“The quality of online maps has been increased significantly in the past few years. So much, in fact, that the CEO of the popular Waze mapping app believes Apple’s maligned Maps app would have been well-liked if it had been released only two years ago,” Sean Ludwig reports for VentureBeat.
“‘Two years ago, [Apple Maps] would have been an amazing product,’ Waze CEO Noam Bardin said today on stage at the D: Dive into Mobile event in New York City. ‘There’s a certain quality bar and that bar is only going up. You have to pour more and more money into it,” Ludwig reports. “Waze serves 44 million users in the U.S., South America, Europe, and other locations with apps for iOS and Android. Waze is rumored to provide Apple Maps with data to improve it, but Bardin would not confirm that.”
MacDailyNews Take: It’s not surprising that Bardin took the fifth on that one. Nobody wants to be associated with Apple Maps.
Ludwig reports, “When asked what Waze’s biggest strength is over Google, Bardin said the company does ‘real time much better.'””
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Maps is amazing right now, too, but, sadly, it’ll never get its full credit due to its botched debut.
Related articles:
Apple expands ‘Maps Ground Truth’ hiring worldwide – March 27, 2013
Apple Maps turning a corner – March 26, 2013
How indoor location could find its way into Apple services – March 25, 2013
Apple wants to map your favorite malls and airports – March 25, 2013
Apple acquires indoor location company WifiSLAM for $20 million – March 23, 2013
Developers prefer Apple’s iOS Maps SDK over Google Maps – March 19, 2013
Apple’s Maps being updated often and significantly – March 13, 2013
Dvorak road tests navigation apps: Apple Maps beats the competition – March 7, 2013
Apple makes massive iOS Maps app hiring push – February 5, 2013
Apple’s Eddy Cue racing to overhaul Maps – November 28, 2012
Apple to Maps manager Williamson: Get lost – November 27, 2012
Forstall pushed out by Cook, source says; news met with ‘quiet jubilation’ inside Apple – October 30, 2012
Can Apple exec Eddy Cue work his magic on Apple Maps? – October 31, 2012
Survey: Apple Maps apps issue irrelevant as massive iPhone 5 sales continue – October 12, 2012
Turn-by-Turn Navigation Shootout: iPhone 5′s Apple Maps app vs. Android Google Maps vs. GMC navigation system – October 8, 2012
Give Apple maps a chance – October 7, 2012
The media turned down Overreaction Road on Apple Maps – September 29, 2012
As they say, “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.”
Waze is no one to talk. I use Waze every day, and have used it from early on. Waze is sucking these days. Nowhere near as good as it used to be. I often find myself switching to Apple Maps. Waze is not able to scale up their servers, I guess. No route updates in bad traffic like it used to do. Unable to map new routes during rush hour.
Agreed. Waze appears seriously hampered lately.
Waze has no idea about Canadian locations and prefers to direct me to places nowhere near me in the US.
We don’t want you down here you anti-American prick.
I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, toto.
Mange la merde.
They’re lucky this article didn’t come out this morning. My comments would not have been so kind right after my morning commute. I hit some unusually bad traffic on my normal drive, and Waze servers were not responding so I couldn’t get any help on which route to choose. It happens all the time now. Apple Maps does not have the same realtime features but it does what it does very well. Works as advertised.
Ok, time to give Apple maps another shot. It’s great
WAZE would have been a great product if it was not sharing every WAZE user information and route with the government of Israel.
What a stupid comment
I love Apple maps. Just wish they included a speed display in GPS mode. For some reason, i really like knowing exactly how fast I’m going, as opposed my car’s speedometer, which isn’t very accurate.
You seriously think a speed readout based on an approximate GPS location would be more accurate than your car’s speedometer? Really?!?
GPS may not know precisely where you are, but it tracks your change in location constantly, and so velocity can be very accurate. Car speedometers have a certain inherent error, then they depend on your tire radius which changes with temperature (environment and speed) and wear and then they are calibrated to show you going faster rather than slower than actual, so yes… I think a GPS may be more accurate than a car speedometer.
The best instantaneous speedometer is the properly-calibrated one connected to your wheel. The second-best instantaneous speedometer is an incorrectly-calibrated one connected to your wheel to which you apply a simple corrective factor.
