
Apple partner says new Maps app in iOS 6 is terrible - uladzislau
http://www.bgr.com/2012/09/18/apple-maps-ios-6-criticism-waze/
======
mattdw
A competitor of TomTom indicates that Apple is relying mostly on TomTom for
mapping data, and says "they've chosen the weakest partner" and "their data is
terrible." Not exactly a neutral source.

Not that it's necessarily untrue; they might be gambling like they did with
Siri, that the best way to get a service like this running well is to ship it
and respond to real-world feedback.

~~~
eyko
As anyone who has tried the iOS6 betas can confirm, the maps are pretty bad.
I've looked for directions to nearby towns and it will send me to another
country. Searching for directions from my office to a friends house sent me to
a point that didn't even have the town's name anywhere near it.

And as far as I know, you can't search for public transport directions (at
least in London a month ago), which was practically 60% of my maps usage. I
had to either use google maps mobile web app or downgrade to iOS5. I did the
latter.

~~~
ghshephard
"As anyone who has tried the iOS6 betas can confirm"... by violating their NDA
and confirming issues with _beta_ software?

I'm guessing, myself, that the Apple Maps are going to be crappy compared to
google for at least a year, or two. And it's probably going to be half a
decade before we see even rough parity on their routing (particularly
walking/transit).

But lets be critical about their released product and respect the Beta
envelope until it's opened.

~~~
kristofferR
The final GM version has been out for over a week now, you don't sign an NDA
if you download it from third party sources. The maps still sucks in the GM
version.

~~~
Bud
Not to be a stickler, but the map data comes from the server, not from the
Maps app itself. Thus, even though you have the GM Maps app, you do not
necessarily know whether the user experience will still suck on the final
release day, tomorrow. They could push out some final massive improvement to
the server data before then. :) (No, I have no special knowledge of this, and
if I did I wouldn't say.)

Full disclosure: I am biased. I worked on Apple's maps team, last year, so
naturally I want the app to be good.

~~~
kristofferR
Well, the reviewers have had access to the same data as I have and critized
the map data quality - I doubt Apple would delay an update of their map data
they have ready to launch just for the heck of it at the cost of a lot of
negative commentary.

The app itself is great, unfortunately the data quality isn't anywhere close
to even the quality the iOS 5 Google Maps data. Apart from the obvious flaws
like no street view or transit data, the pure data is not good too
unfortunately. Let's hope Apple improves it fast, but I'm not too hopeful
considering that Google has spent the last 7 years gathering data and
improving their maps (and getting a lot of exclusive info submitted by their
users).

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aneth4
I've been using Maps for many months as part of the developer program.

They are not "terrible" but they are significantly worse than Google Maps. Let
me count the ways:

1) "International" support is actually terrible. Whereas Google Maps has just
about every road in Bastia (Corsica, France) accurately labeled, Apple Maps
had almost none.

2) Search is not as reliable and sometimes comes up with obscure unrelated
responses.

3) Several times I've been lead to the wrong spot in remote areas, either
because of inaccurate addressing or slightly off road maps.

4) Public transit is not built in. I've pretty much stopped taking the bus.
Hopefully third party providers will fill this gap.

This is a great article on why Apple will have a hard time competing with
Google Maps:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-
go...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go..).

Unfortunately, Google Maps on iPhone Safari is barely usable.

On the plus side, Siri integration with spoken turn-by-turn directions is a
huge improvement, and the lock screen has a nice heads-up nav display. Yelp
integration is also a nice touch.

------
d4m0
I've been using the new Maps for a few months since it appeared in the first
beta builds. I live in Sydney, Australia and the search struggles to find
places. It's not so bad if you put in the entire address, but a search for a
store or location regularly returns nothing.

I've noticed that this has been improving lately. When it first came out a
search for "Apple Store Chatswood" (2km from my work) would return stores in
the USA. Now it returns the correct destination.

It's still not a trustworthy source of directions and I regularly have to use
Google Maps via the browser.

So while this is very frustrating, I can see it improving so am not too
worried long term.

Mind you if Google Maps was an App in the Store I'd buy it asap.

------
joejohnson
Yeah, I've been using iOS 6 and the new Maps is fine. It's not perfect, I
guess, but there were issues with the old, Google-based app as well. The thing
about Apple is they iterate quickly on things like this, so I expect that the
kinks with their map app (backend, dataset-related issues included) will be
ironed out soon.

~~~
magicalist
> The thing about Apple is they iterate quickly on things like this

do they? I don't doubt their ability to solve hard problems elegantly (if a
problem happens to be one they want to solve), but I can't think of any strong
parallels to this that would suggest that. Their other services seem to
iterate on much the same time scales as their major app and OS releases
(especially in the last 5 years).

------
ghshephard
I'll be the one outlier and confess that, interestingly enough, particularly
as someone who doesn't drive, that I've never used Google Maps for transit
routing. I've visited Chicago, London, San Francisco - and extensively used
mass transit in all these places - but it never occurred to me that I could
use Google for routing instructions - I've always used the local Cal
Train/Bart/Tube/El Apps that give me routing information and departure/arrival
times.

