
OpenStreetMap: Welcome Apple - sambeau
http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2012/03/08/welcome-apple/
======
sambeau

      "It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s
       contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get
       that on there."

~~~
sdoering
Why is that, that if Apple ignores credit/copyright (on a massive scale), that
everybody loves their move.

But if anybody would rip of an Apple product, the descendants of mighty Steve
would come raining down with swords, axes and lawyers.

Do you really think they did it, to support OSM. Or should I ask myself:
"Where is the money?"

The money, they do not have to pay Google anymore for the use of maps, while
not crediting all these people, who supported OSM with their time and data-
collecting.

~~~
ticks
Better to approach these things positively, than assume the worst case and
risk creating resentment.

~~~
cbs
It's idealistic naivete to assume the best of everyone. But you're right,
pretending to does make it more comfortable to operate in the world.

~~~
fennecfoxen
It can also make it expedient and more effective to operate in the real world.
You can always say "we tried to approach them and work with them nicely" when
you start making noise and going nuclear after they don't respond.

~~~
adriand
Exactly, it's a very pragmatic move. After all, who has more lawyers? I think
that people need to ask the question, "What do I hope to get out of this
particular thing I'm about to do or say?" more often, as opposed to, "What am
I justified in doing or saying?"

------
ugh
Then congratulations Apple, for making a not so great map even worse. I can't
really judge map quality in the US, but in Germany it sucks. Cities show up
twice or are missing completely, labels are often small, unreadable and ugly.
There is no consistency in the placement of lables.

OSM has its fair share of inconsistencies but it's not that bad.

The map is ok for what it is: Just for presentation inside of iPhoto, not for
browsing or finding your way. I really hope that Apple doesn't plan to use
this anywhere else and hat they just didn't go with Google because they can't
customize their maps any way they want.

(That missing credit is also shameful. I was looking everywhere inside of
iPhoto but couldn't find it. Stuff like that sould at least be moderately easy
to find.)

~~~
tcard
Out of curiosity, I made a comparison between the two towns where most of my
photos are taken as seen in GMaps vs. OSM.

<http://cl.ly/133M1H3W2W362S2F0l13> <http://cl.ly/2P2d3y042N1T0o2p390H>

600k and 60k inhabitants respectively.

~~~
Gring
Interesting. From your screenshots, Apple's maps are so bad it's not even
funny. It's just very, very bad. Steve would've never allowed such a thing to
ship.

Is this a first sign that without an asshole with taste at the top, the
erosion of Apple is inevitable?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
You may be correct, but I'm not positive. These maps are used to give you an
idea of where a photo was taken, not to provide navigation to it, so detail
isn't quite as important. The other consideration is this is one data point.
Perhaps Apple did a thousand of these and felt OSM was better.

Or, maybe Apple is going to quickly flame out.

------
mokus
In addition to the attribution, I'd like to know how they are going to comply
with the "share-alike" part of the license. Where can I download "Apple maps"?
According to the OSM FAQ, it should contain not only the OSM data but all
other data they have merged in.

It also seems like they should be required to release all the styling
parameters and/or code needed to render the maps exactly as they appear in
iPhoto - does anyone know how far CC-BY-SA reaches in a case like this?

EDIT: for that last part, I guess they probably would be fine just releasing
the whole thing pre-rendered.

~~~
rmc
No-one really know how far CC goes, and that's one reason OSM is changing
licence to a new Open Database Licence (ODbL)

~~~
oconnor0
Why wouldn't CC cover this?

~~~
rmc
OSM is a database of geographic facts ("There is a road here. It is called
Main Street. It is a primary road." etc.) Copyright of databases is non-
obvious, so they are switching to a click through database EULA thingie.

~~~
aidenn0
Copyright of databases has on several occasions been overturned

See Feist V. Rural

"The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a
modicum of creativity. Since facts do not owe their origin to an act of
authorship, they are not original, and thus are not copyrightable. Although a
compilation of facts may possess the requisite originality because the author
typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how
to arrange the data so that readers may use them effectively, copyright
protection extends only to those components of the work that are original to
the author, not to the facts themselves. This fact/expression dichotomy
severely limits the scope of protection in fact-based works."

Whether or not the street data is copyrightable in light of this decision is
definitely sketchy; the tiles etc. clearly are since they have some modicum of
creativity.

~~~
rmc
And remember that OSM is a global project, that works in many countries, with
different interpretations of copyright law. You don't want it to be open in
some countries, public domain in others etc etc

------
NameNickHN
There are two things that Apple should do in order to avoid being viewed as a
jerk once again. Put in the credit to OpenStreetMap and make a sizable
donation to the OpenStreetMaps Foundation.

~~~
sdoering
Not only credit to OSM. They would have to credit every single contributor
(whos data is used).

~~~
rmc
Not really. Yes the Licence is CC-BY-SA, but "OpenStreetMap Contributors" is
accepted form. (cf. <http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright> )

~~~
sdoering
Thanks for clarification.

------
petsos
I wonder if this is a temporary quick and dirty solution from Apple, pending a
full-scale switch to their own maps in iOS 6.0.