GPS _does not_ calculate accurate instantaneous speed, only approximate average velocity.
I drove across the US to bring a child home from college and tested my TomTom iOS app (speed readout) against all of the “Mileage Check” 5 mile markers and TomTom’s GPS-derived speed was right on whereas my speedometer overstated my speed by 0.5% — consistently.
Consistent MDN take on Apple Maps — first impressions are lasting.
True, but to a degree.
While I don’t know the numbers, only the low information consumers are affected forever.
Apple Maps is great and I find locations (U.S.) consistently more accurate than Google Maps. And Apple Maps will only get better …
“‘Two years ago, [Apple Maps] would have been an amazing product,’ Waze CEO Noam Bardin said today on stage at the D: Dive into Mobile event in New York City.”
Two seconds ago, [Waze], your Daze are numbered.
Noticed two days ago that Apple Maps is showing icons at accidents and other traffic incidents. Came accross a semi had rear ended another semi in the East bound lane on the Sunol grade. I was going west. cars backed up to Automall Parkway. Clicking on the icon gave an accurate description. Very cool. Google maps only showed the red line where traffic was stopped. I did not see any announcement for this, but it is nice. Did not need to check Waze. Tired of all the chat invitations now on Waze, glad to see Apple getting better.
I think Apple Maps’ implementation of traffic information is both better than Google Maps ever was (much more real time) and the graphic display is easier to read. I always felt Google Maps’ route lines blocked my view of the roads.
Apple Maps is my go to now. 3D buildings for certain cities is amazing, even vehicles can be seen in the Z axis. It’s like flying around like a bird.
Apple doesn’t need an “amazing” maps. Not everything has to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Ecosystem. Maps fits into the larger Apple ecosystem and all it has to do is add value to that.
Recently started using Maps with Siri to locate the various playing fields and ice arenas where my kids play, and it has been fantastically accurate and pleasant to use. It always has a hitch where two major highways cross here in St. Paul, which is weird. Beyond that, it gives me perfect directions to within feet of my destination every time.
No google maps for me, no waze for me. Apple Maps is the best!
One word is all that was needed to save Maps from disaster – Beta! It saved Siri, it would have saved Maps too.
As I stand here on the road side waiting for my friend to pick me up, I realise I should’ve not sent him the “Pick me up from this spot” message. He might try come by boat, in which case he would need to land about 100 meters away and walk across a storage yard. All the online maps show this as part of Shenzhen Bay even it’s all solid ground with streets on it.
Would love to see weather radar/dopler overlay added at some point
I need more audio book listeners to chime in that Maps needs to pause playback of audio books rather than talk over them. TomTom got this right in version 1.5 of their iOS app. Oh: There’s an idea: Pen an article headlined, “Apple Maps would have been a great app 2 years ago had they just done this one thing.”
The fans of Apple Maps have never had to deal with the memory leaks that are inherent and licit.
Patience. Maps will get it’s real credit when it’s real credit is deserved.
Apple Maps are now just as good as Google Maps from what i can tell in my usage and i have meticulously compared both here in Florida. Apple maps also give superior traffic alerts/warnings/info.
Apple Maps cracks me up…it does a terrible job of pronouncing streets….it calls Jupiter…juniper…..no idea why they can’t fix something like that…it’s been doing that since the made their map available.
My iPhone still draws MY OWN street incorrectly. I’ve written to Apple four times, to no avail. It has blatant errors in one downtown area, but no correction. Come on Apple, get with it. Google gets it right however.
With more context, the quote was:
“Consumers now have a quality bar, and that bar is going up rapidly. Two years ago, Apple’s Maps app on iOS 6 would’ve been a fine product.”
NEWS FLASH: there has ALWAYS been a quality bar. Apple users don’t happily accept shoddy unfinished products, and they don’t forgive painfully slow updates. with the flood of corrections being sent to Apple’s error-ridden Maps team, you’d think they would have it in better shape.
Once again, where is the company leadership? Under Jobs, things would have been addressed a hell of a lot faster. Cook, however, is nowhere to be seen on this issue.