Strangely, Microsoft hasn't put the Bing app in the Canadian app store. The app's been out for ages now, and is still US only (as far as I know?). I can't for the life of me figure out a good reason for this. Bing.com has local search results for Canada, so it's not that.
Not that it's putting me out. I can search bing from Safari. Just a strange move on their part. It's like the intern who's job it was to ready the international version got fired and nobody checked his pending workload.
As an European Windows Phone user i'm doubting that they are aware that there's a world outside USA.
A lot of features are disabled for no good reason, and the rest of them has no data for Denmark.
For example when you play music on your phone you can set it to show pictures of the artist on the lock screen. On my phone the background just turns red. Also Local scout is disabled, though there aren't any data for it in Denmark anyway...
The music thing on the lock screen changed for me a few months ago. I'm in Germany. So apparently they make available features elsewhere slowly but they eventually get there. Local search works fine here too, although Germany is probably a bigger market than Denmark.
I gave up on Windows Phone because there was still no Skype app 6 months after I bought the phone, even though Microsoft acquired them. iPhone 4S Just Works...
I think skype was released a month or so after they acquired skype. Besides the skype integration that they show in the next version is way better than on any other phones/OS
Set to be released this fall, if I remember correctly. So it's not that far off.
Skype (when not yet acquired by MS) shelved any plans of producing a Windows Phone version, so Microsoft (after the deal went through) probably had to start at near-zero with its version. At the same time they were likely working at the more native integration for WP8.
Just how many people would you expect them to throw at a problem that likely won't generate that many new customers? It all comes down to that in the end.
> Strangely, Microsoft hasn't put the Bing app in the Canadian app store.
Isn't in my mainland europe store either, though I have "Bing Get MeThere" which is apparently for London traffic and public transport (I'm not in the UK).
> It's like the intern who's job it was to ready the international version got fired and nobody checked his pending workload.
And considering the biggest issues Apple Maps have are outside the US, really doesn't make much sense to promote Bing Maps when they're not available to those who'd benefit most from them.
I wonder if this tendency to characterise people as 'haters' was brought about by the increasing divisiveness of American politics. It is a little disturbing that any kind of opposition or criticism toward a product can be summed up as 'hating on it'. Rather than be a hater, why not be an adversary, an opponent, a critic, a skeptic, a detractor, a gadfly, an enemy, or an antagonist? Instead of 'hating' why not dislike, distrust, oppose, criticise, be skeptical of, or consider flawed? Or if you want to be extreme why not slander, defame, denigrate, or calumniate?
So if I take a balanced view and consider that there are good things about the new Apple Maps but on the whole think there was a laughable lack of quality control -- that makes me a 'hater'.
Words are the functions of speech -- the API of natural language. Differentiation of meaning matters. Using crudely simplified language is like using a crudely simplified API in your programme; it restricts the scope of your expression and what you can create.
If we insist on 'beautiful' APIs with our software, why not go further and reach for the right word when it comes to criticising software?
Americans seem to be overly enthusiast for anything, so maybe when everything is supposed to be "fantastic" and "amazing", any criticism can be dismissed as hating.
The title of the article is just silly, sounds like a 13 year old came up with it. However, having used Bing maps, it seems like a great alternative to Google Maps. Both have Streetview, Transit maps and can also detect nearby businesses. The Bing map's layout and typography looks much cleaner and fresher than Google, but that's just my personal opinion.
I don't know about that. Google has done a fantastic job at a lot of details such as colors and readability of street names that really improve usability. In the Bing version, the color palette is much closer together and less visually distinguishable. And Google Maps is the only map service I've ever encountered that does zooming in and out in a non-jarring way.
It says : To search outside India, change the country appropriately (e.g. United States – English) at the top right corner of the page. Change the country to India for richer maps of top Indian cities.
Edit: You will see the new bing maps once you change country to USA. Which is way better than older version.
Like most others with iOS6 maps I've had my share of troubles and was excited to try this out when I saw the post. My wife gave birth a few days ago and so the first thing that came to my mind was the name of the hospital - a major hospital in LA. Unfortunately, bing failed utterly. "No results found. Pan to a different area and try again". At this point I'm zoomed to all of LA. I tried again, no dice. Apple maps not only found it without a problem, but I only needed to type the first word of hospital name and the rest was suggested as I typed.
Yeah, I only tested one search but it was hardly some tiny dive restaurant or other obscure landmark. App deleted.
Last line really got me. Totally lost it. And yes I agree, that sounds crazy.
I love the app more. I loaded it up the first time and saw how it highlights parks with very vivid colors instead of a light gray outline. My first thought was "I live next to a park???" Low and behold... I live next to a park that I never knew about.
Bing Maps was the one of the first alternative maps I downloaded after the install of iOS 6. Unfortunately, the application is not ready for prime time -- the tiles are not retina, the UI is a mashup of formerly-known-as-Metro elements, and swoosh/zoom animations are overused, like a bad PowerPoint deck.
If Bing released it with retina tiles and a native iOS UI, I think they could win significant market share. It could create a halo product that might make me more inclined to use and think positively of other Bing services.
Bing is also available on Android. I don't know how they implemented the UI but it also has a "glitchy" feel to it with lots of animation. I tried the routing and often to had to click on things twice for them to have an effect.
That is about all I can say on iOS too. It is... definitely a Microsoft product. That said it has way more POIs/businesses than Maps, and a few that Google doesn't include. Though to be honest knowing where comcast has an academy in my city is less than useful its rather complete and doesn't have bars listed that have been out of business for years.
