Have iOS6 users been waiting this long to get GMaps back?? Given the blowout, why on earth didn't Apple give special approval to GMaps and push the existing version back into the App Store?
It wasn't an approval problem. I bet Apple would include Google maps in a heartbeat if it was free (and ad-free), but they had to pay for the privilege of having Google Maps.
The old app was Apple's maps app, that just happened to use Google APIs. And of course, to use Google maps data without letting Google show any ads, you have to pay Google. And if you have 400M iDevices, the number you have to pay Google is probably in order of >$50-100M per year (or something like that - I have no idea; just wanted to say that it's a lot). And even after paying that much money, Apple still didn't have turn-by-turn navigation or vector maps (the rumor is that Google wanted more user data and Apple refused).
So, Apple decided that instead of giving Google $500M in the next few years, to spend that money on developing their own mapping technology and be masters of their own destiny. Sadly, the result is laughably worse than Google's data, and probably will be comparable to Google's 2011 sometime in 2014.
> Sadly, the result is laughably worse than Google's data, and probably will be comparable to Google's 2011 sometime in 2014.
It will improve sooner than that. Apple has been rapidly making deals with data providers in each country. They never had those in place at launch which was why it was so bad.
Great, so we'll just sprinkle the magic data provider fairy dust on their maps, and oh wait, yeah, it's significantly more complicated than that.
Look, don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of being able to catch up. I was part of a small group of folks that took GCC's compiler technology from late 80's to state of the art in the mid 2000's by cherry picking the best of the best from research of the past 20 years. It worked. In 5-6 years, we were able to get within 1-2% of the best compilers at normal opt levels.
But it still took 5-6 years. Getting good takes time. There is no magic fairy dust. The secret to getting the last 25% of the way there in anything is hard work and lots of tuning. There is no magic bullet that will suddenly fix everything.
As someone who likes Apple and its platform(s) and has invested heavily in them, I'd like to believe that, but something tells me it won't.
I'm quoting John Siracusa, because I think what he said makes a lot of sense: Google does brute force (i.e., driving cars all over the world and having thousands of real people auditing the maps data), but Apple wants to get its data using "clever" algorithms. Clever algorithms is what caused [1], and countless other issues.
What I said above is debatable, but the next statement is (I think) absolutely non-negotiable: Until we see Apple Maps (or one of its partners') cars driving around the world (the whole world, mind you - not just US and EU), its data will be demonstrably worse than Google's. It might be good and usable, but still will be worse than Google's :)
Where do you think the data providers get their data from ?
They have cars as well. And they've had them for DECADES before Google. And it's not like Google is driving around continuously updating their data. For example Street View in many parts of my city is over 3 years old and still missing many newer suburbs.
So no. Google does not have a brute force approach. They have just had longer to perfect their algorithms.
As mapping professionals have observed, it isn't as simple as just having more and better data sources. Putting together a solid mapping solution from many disparate data sources can be harder than gathering more data yourself (i.e. there's a reason all those Google Street View cars are out there).
It's also worth noting that Apple's local POI search has been a particular pain point. Thinking it will be easy to match or outdo Google here (when Google Maps often pops up the right POI as a suggestion when I've typed as few as three characters) is foolhardy.
Again. Google Street View cars are NOT going around continuously updating data. It is their existing data providers that are doing this for them. I know this for a fact. And sorry but Google doesn't own any POI data either. They license it from third party providers. For example in Australia it ALL comes from Yellow Pages.
If you do a POI search e.g. Sydney restaurants in Google Maps you can scroll down to see the attribution e.g. "Business listings distributed by Yellow Pages". Likewise for most other countries.
But hey I will grant you that Google Maps has a better autocomplete.
I didn't say Google did everything themselves. That would be ludicrous and, AFAIK, no one does that. I said that gathering more data yourself can be easier than integrating disparate data sources. In other words, direct data gathering is an important part of the story and fixings things isn't as simple as "MOAR DATA"!
> And sorry but Google doesn't own any POI data either.
Some of Google's recent acquisitions would beg to differ:
Oh, by the way, I wouldn't trivialize what Google's doing with autocomplete. The way Google works on reliably guessing user intent from limited, often noisy input makes a huge difference on mobile. To take one example, search interfaces that can't tolerate misspellings are irritating on the desktop and downright painful to use on a phone or tablet.
