘Death by GPS’ existed long before Apple go into the map business. Only difference now is Apple is involved, so it has a higher profile.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/30/3362727/death-by-gps-in-desert.html
The fault is in both Apple and the end-user.
Apple because in this case it’s placed Mildura literally in the middle of nowhere. There’s no geographical formation or area called Mildura in the area Apple claims the town is located. Is it a map partner’s fault? Maybe, but regardless, Apple shoulders more of the responsibility–it’s *their* product offering the end-user sees, *they* pushed it as being ready for prime time.
The end user is also at fault because after years of warnings about GPS directions not being 100% accurate, users are *still* blindly following TBT directions without double-checking the routing first.
MDN, Lighten up…
“No matter what Apple does, no matter how much better they make Apple Maps, it will now always “suck” in the minds of a large segment of the population… ”
Please, many many people are just stupid. You cannot fix that by complaining when Apple is not PERFECT… Google maps are wrong very often. Many times I find that a store or house is located up to a mile incorrectly using Google. Lately, Apple has been MORE ACCURATE.
So, chill. Its the holidays. Eat some pumpkin pie and mellow out.
PS. Happy Holidays!!! And I love the site, bugs and all. It is THE BEST place to get news about Apple from around the world.
Just some praise… en
I remember when I thought all Aussies were like Crocodile Dundee: amazing, outback heroes, so for me, this damages THEIR reputation more that Apple’s. It has forever tarnished my rose-colored glasses version of the Australian who could simply look up at the sky and know precisely where he was. I mean, seriously, you’re seventy kilometers from your destination? Really, you’re driving along the road and you come to some SAND? “G’day mate! The map here has a blue line, so this outback wilderness must be a road.”
The maps app apparently has some problems in certain areas, but if they are getting their info from Tom Tom, is there any history of similar problems with the Google maps rollout or with GPS devices? I remember my Magellan GPS pulling a lot of funny business on me over the years, and I never once even imagined crying “victim”.
exactly.
stop bitchin’ people; use your own sense of intelligence or intuition too!
what really bugs me:
no competitor is more precise in all the same areas. whether all gps is based on tomtom or not.
the reason apple gets bashed then, must be logically:
1. marketing hype from competitors that advertise not their advantages but survive on bashing others’ inconsistent faults
2. bribed media
3. disinfo (Apple maps never had problems for many others)
4. common human stupidity
5. Apple being recession-proof, unlike ANY competitor, must be successful because they’re the evil-doers, the monopolizers, cheats, liars, profit mongers etc.
AS IF ANY competitors does not do at least as “badly” or worse! yet Apple, being so big, jealousy & crying over spilled milk fits, hence it’s so easy to blame Apple for all that is wrong, since those people or naysayers cry that if Apple claims to invent or change things or is the only one who thinks different, then Apple should take the blame for all. wow. what intelligent logic!
if you are logical, smart, you can not go wrong with Maps. stop blaming. start thinking. if you had any clue, you’d at least know that TomTom’s precision is Apple and competitors’ basis. fine, Apple chose tomtom, but then so did the competition. there’s also no competitor to tomtom that is infallible. so all those false arguments against apple are bogus, silly, exaggerated.
it’s exactly the same point when the Audi 200 model i think it was, that nearly collapsed Audi in the US market, just because some idiot lady couldn’t keep her foot of the gas & blamed it on Audi’s defect. 1 silly story blown out of proportion in the media can kill a company! imagine a world without Apple just because some moron has a vendetta. whether correct or not, why kill what is still the best overall co. in the world, affecting the lives of so many happy users, just for the sake of an individual’s greed/idiocy?!
what naysayers or avengers do not get is that they’re totally selfish in their stupid, senseless acts. give me one other co. that tries as hard as Apple to give more than it takes, that humanizes high tech as much, that has a vision at least, that makes things as easy & ubiquitous.
you can not innovate every 1/2 year for god’s sake! Apple never claims they invent all, just that they do it better. if you bitch about Maps or Siri, well, show a better, more consistently precise alternative before you open your silly big mouth. it’s always that there’s nothing better. until then, shh. and for your silly, low % experience, most are happy. go bark elsewhere.
apple is not perfect. but it’s the closest to perfection there is in the market. no one tries harder. period. now go masturbate to your fave co., stfu, be happy with your chaos ware – which you obviously don’t seem to be or else you wouldn’t bitch at Apple due to jealousy and/or Stockholm Syndrome.