A for effort and data contained. C+ for execution. Would like to see what Google comes up with on iOS.
Sadly the bing app won't when I click 'Directions' in the Yelp App. I wish apple were not such control freaks and we could have the intent system in iOS... even if it was an advanced feature hidden in some obscure menu.
Maybe it depends on your area, but I really think the bad press on the new iOS Maps App is overblown. I took a 700 mile road trip last weekend and Maps worked flawlessly. The turn-by-turn directions were neat, and the ETA and remaining miles were useful.
Yes, cos it uses TomTom data. But try walking somewhere or using public transport, especially outside of the USA. Then you'll see the problems with Apple Maps.
Maybe I'm being stupid but I cannot find any maps on the Bing app. I open the app up and I get presented with a search bar and a picture of some mountains, touching the screen anywhere doesn't bring up any options for different types of searches (i.e. I wanted a map-specific one). Searching for my town "Brno" just brings up regular search results with no option to view a map. Searching for "London" brings up more, so there's a new header giving me the options of narrowing my results by "all", "images", "video" or "news" but still no maps.
This is not a suitable replacement for Google maps, I'll be deleting it.
Same with me, except I get pretty flowers instead if mountains! I'm in Thailand do I guess Bing maps only works for the USA. Which makes Apple's recommendation if it as an alternative to Apple maps even more breathtaking. They've forgotten the rest if the world exists.
"Transit directions aren't available for these locations" (Nottingham, UK).
Nearest pub not on the map (admittedly it's not there on either Google Maps or Apple Maps, but I guess it's only been open for about three years), and the nearest one that is listed has actually been demolished for about 3 years (it's gone on both Google and Apple maps).
No traffic shown on the driving view, at least around here.
Also no street view, but at least it's got aerial views of the town that aren't just clouds.
So unless I'm after an aerial shot of an area and maps.google.com isn't working, it's a "no thanks" from me.
I really love the satellite view in Bing maps. Clearly shows details, and the color is just right. But it seems outside US it lacks road information. If you look at China, even for a provincial capital city with over 10 M population, there doesn't seem to be many roads on the map:
I had to use Bing Maps on the Palm Pre for a few months this year after they updated the app (and partially blocked the Google Maps mobile site). Bing couldn't find anything without an exact address.
I arrived in Melbourne, Australia not to long ago and at the time was carrying around a Nokia Lumia 800. Being new to the city, I was heavily dependent on Bing Maps and it let me down in so so many ways.
In particular, the complete lack of public transit data (which I used heavily) and poor turn-by-turn where big factors in driving me to get an Android device with Google Maps.
I had the same problem. On a cursory run through, the app seemed pre-alpha in quality. Most things didn't seem to work, and what did work was couched in awkward and annoying animations and poor image quality (especially maps).
The first two also do routing and integrate with iOS 6 Maps. Regarding public transit I am actually happier with iOS 6 than I was before, precisely because of the 3rd party integration.
It took me about 5 tries for it to actually find the address I kept searching for and tapping on, but once it 'took' the directions were accurate and easy to follow (walking to the stop, which bus, how long, etc).
Good timing. I was in the car as the navigator two days ago, the driver handing me his iphone with iOS6. The maps app took a 15 minute trip across town and made it into an almost two-hour long journey.
I tried using Google Maps through Safari but it was so slow it was unusable.
If I search for 'bing' in the iOS 6 App Store app, result #1 is 'Bing Get Me There' – a travel app for London … sidewards scrolling in the new App Store app is horrible but I made it to result #20 without any sign of a real Bing map app …
Just looked at Nokia maps around my work in Central London. The business listings are all wrong and the icons are placed on top of the road names making it very hard to use.
Bing Maps have been rapidly improving over the past year and no one seems to have picked-up on it. via their deal with Nokia, Microsoft is slowly updating the backend data, incorporating Navteq's over 20+ years of mapping tech. its not quite up to parity with Nokia Maps (or Google) internationally yet, but it's come a long way and (i'm guessing) easily beats-out Apple's quickly-built homegrown implementation.
for those who don't know, Nokia owns Navteq (purchased a few years ago) which powers over 85%+ of automotive navigation systems (as well as Garmin, Mapquest, and many other popular mapping services)..
My major problem with Bing is that it defaults the interface language based on your location. This is stupid. If I'm travelling in China, then having the entire interface in Chinese is completely useless.
Bing like many other major sites, make the poor assumption that the user's location == preferred language.
From a usability perspective, the interface language should primarily be based on the browser user agent Accept Language, and THEN an ip-to-geo database lookup can OFFER the user the location based user interface language.
Finally there should always be a way to change language.
Bing, as in the entirety of Bing, does not have a way to change language. I am currently in Germany, and there isn't a way for me to use the maps in English.
It is a schoolboy mistake from a major player. Idiotic if you ask me.
I've never used Bing Maps before, but it does look pretty nice. Anybody else seeing weird graphical glitches when panning around (in Chrome on Windows 7)?
They haven't given up on it, it's just quite limited at the moment, only showing up in major US cities. I actually find it stitches together images much better than Google's Street View, although it could just be because Google's pictures were taken a long time ago.
Not that it's putting me out. I can search bing from Safari. Just a strange move on their part. It's like the intern who's job it was to ready the international version got fired and nobody checked his pending workload.