There are lots of data sources other than Street View, satellite and aerial imagery being big ones obviously, but also user provided data, Business Photos, phone calls, etc.
The Yellow Pages attribution you see doesn't necessarily mean all data came from Yellow Pages, just that some may have.
The IOS6 Map is actually significantly better than the IOS5 maps (Vector, Voice Turn by Turn, Offline Access, Fast) - And, for popular urban locations in the United States - it's a significant improvement.
The people who want in-situ transit directions, want Google's much superior search experience, and those who got screwed over by Apple not covering their geographic area particularly well - will be happy about this upgrade though.
> "And, for popular urban locations in the United States - it's a significant improvement."
Disagreed completely. Pretty much the only people who have had a net positive from iOS6 Maps are the people who drive, and thus are able to take advantage of turn-by-turn.
Here in NYC iOS6 Maps is nearly completely useless. Searching for locations by address frequently takes you hundreds of miles away - "24 Orchard" takes you to another state, for example, even if you are standing less than half a mile from the address. Searching for places by name has a worse than 50/50 chance of finding it, and frequently completely unrelated results come up instead. Even when Apple can get the addresses of places correct, it frequently has trouble getting them in the correct locations - I've seen many instances of correct addresses dropping the pin in wrong locations - usually a block or two away.
The disaster of iOS6 Maps goes well beyond the loss of transit directions - the data and search components are atrocious.
The problem with bad mapping is that it has a thresholding effect. The utility of your mapping service does not scale linearly with the quality of your data - once your data is wrong above a certain threshold of all usage, people stop trusting your maps entirely. I do not trust iOS6 Maps because I have no way of knowing if it got anything right, and its failure rate is high enough that I have to second guess everything it tells me. Which is to say, it has become useless.
iOS6 Maps is a disaster for major urban locations in the United States. I for one am waiting for the Google Maps app to drop like a kid on Christmas eve.
That's very interesting (and useful) information. It sounds like it's not "Popular Urban Locations" but instead, a "subset of popular urban location" - Perhaps I guess I need to be very specific and say in the Bay Area (Everywhere, all the way down to Gilroy).
Your experience, though, explains why Tim Cook felt he needed to apologize.
Locally (Redwood City, Foster City, Mountain View) I prefer to use the IOS 6 Mapping application on my iPhone 5, than, rather than, side-by-side, the IOS 5 Mapping application on an iPhone 4S. Forgetting about Turn-by-Turn (which is the obvious and clear advantage of IOS 6 Mapping) - the super twitchy-fast vector Maps in IOS 6 Maps, not to mention their offline presence made all the difference. Particularly if you get into a sketchy cell area, where the old IOS 5 maps was basically "No Maps" - compared to the IOS 6 Maps which are "No Internet connection required, here are your maps."
While in Redwood City, I send all sorts of queries out to Siri like "Directions to Waterfront Pizza" (It picks the right one up in Foster City), and "Directions to 3463 Page Street" (It's intelligent enough to use the Page Street in Redwood City) - I use maps a lot, and haven't seen any regression beyond what I would see in google maps. IOS 6 maps is as close to flawless as a generic mapping application needs to be for my use in the peninsula area.
I wonder if Apple did something remarkably stupid, and only optimized the Bay Area? If so, then they deserve all the bad press they've received over their mapping application.
It might be interesting to have some third-party do a "Here are 1000 typical queries in 100 typical urban locations" and come back with a scorecard. Given that Apple is pulling a lot of data from TomTom for IOS 6 maps, I would be surprise to see their results much poorer than what TomTom would do give directly.
Google Maps are hardly perfect themselves. Not so long ago (as in September), searching for "city hall" with the Philadelphia City Hall centered on the map would transport you to a police station in Chicago. Rittenhouse Square still has a random assortment of businesses inside it. Washington Square is labeled Independence Mall State Park. There's apparently a heliport in the Constitution Center.
As long as your definition of urban locations excludes Philadelphia, Google Maps are just swell.
Arguably it's a significant improvement for popular urban locations - if you always drive and never use mass transit. Something that isn't true of most residents of many popular urban locations.
