
Apple Botches China and Japan Maps in iOS 6 - allenwlee
http://www.techinasia.com/apple-ios-6-maps-china-japan/
======
w1ntermute
This is especially galling for the Japanese. Not only are they valuable
customers due to their frequent cell phone purchases and rabid desire for
brand-name products (including Apple, of course), but a quarter of the
Japanese population (and the main target market) lives in Tokyo, where people
are almost entirely dependent on public transit to get around. With iOS 6,
there are no built in directions!

Of course, Apple apologists will jump to say that you can just get a 3rd party
app, but that simply doesn't cut it. Google Maps provided a door-to-door
solution for directions, which makes a big difference when you don't know what
the closest train station to an address is. Moreover, the ability to see the
total door-to-door time and compare it to the cost of the trip made it easy to
select the optimal route (based on a combination of price and time).

And here are some of the amusing mistakes in the database[0]:

* "McDonalds" and "Pachinko Gundam" train stations

* A station not attached to any railway lines

* No Osaka station (this is a really big station)

* Place names in Chinese and Korean

* Haneda Airport (busiest airport in Japan) is mislabeled as 「大王製紙」 ― "Great King Paper Manufacturer" (this one has gotten a lot of laughs)

* Narita Airport (2nd busiest airport) completely missing

For those who can read Japanese, there's a good 2chan thread archive[1] of
Japanese netizens taking the piss out of Apple Maps.

0: [http://www.japanmobiletech.com/2012/09/ios-6-maps-fail-in-
ja...](http://www.japanmobiletech.com/2012/09/ios-6-maps-fail-in-japan.html)

1: <http://gahalog.2chblog.jp/archives/52132765.html>

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
>"Pachinko Gundam" train station

Wow. You couldn't make it up, could you?

For those unaware, "pachinko" refers to a form of gambling, gaming machine,
comparable to the Western "slot machine".[0]

"Gundam" is a popular anime series in Japan.[1]

[0]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko>

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam>

~~~
patio11
Pachinko Gundam is a thing, too. (Panchinko machines, like Vegas slot machines
and Zynga products, are often themed to stimulate additional interest over the
base Skinner box gameplay. Unlike Vegas slots and Zynga products, the core
pachinko customer is a Japanese salaryman, so most of the themes skew in that
direction. The most popular, by a wide margin, is about a chesty mermaid and
her under-the-ocean gal pals.)

~~~
w1ntermute
Right, one of the (many) things that Japan takes to the point of absurdity is
brand licensing. If any sort of media content becomes successful, particularly
anime/manga or J-pop artists, you can be sure that there will be branded
drinks, foods, restaurants, toys, outfits, even red-light district "services".

Maybe it's just that coming from suburban America, I'm used to spending more
time in a car (isolated from the visuals and sounds of ads) and the population
density is lower, but the advertising/branding just seems that much more
intense in Tokyo. Then again, I've been to NYC, and it didn't feel like that -
for example, the train stations didn't have ads.

------
olalonde
To be fair, Google Maps in China isn't great either. See "Map View" vs
"Satellite View" here:
[https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.637323,114.030954&spn=0.0...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.637323,114.030954&spn=0.001513,0.00284&t=m&z=19).
It's off by a few hundred meters (the corresponding satellite view for the
previous map view is actually here:
[https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.640363,114.025936&spn=0.0...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=22.640363,114.025936&spn=0.003025,0.005681&t=h&z=18)).
I assume Google is aware of this issue since they don't overlay map data over
their satellite view like they do almost everywhere else around the world. The
fact that they can't drive their Street View cars in China doesn't help
either.

~~~
prewett
My Chinese friends tell me that there is a government requirement that maps
databases have an offset. I'm guessing the Google car isn't permitted to drive
around in China, because they lease maps from Mapabc [1], which presumably has
the offset. If you go to ditu.google.cn you get accurate maps without the
offset (but it's only in Chinese).

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps> (see the "Copyright" section)

~~~
w1ntermute
> there is a government requirement that maps databases have an offset.

What do you mean by offset? Mapping companies are forced to make their data be
inaccurate?

~~~
wisty
Yes. The US did this with GPS - co-ordinates would be slightly scrambled,
unless you had a military decoder.

Some people worked around it by getting the GPS location at a fixed point
(i.e. a lighthouse) then figuring out the offset for the area.

The reason being, maps and location data has military uses.

You'll also find it's illegal to make maps of certain infrastructure
(generators, power lines, dams) in many countries.

~~~
sern
Not quite the same thing, although they do have some similarities.

The Selective Availability "feature" of GPS worked by fuzzing the time
readings output by the GPS satellites. The fuzz was time-varying but only
changed every few seconds. Because it affected nearby receivers with similar
amounts of error, if you had access to two receivers in the same area you
could quite accurately measure their positions relative to each other.

The Chinese map obfuscation scheme is basically a secret map projection (it's
not a constant offset, it varies over locations). GPS coordinates go into a
black box and out come obfuscated coordinates, which you then use to plot on
the map. Because there wouldn't be much point to GPS receivers that constantly
show your location on the wrong point on the map, receivers sold in China
actually incorporate the algorithm, and it probably wouldn't be too difficult
to reverse engineer.

~~~
ghshephard
I'm trying to figure out if you are serious about "Chinese Map Obfuscation
Schemes". Your description of SA and DGPS is spot on, but I can't think of any
reason that China would want to obfuscate their maps now that satellites have
mapped their country.