Google map for the iPhone and oPad are still available and there are other map alternatives such as Mapquest that should be available for Australia.
Yes sometimes it’s not any company’s fault, it’s just Nature weeding out the stupid.
There have been stories like this with sat navs since they came out. I would never trust any sat nav blindly – especially if I was going to the middle of nowhere.
… Several TV detective-genre story lines featured “death-by-wrong-turn” episodes before Apple’s map feature was released. I recall an episode of “The Mentalist” where Van Pelt became lost due to a faulty map, and STAYED lost because of a downed phone tower. Similar plot devices showed up in movies, as well. Mostly pre-Apple-Maps.
True, I remember the Casadega episode of Everglades had a similar situation. What is even crazier is tha Casadega is over 300 miles away from the Everglades!
Call it a beta, have a ‘corrections’ website, offer goodies for user-adds, promote like mad, end up with an excellent app, gain kudos from media, happiness all round.
Yes, one thing I’ve complained to Apple about is the lack of a Maps app for the Mac, never mind on the web as part of iCloud, in order to provide other/better ways to submit issues. That would also let you plot and plan a trip with multiple stops or waypoints and sync it to all your devices (especially on iPhones where smaller screens make such plotting more of a challenge).
Does anyone at Apple even read the “Report a problem” submissions from iOS Maps? I’ve reported 4 problems, all in a major city, but not a single one has been corrected since Maps launched.
First impression might already be lost, but they still need to fix what’s there!
I just checked and indeed Apple Maps is pointing to a barren spot south of where the town of Mildura is. This should obviously be fixed, along with whatever other mistakes that are detected. But a couple points.
1.) The police put a notice on their website. Did any of them think to contact Apple ? There’s a place to report mistakes. I just submitted one for this, took about a minute to do.
2.) To anyone who was in the process of getting lost. Did they ever consider to look at the location using Satellite view? If they had done this they would have clearly seen that there was no town at the pin. In fact there doesn’t appear to be any roads at this location.
By the time they’re stuck in the middle of nowhere there’s probably no cell reception to pull down satellite view.
And a surprising number of people, probably the vast majority, never double-check the route their GPS gives them before heading off. I double-check any destination I’m not familiar with, even in my own city. Sometimes even to places I do know, just to see whether Apple’s routing agrees with mine. About half the time, mine’s better, the other half it does come back with a more efficient route.
OK, maybe they lose their signal and can’t download satellite views. But they still can see the regular map.
At some point shouldn’t it dawn on them that something’s wrong when the town they’re trying to get to has absolutely no roads!
People following GPS voice directions have driven into washed out roads and almost off a cliff. For some reason GPS voice is trusted to a fault, overriding road signs and common sense.
Part of that, I think, is that they think the GPS is giving them a more efficient route, or it’s detouring them around a traffic jam further ahead. The GPS never tells you why it sometimes chooses a non-obvious route.
At least the Apple maps have not caused a war, as Google maps nearly did.
http://ti.me/axCkHE
Why is this relevant to the discussion? Childish response on your part. This has nothing to do with Google and everything to do with Apple Inc. Google’s near misses or failures does not excuse Apple Inc. on any front. Apple Inc. has been around for 37 years and Google for 17 years. Apple is the older brother so deferring back to Google is futile.
It is relevant in the sense that no companies map system is flawless. Google, MapQuest, Bing, etc. have all led me astray at one time or another.
Apple appears to be rapidly fixing the data problems with its map service. I did not agree with MDN’s Take on this subject when it was originally posted, and I still don’t agree with it. The debut of Apple Maps was not Apple’s finest moment, but it will not “always suck” in the minds of the public. That is overly dramatic and unworthy of MDN.