Your answer doesn't preclude it, but the features you list of iOS6 Maps are standard fair in Android and I presume would be present in a Google Maps for iOS. (That's of course not to say that the iOS6 maps isn't an improvement. I think the nav UI is quite pretty.)
Yep, me too. I have an iphone 4/iOS5 and have also delayed upgrading to iOS6 due to the bad press and my need of transit directions. I have a car too, but I frequently ride the bus to the airport for longer trips.
And I still might wait for some google maps app reviews before I upgrade...
The existing version was an Apple app, that used google technology. They would have to relicense the data to use the past maps app. I'm sure they'd rather spend that money to improve the new one.
Really? Jeez the doublethink in this thread is strong. Why is the alternative to "keep what works until you can't", "ditch it with months on the license to push an inferior, downgraded experience"?
Why couldn't they have spent that time getting data partnerships that apparently is going to solve all of their problems?
I would imagine they were working from a standpoint of "this is the last major launch before the license is up.". Could you imagine if the google maps app was shut down? people would go bannanas.
>>Why couldn't they have spent that time getting data partnerships that apparently is going to solve all of their problems?
I would imagine they have been spending years on this already. Google has just been spending nearly a decade doing the same thing. When you are both world class development companies, a several year lead is insurmountable for a very long time.
Have iOS6 users been waiting this long to get GMaps back??
Yes. Very much so. I was frustrated with the app for a few weeks, then one day driving back from out of state I ran into a closed section of interstate. After half an hour of fighting the app in a convenience store parking lot, I gave up and went inside to buy a road atlas.
I could really rely on google maps to give me good directions and actually show me all the roads sensibly. With my android phone, when I needed to deviate from the calculated route I'd just let my sense of direction lead me around for 15 minutes then look back at my phone, thats how much I trusted it.
I use my 3rd gen ipad all the time, in the bay area, and the Apple maps suck. Sorry but they do. My wife's iPad, being Gen 1, has been spared being upgraded to IOS6 and so we look up map things on hers. On numerous occasions we've compared what the 'old' Maps app brought up and what the 'current' Map app brought up and merely shook our head.
I am surprised that Google would even consider putting their maps back on iOS at this point given the publicity but they have never been a very scrutable organization.
The actual "complaining" may be attributed to a few people (non-iOS or not), but from its reliability alone, Apple's iOS6 Maps is certainly not my first choice when I need directions to a new location that I have little familiarity with. An early usage of iOS6 Maps led me to the wrong address (a confusion of North/South streets) and it's not like I live in a particularly exotic region (South Bay/Los Angeles). I'll give it another chance when iOS7 Maps is out.
Honestly -- the directions are fine. Turn by Turn seems useful (only had it a short while in AU).
The key issue for me is crappy information display. Most of the time -- major roads aren't shown while zoomed out. So If I want to glance at the maps to try an alternate route -- I can't.
Really? I know to expect this from you, but you're really going to make this absolute statement: "The only people complaining about Google Maps seem to be non-iOS users." and stand by it? Besides, somehow I have no doubt that you're a fan of native apps and would happily espouse how important they are.
It's not an absolute statement. I said SEEM to be.
Because the fact is that the mobile site IS about 80% as good as the native app. Especially given the native app has poor caching and no offline capability.
Comments
Have iOS6 users been waiting this long to get GMaps back?? Given the blowout, why on earth didn't Apple give special approval to GMaps and push the existing version back into the App Store?
It wasn't an approval problem. I bet Apple would include Google maps in a heartbeat if it was free (and ad-free), but they had to pay for the privilege of having Google Maps.
The old app was Apple's maps app, that just happened to use Google APIs. And of course, to use Google maps data without letting Google show any ads, you have to pay Google. And if you have 400M iDevices, the number you have to pay Google is probably in order of >$50-100M per year (or something like that - I have no idea; just wanted to say that it's a lot). And even after paying that much money, Apple still didn't have turn-by-turn navigation or vector maps (the rumor is that Google wanted more user data and Apple refused).
So, Apple decided that instead of giving Google $500M in the next few years, to spend that money on developing their own mapping technology and be masters of their own destiny. Sadly, the result is laughably worse than Google's data, and probably will be comparable to Google's 2011 sometime in 2014.