~~~
sern
Paranoia, maybe? But yeah, it's rather pointless. Even more so since GPS
vendors have access to the algorithm.

------
mootothemax
This is making me seriously reconsider buying an iPhone 5 when it becomes
available here in Poland next week. Maps are a vital part of my smartphone
activities, and Google's offering have been really impressive.

If Apple can't get this right for a market as big and smartphone-friendly as
Japan, I'm struggling to think how they'll do so for Poland.

Edit: just to clarify, I don't care in the slightest about the 3d-image
errors, but the problems with directions look incredibly painful, missing
roads will be a huge hindrance, and the disappearance of points of interests,
well, that's just plain annoying.

~~~
denniedarko
The easy workaround for the moment would be to place a shortcut to
maps.google.com on your iPhone home screen. Then you don't need to use the
default maps if you feel they aren't up to scratch.

~~~
jedberg
People keep saying this, but it isn't anywhere close. The web interface is
buggy (it doesn't respond to all the clicks) and much more importantly, if you
click on an address in any other app, it will take you to Apple maps.

A good chunk of my navigating is looking up addresses in other apps (like
Yelp) and then clicking on them.

This is now horribly broken and there is no workaround.

~~~
w1ntermute
I'm guessing the only short term solution (if Google doesn't release an app)
will be jailbreaking the phone and replacing Apple Maps with the old iOS 5
Google Maps app. Someone will probably come up with a way to do that soon.

~~~
georgemcbay
Even if Google releases a standalone maps app, isn't his Yelp address example
still a non-starter? It has been a long time since I was a daily iOS user
(iPhone 3G), but unless things have changed drastically it doesn't have an
Android-like Intent system and I doubt Apple will make the default action for
clicking addresses in other apps be to start Google Maps now.

~~~
vvhn
I'm not sure how it is done but the app AroundMe has, since 2009, shown me the
location on the maps app but has also always given a "Route Using" option
which has all the GPS apps on my phone including the maps app. Selecting the
navigon feom there starts the navigation to that address using navigon.

------
hoi
They made another mistake for Hong Kong.. The maps are in English only... many
Taxi drivers won't be able to take you where you want because they only know
it in Chinese and pointing it out on an English only map doesn't help.

~~~
objclxt
You'll have "Display English Names Only" enabled. If you go into the Settings
app, select "Maps", and make sure "Always English" is set to Off you'll get
non-English street names for non-English countries (Hong Kong, Japan, China,
Saudi Arabia, etc etc).

~~~
hoi
Yep, it works, but not easily usable because for non chinese readers, you
would have to type the search in English, and then leave the app to switch it
to chinese for the taxi driver (and switch it back to English to do your next
search).

------
swang
What a disaster for Apple. But of course Apple can't admit fault and the
people who are screwed are the users.

Steve would have never let this application go through.

~~~
tvon
Eh, if he was gone before the iPhone 4 people would have said the same thing
about "antennagate".

~~~
swang
I think this is different because it was pretty difficult to reproduce that
antennae problem if you never put your hand in that spot. This Maps app is the
only Maps app now and it's missing a lot of features.

Steve wouldn't have let this happen because it's a poor product and it's
obvious (everyone uses Maps).

~~~
vvhn
ok then -MobileMe and that was a paid service. The only person who knows what
Steve Jobs would or would not have done was Steve Jobs. Stop pretending like
you (or anyone else) does.

------
acuozzo
Don't forget: release early, release often is TheRightWayToDoIt!

~~~
mun2mun
Problem is that it is the content that Apple have no control. Main reason of
Apple's great user experience is full control over every aspect of
hardware/application. Apple should have heavily tested TomTom's map data
across various country before ditching Google map. Ironically Apple is getting
same criticism as Microsoft got over the year for BSOD in Windows(most of the
time it was for faulty driver/hardware which Microsoft didn't control).

~~~
hoi
The fault isn;t tomtom's map data, it's all the layers on top that Apple have
to add to it. Tom Tom's data (they acquired Teleatlas) is one of the two best
resources (the other being Navteq) for map data. How you use the map data is
the problem and Apple haven't got it right this time, I would guess most of
the testing was completed in the USA, so I would expect most major cities to
be fairly fine. It's once you go internationally it gets bad.

I used to work on these types of issue half a decade ago (2007), and one way
of testing the accuracy is to stream GPS data in and test that it worked ok.
We did this by - a)Test programme that could load and play GPS commutes.
Connect to the phone as a bluetooth GPS device. PLay the commute (from
multiple countries. b) on the phone - intercept the screen signal, using
another programme, check the screen automatically to make sure the map was on
the road (reading for road names and POI for more robust testing) We could run
mapping/navi tests around the world without having to leave our desks. (This
testing was done for the Nokia N95/N82.. I left in 2008)

------
xster
Another part of Steve playing god giving each country an island of its own?

Did use iOS 6 in China a month ago... pure garbage. Mapquest was better 5
years ago.

~~~
dlundqvist
Do you know if you used TomTom or AutoNavi maps? In my limited testing not
long ago TomTom was pretty bad here in China and AutoNavi was like a black
hole out side of it.

------
po
Quite annoying. Here are some alternatives for people (like me) living in
Japan:

* Bookmark the normal maps.google.com page on the front page

* Foursquare

* Japan Map - 'Free for a limited time' [https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/japan-map-itsumo-navi/id3066...](https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/japan-map-itsumo-navi/id306683384)