~~~
rmc
"Their own maps"? These are _their_ maps. They are rendering them, they are
hosting them. If you mean "their own map data", then that would be silly (&
expensive) for Apple to either (a) drive a car around everywhere like Google
Street View or (b) licence some third party mapping company. OSM is a good
solution for Apple here.

~~~
forza
They did buy c3 technologies so they are probably up to something map related.

------
5h
This is (for me) a very timely validation of OSMs efforts, congrats to them!

------
dan1234
Has it been confirmed that they're using OSM data or could the data be a
product of their acquisition of Placebase (back in 2009)?

Apple have actually been using this tile set for a while (it's used in the
slide show mode of the current version of iPhoto for OS X).

~~~
rmc
Yes, it looks like OSM. There are small roads that I've mapped that are only
on OSM, and are present on these maps. The data from OSM is from april 2010
(based on "The road added to OSM on $DATE1 is on these appple tiles, but the
the road added on $DATE2 isn't")

And yes, it looks like they've been using it for a while, no-one noticed till
now.

~~~
megablast
> And yes, it looks like they've been using it for a while, no-one noticed
> till now.

What do you mean by that? This is all from software released today, right?

~~~
dan1234
No, the same tile sets are used in iPhoto for OS X (part of the iLife suite)
and some people claim they're used in Aperture (another photo editor but I've
not used it).

Where they have used it, they used it as hint as to where a photo was taken.
The more detailed info panes still use google's maps.

------
mrinterweb
I can see a big migration away from Google Maps with Google's new pricing.
Google's pricing can potentially get prohibitively expensive quickly. 25000
map views per day and $4/1000 map views that exceed the free 25000 map views.
I am starting a new project that is focused around mapping. There is no way
Google Maps will work for me with their pricing model. Open Street Maps is
great.

------
JVIDEL
What is the word I'm looking for, "disappointed"?

The lack of given credit to OSM doesn't seems like an accident, and I was
looking forward to see what Apple was doing with that amazing mapping
technology from SAAB.

This is underwhelming to say the least, I was expecting much more from Apple.

~~~
rmc
I presume the missing attribution was an accident. They cannot avoid it for
much longer. It's legally required under the OSM copyright licence (CC-BY-SA)

~~~
jarek
Yeah. Apple isn't known for sweating the small stuff.

Accident my ass! Incompetence, at best. If this was Microsoft or Oracle, not
Apple, HN would be grabbing their pitchforks in three seconds.

~~~
Steko
If this was any other company not a single article would have been written
about it in the first place.

~~~
fpgeek
Provably false: [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/microsoft-adds-
openst...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/microsoft-adds-
openstreetmap-layer-to-bing-maps/)

~~~
Steko
Expected an article about Microsoft not providing attribution to OSM but you
didn't deliver.

An exaggeration on my part perhaps but when you compare the number of articles
written about this compared to the Google contractors that intentionally
sabotaged OSM data the difference is staggering.

~~~
fpgeek
I took the broader class to be articles about <company> using/working with
OSM, not <company> misusing OSM data. However, I'd also say that if people are
going to write about that sort of low-profile collaboration between Microsoft
and OSM, I think plenty more people would have written about it if Microsoft
had done anything inappropriate with OSM or OSM data.

As for the Google contractors, I remember that being a big story (especially
coming on the heels of the Kenya incident) until Google fired them and
apologized.

Similarly, I'd expect interest in Apple's failure to credit OSM to go away
once they fix it and apologize. Apple's use of OSM is interesting on its own
terms, of course, so I doubt interest in that will die down anytime soon.

------
sharmi
I see this as a favorable move to OSM. Hopefully the OSM's data would be
enriched further considering the huge volume of people who would come in
contact with OSM. OSM still lacks in a few places like middle east (Kuwait).
But what was surprising was, wikimapia has several orders of magnitude better
data for the same region compared to OpenStreetMap or other commercial map
providers ( That includes google maps, yahoo maps etc )

------
MRonney
The map for my hometown shows a train station that hasn't existed since the
early 1900's.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
If it's in the current OSM db, you should fix it. That's the great thing about
OSM.

~~~
bergie
Yep, and it is even very easy: [http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/openstreetmap-
s_user-generated_dat...](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/openstreetmap-s_user-
generated_data_wins_when_there_are_changes/)

------
Shank
I thought someone compared the terrain with OSM and in certain locations it
differs?

Edit: They're apparently combining map data in some places.

~~~
rmc
OSM doesn't have "terrain" (as in hill shading and mountain slopes), but it
does have streets and roads. Apple and OSM match up in lots of places.

Apple are not using OSM in USA (maybe canada, i dunno), but are definitly
using it outside there.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
OSM does have terrain, just not in the default map render (which includes most
hand-editible data to aid contributers but is often assumed to be the single
intended end product). For elevation they re-use SRTM data (and other sources)
to create maps with shaded slopes or contours:

<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SRTM>

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Shaded_relief_maps_using_...](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Shaded_relief_maps_using_mapnik)

<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contours>

------
rmc
There are some licence and copyright matters to be dealt with, but it's good
to see another company switch to OpenStreetMap

------
stevenp
We know that Apple is working on using their own map technology based on some
of their acquisitions. Is it possible that OSM is just a stop-gap until their
own maps are ready to go? Perhaps they didn't want to enter into another
licensing agreement with Google if they're going to be ready to switch to
their own solution later this year with iOS 6?

~~~
rmc
Well these are already their maps. They have styled them, hosting them etc.
They are just using the raw underlying OSM data. You have to get data from
somewhere, and OSM is probably one of the best sources of data.

