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.
Comments
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.