> Sadly, the result is laughably worse than Google's data, and probably will be comparable to Google's 2011 sometime in 2014.
It will improve sooner than that. Apple has been rapidly making deals with data providers in each country. They never had those in place at launch which was why it was so bad.
Great, so we'll just sprinkle the magic data provider fairy dust on their maps, and oh wait, yeah, it's significantly more complicated than that.
Look, don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of being able to catch up. I was part of a small group of folks that took GCC's compiler technology from late 80's to state of the art in the mid 2000's by cherry picking the best of the best from research of the past 20 years. It worked. In 5-6 years, we were able to get within 1-2% of the best compilers at normal opt levels.
But it still took 5-6 years. Getting good takes time. There is no magic fairy dust. The secret to getting the last 25% of the way there in anything is hard work and lots of tuning. There is no magic bullet that will suddenly fix everything.
As someone who likes Apple and its platform(s) and has invested heavily in them, I'd like to believe that, but something tells me it won't.
I'm quoting John Siracusa, because I think what he said makes a lot of sense: Google does brute force (i.e., driving cars all over the world and having thousands of real people auditing the maps data), but Apple wants to get its data using "clever" algorithms. Clever algorithms is what caused [1], and countless other issues.
What I said above is debatable, but the next statement is (I think) absolutely non-negotiable: Until we see Apple Maps (or one of its partners') cars driving around the world (the whole world, mind you - not just US and EU), its data will be demonstrably worse than Google's. It might be good and usable, but still will be worse than Google's :)
[1]: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/12/11/apple-fixes-australian-m...
Where do you think the data providers get their data from ?
They have cars as well. And they've had them for DECADES before Google. And it's not like Google is driving around continuously updating their data. For example Street View in many parts of my city is over 3 years old and still missing many newer suburbs.
So no. Google does not have a brute force approach. They have just had longer to perfect their algorithms.
So why didn't Google just buy data from them?
They did, but restrictive licencing terms drove them to start collecting their own, the process is still not complete.
As mapping professionals have observed, it isn't as simple as just having more and better data sources. Putting together a solid mapping solution from many disparate data sources can be harder than gathering more data yourself (i.e. there's a reason all those Google Street View cars are out there).
See the frequently referenced: http://blog.telemapics.com/?p=399
It's also worth noting that Apple's local POI search has been a particular pain point. Thinking it will be easy to match or outdo Google here (when Google Maps often pops up the right POI as a suggestion when I've typed as few as three characters) is foolhardy.
Again. Google Street View cars are NOT going around continuously updating data. It is their existing data providers that are doing this for them. I know this for a fact. And sorry but Google doesn't own any POI data either. They license it from third party providers. For example in Australia it ALL comes from Yellow Pages.
If you do a POI search e.g. Sydney restaurants in Google Maps you can scroll down to see the attribution e.g. "Business listings distributed by Yellow Pages". Likewise for most other countries.
But hey I will grant you that Google Maps has a better autocomplete.
I didn't say Google did everything themselves. That would be ludicrous and, AFAIK, no one does that. I said that gathering more data yourself can be easier than integrating disparate data sources. In other words, direct data gathering is an important part of the story and fixings things isn't as simple as "MOAR DATA"!
> And sorry but Google doesn't own any POI data either.
Some of Google's recent acquisitions would beg to differ:
http://www.wired.com/business/2011/09/google-buys-zagat/
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/13/technology/google-frommers/i...
And, unless you know differently, I'm pretty sure Google owns Google Places...
> Again. Google Street View cars are NOT going around continuously updating data.
I think you might be a little bit dated in your understanding. Google any random city on maps.google.com. Look at the fine print at the bottom: "Map data ©2012 Google"
I remember what that used to say a 4-5 years back. Copyright NAVTEQ. They have been quite busy.
Oh, by the way, I wouldn't trivialize what Google's doing with autocomplete. The way Google works on reliably guessing user intent from limited, often noisy input makes a huge difference on mobile. To take one example, search interfaces that can't tolerate misspellings are irritating on the desktop and downright painful to use on a phone or tablet.
