Apple can’t unilaterally decide to use Google Maps or not. You do not know the conditions Google set. My guess is that Apple was backed into a corner and Google wouldn’t give them vector maps or turn-by-turn navigation.
Building a good maps service is miles outside of Apple’s core competency, so this is all very sad – but at the same time no surprise at all.
(Mind you, all this at best explains the bad maps experience, it does not excuse it.)
It's a product of Apple's inability to form stable B2B relationships - "adult relationships" if one enjoys snarky analogies. Contrast this to the way in which Microsoft has recently addressed Google's strength in Maps. They found someone with mutual interests. http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-and-nokia-present-unif...
Google and Apple have been unfriending each other since Schmidt resigned from Apple's board three years ago. A jilted Apple is again "looking and feeling" for reasons to drag the ex who cheated on them into court. Heck, in Samsung, they are even treating one of their current "friends with benefits" like an ex.
TomTom's response, "We are a paid escort service, you can find us in the phonebook."
Regardless of the drama involved, the fact is that Google is competing against Apple, and maps are a significant enabler of that competition. Apple has to cut off Google in this case.
Imagine TomTom when they got a call from Apple. It's not as if TomTom aren't facing competition from Google, only more so because the dedicated GPS hardware they sell is becoming increasingly marginalized by smartphones. They've got to have been thinking, "This could big," while imagining the benefits from being a partner in the data development for Apple's map app.
But Apple didn't want a relationship, just a one time cash transaction so that Apple can encroach on TomTom's business.
Part of me suspects that Apple got the worst possible data set TomTom could deliver and still plausibly argue they met the requirements of their agreement with Apple. There was no strategic advantage in doing otherwise.
Apple needs to move on. It was Google that did the cutting off.
"But Apple didn't want a relationship, just a one time cash transaction so that Apple can encroach on TomTom's business. Part of me suspects that Apple got the worst possible data set TomTom could deliver and still plausibly argue they met the requirements of their agreement with Apple. There was no strategic advantage in doing otherwise."
I disagree. Even if they gave them a high quality data set, that set is going to be obsolete within a year (let's say). Now Apple can either choose to keep obsolete data (which will definitely impact customers) or buy updated data from TomTom.
The scenario you propose doesn't provide a strategic benefit to TomTom because it does not address TomTom's long term disadvantage relative to Google and other companies in the mobile navigation space. Google's and Apple's mobile mapping services run on devices which can communicate data back to their services.
TomTom's problem is that their devices only communicate one direction. A partnership with Apple could have allowed TomTom to collect realtime data directly in the same way as their major competitors.
In the next twelve months, Apple will probably have collected more useful data than TomTom in many respects. That doesn't mean they will be successful in using it to their advantage, but it does mean that there is little reason for Apple to purchase a new dataset.
But it would mean that Apple would have to rely on users to report any new road construction or road name changes. Just because the phone could communicate back, doesn't mean the user will or that the data will be correct.
Maybe my creativity is limited but I just don't see how Apple being able to collect data would help with getting updated maps. I think it could help with their directions since they know the most commonly taken routes and could actually even time people's routes to find which are truly the quickest, but I don't know how it would help with updating maps from road changes and the like.
I suspect that Google can detect road construction using data mining techniques...it's the sort of phenomenon that is relevant to mapping only because of its effect on movement.
I apologize for not being more clear, but when I said road construction I didn't mean just fixing of roads but adding new roads. In order to have those new roads in your system you need to update your data set.
I have fallen victim to this. I bought a new used car (it's new to me but a 2007 model) that has built in navigation. Between the date of manufacture of the nav disk and current date, an interstate was added/modified near me. Now everytime I go by that area my GPS says I'm in the middle of a field. In reality, I can't see a customer filing a ticket with Apple to get that road in the GPS system. Even if they do, Apple would most likely need coordinates. This construction of new roads is what TomTom has a temporary strategic advantage over Apple (only temporary since Apple could get a department together to monitor all new roads).
Have you seen the iOS6 Maps problems-reporting UI? It's simple, it's fast, it's right in the place where you encountered the bug.