~~~
stevenp
Interesting. Does that mean that the companies like Placebase (which Apple
acquired) weren't generating their own map data? I guess I just assumed that
they were, but the small amount of info I can find on them now makes it seem
unclear.

~~~
rmc
I don't know anything about Placebase (or the other map company Apple acquired
at the same time).

But from a practical standpoint, the world is really really bog. "Generating
map data" isn't exactly easy, you don't "generate it", you have to "collect
it". This isn't like generating a spell checking dictionary, or a a user
generated world for a video game. You have to use reality.

The half a million OSM users has been collecting this data for about 8 years
now. Either with lots of GPSs or buy tracing satilite/aerial imagery from
Yahoo and now Bing (not Google ☹).

To generate it yourself, you need to reproduce all of that above. Google's
Street View is a way to reproduce it, since you'll have GPS traces of all the
roads, and photos of what the road is like (for street names). OSM covers
twice or more times what Google Street View does, so that won't even get you
there.

The other option is to pay companies that have already done this, this is what
Google Maps (et al.) mostly is, and is also what GPS/SatNav companies do. They
get their data from either governmental sources if possible, or from tracing
aerial imagery.

All those options are _expensive_. Why not just use that free OSM data?

This is why OSM was created. To provide a free source of map data to improve
humanity.

------
chpolk
With many of these larger map-based apps switching to OpenStreetMap, does
anyone know any apps that receive a large amount of traffic that are
currently/going to stay with Google Maps? And if so, how are they dealing with
the charges (is it doable with a large amount of traffic without a significant
source of revenue)?

------
nchlswu
Could someone clarify using a service like OSM or Google Maps vs. using their
data for map tiles?

After the announcement I read tweets that basically said Apple was still using
the Google Maps service, but the tiles were rendered by Apple?

Based on what I'm reading it sounds like I misunderstood or am misremembering
what I read.

~~~
rmc
Some of Apple's software is still using Google Maps. Some is use tiles that
Apple render and host, but based on OpenStreetMap data. Basically 2 years ago
someone download the OSM data base (you can get it here
<http://planet.openstreetmap.org/> ), and then they made up their own style.

------
dutchbrit
Someone at Apple definitely deserves a good spanking..

------
Metapony
Link is down. I'd ask for a google cache link, but the irony would make me
implode.

~~~
soult
I don't know if you posted this just for pointing out the irony, or if you
really don't know: Retrieving the website from the Google Cache is as easy as
searching for "cache:FULL_URL" with Google, there isn't even a results page or
anything, you get directly to the cached page.

------
dbkbali
Great Apple, do no evil! How can we get better coverage for Asia?

~~~
rmc
With OSM, just start mapping! It's a wiki!
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide>

~~~
toyg
That won't help Apple users though -- OP points out that the map data is stale
(possibly two years old). It suggests there was a one-off dump at some point
which was then used to build the service.

~~~
stephen_g
I doubt they would dump once and never update it... Eventually they'll need to
update or the maps will be useless...

------
X-Istence
The Apple tiles are completely missing the street I live on ...

~~~
sjg
Well add it into OSM ;)

------
Tycho
_Just_ when I thought they couldn't get any more evil.

------
robertgaal
How can a project this cool have such an ugly website? It's shit like this
OSM...

------
phil
I don't get it. Where's the evidence that these maps are based on OSM data
versus, say, Navteq or TeleAtlas data?

The tiles use terrain data that nobody thinks is from OSM, and when I look at
North American cities, the street grids certainly don't seem to match any
better than you'd expect.

This post sounds pretty confident but they don't explain why.

~~~
mitakas
Don't read between the lines:

 _"The new iPhoto for iOS, however, uses Apple’s own map tiles – made from
OpenStreetMap data (outside the US)."_

~~~
phil
Ah, thanks -- I missed the _(outside the US)_ bit.

------
tseabrooks
It feels a bit silly to fawn over map tiles... and I'll probably be accused of
being an "Apple Fanboy"... But I'll be damned if those aren't some gorgeous
tiles.

Hopefully, this signals apple will move away from google for the built in maps
app and provide something superior themselves with something comparable to the
kick ass turn by turn in the current Android devices.

~~~
randallsquared
One of these is far nicer and clearer than the other:

<http://alastaira.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image3.png>

<http://alastaira.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image4.png>

Apple's version comes up really lacking in comparison to the default OSM one,
which I would call gorgeous, personally.

~~~
dochtman
Meh. I love what OSM is doing, but IMO their tile style doesn't hold a candle
to Google's (but then I dislike Apple's style here, as well).

~~~
lbotos
Anyone can make their own tiles with things like tilemill
(<http://mapbox.com/tilemill/>)