There are lots of data sources other than Street View, satellite and aerial imagery being big ones obviously, but also user provided data, Business Photos, phone calls, etc.
The Yellow Pages attribution you see doesn't necessarily mean all data came from Yellow Pages, just that some may have.
Great, so we'll just sprinkle the magic data provider fairy dust on their maps, and oh wait, yeah, it's significantly more complicated than that.
The IOS6 Map is actually significantly better than the IOS5 maps (Vector, Voice Turn by Turn, Offline Access, Fast) - And, for popular urban locations in the United States - it's a significant improvement.
The people who want in-situ transit directions, want Google's much superior search experience, and those who got screwed over by Apple not covering their geographic area particularly well - will be happy about this upgrade though.
> "And, for popular urban locations in the United States - it's a significant improvement."
Disagreed completely. Pretty much the only people who have had a net positive from iOS6 Maps are the people who drive, and thus are able to take advantage of turn-by-turn.
Here in NYC iOS6 Maps is nearly completely useless. Searching for locations by address frequently takes you hundreds of miles away - "24 Orchard" takes you to another state, for example, even if you are standing less than half a mile from the address. Searching for places by name has a worse than 50/50 chance of finding it, and frequently completely unrelated results come up instead. Even when Apple can get the addresses of places correct, it frequently has trouble getting them in the correct locations - I've seen many instances of correct addresses dropping the pin in wrong locations - usually a block or two away.
The disaster of iOS6 Maps goes well beyond the loss of transit directions - the data and search components are atrocious.
The problem with bad mapping is that it has a thresholding effect. The utility of your mapping service does not scale linearly with the quality of your data - once your data is wrong above a certain threshold of all usage, people stop trusting your maps entirely. I do not trust iOS6 Maps because I have no way of knowing if it got anything right, and its failure rate is high enough that I have to second guess everything it tells me. Which is to say, it has become useless.
iOS6 Maps is a disaster for major urban locations in the United States. I for one am waiting for the Google Maps app to drop like a kid on Christmas eve.
That's very interesting (and useful) information. It sounds like it's not "Popular Urban Locations" but instead, a "subset of popular urban location" - Perhaps I guess I need to be very specific and say in the Bay Area (Everywhere, all the way down to Gilroy).
Your experience, though, explains why Tim Cook felt he needed to apologize.
Locally (Redwood City, Foster City, Mountain View) I prefer to use the IOS 6 Mapping application on my iPhone 5, than, rather than, side-by-side, the IOS 5 Mapping application on an iPhone 4S. Forgetting about Turn-by-Turn (which is the obvious and clear advantage of IOS 6 Mapping) - the super twitchy-fast vector Maps in IOS 6 Maps, not to mention their offline presence made all the difference. Particularly if you get into a sketchy cell area, where the old IOS 5 maps was basically "No Maps" - compared to the IOS 6 Maps which are "No Internet connection required, here are your maps."
While in Redwood City, I send all sorts of queries out to Siri like "Directions to Waterfront Pizza" (It picks the right one up in Foster City), and "Directions to 3463 Page Street" (It's intelligent enough to use the Page Street in Redwood City) - I use maps a lot, and haven't seen any regression beyond what I would see in google maps. IOS 6 maps is as close to flawless as a generic mapping application needs to be for my use in the peninsula area.
I wonder if Apple did something remarkably stupid, and only optimized the Bay Area? If so, then they deserve all the bad press they've received over their mapping application.
It might be interesting to have some third-party do a "Here are 1000 typical queries in 100 typical urban locations" and come back with a scorecard. Given that Apple is pulling a lot of data from TomTom for IOS 6 maps, I would be surprise to see their results much poorer than what TomTom would do give directly.
Google Maps are hardly perfect themselves. Not so long ago (as in September), searching for "city hall" with the Philadelphia City Hall centered on the map would transport you to a police station in Chicago. Rittenhouse Square still has a random assortment of businesses inside it. Washington Square is labeled Independence Mall State Park. There's apparently a heliport in the Constitution Center.
As long as your definition of urban locations excludes Philadelphia, Google Maps are just swell.
Arguably it's a significant improvement for popular urban locations - if you always drive and never use mass transit. Something that isn't true of most residents of many popular urban locations.
