

Apple Maps Vehicles - aaronpk
http://maps.apple.com/vehicles/

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danso
This is impressive...while I'll be using Google Maps on iOS for a long time to
come...Google has such a lead that creating one's own geospatial dataset seems
tantamount to reinventing the wheel...yet, it seems dangerous to _not_ have
competition in this area, as it gives one company almost unilateral power to
define the existence of geography (at least for day-to-day usage). And of
course, using Google Maps means buying into their user-information-sharing
system. Glad Apple is using its money to take on the challenge.

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jobu
For me the biggest problem with Apple Maps on iOS is usability, not data.

The first thing I've ever seen anyone do when they start a route on Apple Maps
is pinching to zoom out. No, you need to use the overview button. Wait,
where's the overview button? You need to tap the map to show the button, and
then tap the button and it shows the whole route. After that you have to zoom
back in to see what's coming up next in the route.

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roflchoppa
oh man that drives me up the wall, but i also noticed that it drives my mother
up the wall too, i guess even a 50 year old lady with limited tech experience
also saw through that flaw.

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sosborn
> 50 year old lady with limited tech experience also saw through that flaw.

It has been my experience that these are the people most likely to snuff out
UI flaws whether they know it or not.

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nakedrobot2
Does anyone have a photo of one of these vehicles? I'd love to see it.

Apple is certainly in the long game with their maps... One interesting thing
to point out is that while google streetview started as a project to augment
the maps with photos, it quickly became clear that these photos of the streets
could be a primary way to gather accurate real-world data about the streets,
one-way signs, street numbers, and so on. Clearly Apple is up to the same
thing here.

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nav1
This article has one: [http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/17/apple-maps-
vehicles-engl...](http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/17/apple-maps-vehicles-
england-new-orleans/)

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arthurcolle
They aren't very aesthetically pleasing...

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LoneWolf
So what? Not everything apple does has to be shiny. If they do the job, why
bother?

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shogun21
Eight years behind Google. I'm interested to see how quickly they can catch
up!

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simonh
It's unlikely to take anything like 8 years. Much of Google's effort during
that time has been refreshing images of streets they had already visited. If
Google has visted a street 4 times to keep the data up to date, Apple only has
to visit it once to be just as up to date (and continue to visit regularly
after that to stay up to date, of course).

edit: mixmastamyk beat me to it by 1 minute, so +1 to you sir.

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bambax
That's not entirely true; Google does not refresh _all_ of its data every
cycle: some "rare" locations (where few people live) have been visited only
once during those 8 years.

To catch up you need to cover all locations, not just the frequent ones, so
that takes more than one cycle.

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simonh
Google doesn't cover 'all locations' so I think that's a red herring. Their
best bet is to provide a service with unique distinguishing features that is
competitive with Google. Similar or competitive coverage is just one measure
of usefulness.

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weaksauce
Interesting and not something I'd have expected from apple. That actually
brings up an interesting question... How many miles of roads are in the us?
Europe? How many of these vans will they deploy?

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sctb
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9691055)

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Robin_Message
It's great that they provide this detailed what location when data.

However, it demonstrates that their maps still have some way to go. E.g. They
are driving around southern Hertfordshire this week, where I used to live.
Dacorum is a borough, not the name of an actual place; I've never heard of
Hertsmere or the three rivers; and Welwyn Hatfield are two adjacent towns. 3
out of 7 place names is not great.

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fredleblanc
Not sure that it helps, but the one local to me is Massachusetts, USA, and
they describe it as "Suffolk (Boston)," where Suffolk is the county name. No
one would use that in day-to-day talk… maybe they have some more or semi-
official name of a "region" in your area?

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vinay427
Any news on whether Apple will contribute these findings back to
OpenStreetMaps, like Microsoft's apparent provision of Bing aerial imagery?

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darkstar999
Haha! No.

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pepijndevos
This is the page to check out if you want to go maps photobombing.

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Oletros
An enourmmous task to accomplish, but it improves its mapping data

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bluthru
I'm really excited to see Apple's 3d model of street view versus Google's 2d
skyboxes.

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jlhonora
Next step: JavaScript API?