In hindsight, I feel a little foolish now that I've discovered that I could
have done this with Google Maps (Ironic, given that I _do_ use Google Maps for
cycling/walking directions)

I guess that puts me as one of the few Mass Transit riders that won't be
negatively impacted by the upgrade (downgrade?) to the iPhone 5.

~~~
xanados
In San Francisco the iOS 5 maps app doesn't have real-time schedule
information on the buses, so it's not that useful except for the route itself.

------
wictorwictor
The loss of transit directions is just critical. One of the most important
features of my iPhone that I rely on every single day and they're ripping it
out. I won't be upgrading to iOS 6 until they fix this.

~~~
donohoe
I wouldn't mind so much if I at least know what trains were at a certain
station in NYC.

Its completely unhelpful.

------
uptown
I've been disappointed with maps, but would be incredbily surprised if Google
doesn't release a stand-alone iOS version of their maps app within days or
weeks. Whether it will include turn-by-turn directions is an unanswered
question in my mind, but it would at least solve public-transportation and
street-view needs. I suppose you'd still be stuck using Apple's maps for any
in-app mapping development unless you can work out a deal with another
provider or roll your own OSM implementation.

~~~
oldgregg
You think? I don't see that much upside for google (do they really make that
much money from ads inside maps?)... at the same time mapping is such a
critical application I can see it having a dramatic effect in the iOS vs
android wars.

~~~
uptown
Think of it this way. The more Google knows about its users, the better-
positioned they are to make more money off of them. If they know a person
travels to a certain part of the city/state/country/world they can use that
information to serve more context-appropriate ads to that person elsewhere in
the Google eco-system. There's tremendous value in location - I don't see them
giving that up.

~~~
stickfigure
I would be very surprised if the Google (search) website could share
information like location with a hypothetical Google Maps app. And even if it
could, I would expect Apple to shut down that avenue eventually.

~~~
uptown
Every Google iOS app has encouraged users to login to their Google account.
I'd surprise me if this isn't the case with the maps app as well, and there's
a convincing reason to encourage people to do so - giving them the ability to
send directions to your phone from desktops and other devices. While it
doesn't mean everyone will do this, they could still use anonymous location
information to direct users to businesses in whatever context the user is
most-applicable to the user (i.e. if they're shopping in a mall, or something
like that).

------
poutine
I've been using the beta to navigate around Vancouver for a month or so and it
works quite well. Turn by turn with voice commands through bluetooth to my car
is great. The Yelp integration is pretty useful too. Big thing that's missing
is the street view, but not something I've used much in the past.

Regardless of how it stands compared to standalone GPS units and Android it's
a big improvement over the previous maps app.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _Big thing that's missing is the street view, but not something I've used
> much in the past._

I suspect that puts you in a tiny minority...

Streetview is a _huge_ deal.

The lack of transit integration also pretty much makes Apple's maps a non-
starter for me.

I'm curious to see what they do in places like Tokyo, where public transit is
used for a huge majority of trips, and the transit system is complicated
enough that a good routing app is very useful. The iphone is very popular in
Japan, so I'd think Apple would be somewhat reluctant to just give its
customers the finger like that...

~~~
w1ntermute
> The iphone is very popular in Japan, so I'd think Apple would be somewhat
> reluctant to just give its customers the finger like that...

This is a potential goldmine for Android OEMs. The Japanese frequently buy new
phones (more so than any other country, I believe), and if word gets out that
the iPhone doesn't have public transit directions, they could easily make a
lot of sales.

~~~
taligent
Then again I've heard that the Japanese have this magical invention called an
"app" which someone can install on their phone to add new functionality.

I've even heard that there are some ones already for say the Tokyo subway.

~~~
snogglethorpe
There are lots of third-party transit routing possibilities (although many are
not so great). Nonetheless, many people will use the defaults, and having to
switch apps to do something which didn't use to require it is, of course,
annoying. Basically, the phone sucking by default is not a particularly good
business strategy.

My suspicion is that the Japanese resellers (au, SoftBank) will preinstall
something better than Apple's map (maybe Google's rumored new mapping app).
I've no idea how much freedom they have to do this under their contracts with
Apple, though, or whether they could integrate such an app more deeply (e.g.
cause it to be used as the system default mapping app).

------
photoGrant
The inability to easily use the public transportation option was the biggest
issue for me.

------
tortilla
You can get walking directions in iOS 6

[http://lifehacker.com/5943259/get-walking-directions-in-
ios-...](http://lifehacker.com/5943259/get-walking-directions-in-ios-6)

------
Steko
And by "partner" BGR of course actually meant "competitor".

~~~
uxp
And by author, BGR meant Android Columnist:

 _Dan joins the BGR team as the Android Editor, covering all things relating
to Google’s premiere operating system_

------
halayli
Said Dan Graziano...

"Dan joins the BGR team as the Android Editor, covering all things relating to
Google’s premiere operating system. ..."

------
mikeash
iOS 6 maps is a massive step backwards in an otherwise solid release. I'm
looking forward to Google releasing their own maps app, assuming they do. For
now, I'll get by with their web app.

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ryandvm
Sorry, you guys are just not thinking differently enough.