I disagree. I am in a major metropolitan area, and not only is the data worse but more importantly, usability is worse with Apple Maps.
Your answer doesn't preclude it, but the features you list of iOS6 Maps are standard fair in Android and I presume would be present in a Google Maps for iOS. (That's of course not to say that the iOS6 maps isn't an improvement. I think the nav UI is quite pretty.)
Personally I'm still on iOS5, I've been waiting for this to upgrade to iOS6.
Yep, me too. I have an iphone 4/iOS5 and have also delayed upgrading to iOS6 due to the bad press and my need of transit directions. I have a car too, but I frequently ride the bus to the airport for longer trips.
And I still might wait for some google maps app reviews before I upgrade...
The existing version was an Apple app, that used google technology. They would have to relicense the data to use the past maps app. I'm sure they'd rather spend that money to improve the new one.
They actually had about a year left on their license. Source -> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57520590-501465/apple...
Having a few months up your sleeve on current licensing terms doesn't mean you could sit back and wait for the expiry date before acting.
True, but releasing a beta of your potential replacement (for example), is another way of acting.
Really? Jeez the doublethink in this thread is strong. Why is the alternative to "keep what works until you can't", "ditch it with months on the license to push an inferior, downgraded experience"?
Why couldn't they have spent that time getting data partnerships that apparently is going to solve all of their problems?
I would imagine they were working from a standpoint of "this is the last major launch before the license is up.". Could you imagine if the google maps app was shut down? people would go bannanas.
>>Why couldn't they have spent that time getting data partnerships that apparently is going to solve all of their problems?
I would imagine they have been spending years on this already. Google has just been spending nearly a decade doing the same thing. When you are both world class development companies, a several year lead is insurmountable for a very long time.
So, now Apple, Godly Apple, is rushing incomplete, knowingly broken products out just to fit with their hardware release schedule?
I don't have a dog in the race, but maybe I'm realizing why Scott was fired.
No, iOS6 users who want google maps have been using the google maps website. It actually works incredibly well.
Have iOS6 users been waiting this long to get GMaps back??
Yes. Very much so. I was frustrated with the app for a few weeks, then one day driving back from out of state I ran into a closed section of interstate. After half an hour of fighting the app in a convenience store parking lot, I gave up and went inside to buy a road atlas.
I could really rely on google maps to give me good directions and actually show me all the roads sensibly. With my android phone, when I needed to deviate from the calculated route I'd just let my sense of direction lead me around for 15 minutes then look back at my phone, thats how much I trusted it.
Does maps.google.com not work on iOS 6?
The only people complaining about Google Maps seem to be non-iOS users.
Because the mobile version has been available and was about 80% as good as the app. Which really showed just how lacking the original maps was.
I use my 3rd gen ipad all the time, in the bay area, and the Apple maps suck. Sorry but they do. My wife's iPad, being Gen 1, has been spared being upgraded to IOS6 and so we look up map things on hers. On numerous occasions we've compared what the 'old' Maps app brought up and what the 'current' Map app brought up and merely shook our head.
I am surprised that Google would even consider putting their maps back on iOS at this point given the publicity but they have never been a very scrutable organization.
The actual "complaining" may be attributed to a few people (non-iOS or not), but from its reliability alone, Apple's iOS6 Maps is certainly not my first choice when I need directions to a new location that I have little familiarity with. An early usage of iOS6 Maps led me to the wrong address (a confusion of North/South streets) and it's not like I live in a particularly exotic region (South Bay/Los Angeles). I'll give it another chance when iOS7 Maps is out.
And the Mildura Police force.
Honestly -- the directions are fine. Turn by Turn seems useful (only had it a short while in AU).
The key issue for me is crappy information display. Most of the time -- major roads aren't shown while zoomed out. So If I want to glance at the maps to try an alternate route -- I can't.
Really? I know to expect this from you, but you're really going to make this absolute statement: "The only people complaining about Google Maps seem to be non-iOS users." and stand by it? Besides, somehow I have no doubt that you're a fan of native apps and would happily espouse how important they are.
It's not an absolute statement. I said SEEM to be.
Because the fact is that the mobile site IS about 80% as good as the native app. Especially given the native app has poor caching and no offline capability.