Outside of the US, I’m not sure that Apple is “rapidly fixing the data problems with its map service”. For example, In New Zealand, Timaru airport is placed in the middle of a Christchurch suburb, about 150 km north of its actual position. This error made the front page of the Christchurch Press about two months ago when a local resident said it presumably explained the increased noise levels in his street.
Having said that, I agree that no map system is flawless. For example, on Google Maps, the South Island township of Cave appears as “Care”, and the unsealed but popular Dansey’s Pass scenic road from Ranfurly to Duntroon doesn’t appear at all.
MacTech… astroturf much?
These guys are relying on a cellphone GPS that will last maybe 3-4 hours hiking in the outback? Not an excuse for Apple but these guys are Darwin Award candidates
Hiking? WTF? You DRIVE to get between towns in the outback. Driving means a car, which means a constant power source to plug into as long as the engine is running or battery has charge.
These weren’t people getting lost hiking say the Grand Canyon. They may not have been as prepared as they should have been, but at least get their circumstances right.
Just waiting for the inevitable lawsuit. Sue apple cause I got lost in the outback.
Life threatening to stupid people who do not plan properly. HAving no water? If I was wandering anywhere away from the coast in Australia I would have a trunk full of it. And a dedicated GPS, not a phone add-on designed to help you find a Starbucks. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
With ***$100b*** in the bank it is inexcusable for Apple to be this lax.
The cops are dead right, and it’s just a matter of time before somebody gets led into a swamp and Apple into a very damaging lawsuit.
You ‘Darwin award’ people suck. If your loved one got stuck unprepared you’d not be so quick to judge. I have learned to check two sources for a location. But I only started bothering AFTER Apple dumped Google maps.
then you were lucky, not smart!
I make sure my ‘loved ones’ are prepared, in any situation.
Never mind GPS. Anyone want to bet that more than a few people have become lost pre-GPS using incredibly accurate maps on paper? Near where I live, people periodically get lost and have to be rescued within one hour’s walk of a substantial city!!!
once again, if people want to go walkabout, no matter what sort of info they use as their map, it helps if they know how to interpret the info they are using.
Lots of people cannot translate the map info to real life as soon as they are moving in any direction other than towards the top of the map. (paper maps , that is)
Getting the outback of Australia wrong is one thing, but here in New York City they still haven’t fixed many things. I no longer use their maps app at all and just go straight to Google. It will be this way forever for most people. The taint on Apple’s maps will never lift and MDN is correct to point that out. It also tarnishes the iPhone experience as being less than what it once was. This map fiasco and MobileMe are the two biggest mistakes Apple has made in the last decade. In trying to punish Google quickly Apple ended up torturing their users and destroying any chance they had to launch and maintain Maps for the future. Game over on this, Google won. The sad part is that Apple has not been fixing Maps since the launch – same errors now for months. Have they given up on it? I’ll never know as I won’t be using it. The app sits on the last screen buried in a folder, as it does for most of my friends.
Steve Jobs would never have approved this map app! Never!
Ah, another great Anustralian con. I once showed some of them a map of Toronto. A map on a single page is nearly unbelievable as many use huge directory books hundreds of pages long, for a single city. I once did buy a very expensive map of Brisbane, worse map I’ve even bought. Oh, and forget about asking directions, unless you ask several people and simply pick one.
I’ve been out there with the 40 plus degrees, you better darn well carry your own water, map or no map, that’s the land.
Frankly though, if Apple Maps if life-threatening to Anustralians they should get an award for improving the state of human kind. Maybe Apple could buy some radio stations and hire some DeeJays that aren’t life threatening to the civilized world.
Funny that you all think its Aussies getting led off course … It’s tourists. Aussies know how dangerous the outback in Australia is, but idiot tourists think they know better … and they follow these maps rather than buying a paper map.
Wish I had a dollar for every time an American asked me if I had a kangaroo in my back yard, or had a koala bear (not a bear, btw) as a pet …
Tools.