The other thing you ignore is that people want their local data to be correct in the maps they use, for practical reasons. I too reported new construction around my home everywhere I could, because it's, among other things, in my best interest to have my address easy to find (by guests or postal drivers, for example) on any GPS out there.
I think that is a bit disingenuous. Nokia-Microsoft is a much better fit than Apple-Google.
Nokia has hardware and maps; Microsoft brings in its OS. That either is win-win, or lose-lose, but there is little reason for either party to be suspicious of the other at the moment.
On the other hand, Apple has good reasons to be suspicious of Google. Collaboration with google can be a win-loose combination, with Apple at the losing end: Google wins if iPhone fails.
Maybe, but one could also say it started when Google started promoting Android.
Also, Apple-Twitter and Apple-Facebook are, I think, good complementary fits, too, and that only because their own attempts at social networking have been 'less successful'. I do not see that changing anytime, if only because one cannot expect that all one's friends use Apple hardware, and I do not see Apple develop e.g. FaceTime and Messages for Windows.
I do wonder why Apple chose to build its own mapping solution. I think the only logical follow-up to that would be that they went their own way for search, too.
I don't think it's sad at all. Would you give your main competitor all the features your native users use, after that competitor has been cut-throat with your ecosystem?
This is a valid argument and one that I originally did not see. It very well could be the same case as the YouTube app (Core App vs Third-Party App) where Google might have wanted more flexibility in updating its apps (not tied to the OS).
> With the cash they have at hand I'm surprised they simply didn't buy out an existing maps provider.
That's more or less what they did, the maps are coming from TomTom and Waze. The main issue with the iOS 6 maps application appears not to be with the map data itself, but with the (lack of) points-of-interest and their accuracy, which cripples the search functions. A company like TomTom is mainly concerned with maps and points-of-interest for car navigation, much less with finding individual shops, landmarks or other places you find by other means than street address. Probably you won't have any problems finding gas stations, motels or roadside restaurants and such with iOS 6 maps, but good luck finding all widget shops in New York. TomTom's navigation units do have some points-of-interest outside of what you'd expect from a satnav, but it's a far, far cry from the amount of data Google has.
As it stands, I don't think there is any single party besides Google that has so much diverse geographically indexed data. There simply is no company that Apple could have bought to fill that gap. It will probably take them years to gather even half of the data Google Maps already provides.
The article identifies Dudley and Stratford-upon-avon as broken in Apple's app. Both Dudley and Stratford-upon-avon are identified fine in the TomTom (nee Tele Atlas) online route planner if you search by name [1]
If you compare the first example image from the article [2] with the TomTom data [3] you can see the minor roads are present in TomTom's data, present in Google's data, but absent in the screenshot of Apple's software.
This may well indicate a problem with Apple's software.
I looked up Sunderland Street, Tickhill, England on the new Maps app, and all the streets shown in the old Maps screenshot in the second image are there. Perhaps they've already added the missing data? The Satellite imagery in that area remains particularly bad, though. I think if Apple can iterate and improve the app quickly, the initial errors won't be that significant.
My best guess is there's a problem in serving the map data up to users.
Vector slippy maps run on bounding box searches - if I look at New York, my client says to the server "Tell me all the roads within this square" with the latitude and longitude of wherever I'm looking.
There's a lot of data - too much to store on one server - and the data doesn't all shard naturally. You can divide the world up into squares and store different squares on different servers, but long roads cross many squares, big objects like country borders belong in many squares, and when you're zoomed out your view covers many squares.
The server also has to be clever; I don't actually want every road in New York or the data would take forever to load. I only want the major roads when I'm zoomed out.
All these problems are solvable - spatial databases like PostGIS have been able to perform bounding box queries for years - but I don't know of anyone using PostGIS to support the millions of users Google have. It's well known that for regular data Google has things like BigTable, fancy NoSQL stuff that's supposed to scale well; I assume they have a geospatial database along similar lines. It's possible Apple decided to develop something similar.
My guess as to how [1] came about is that the user started zoomed out, so they only got sent major roads, then when they zoomed in some hiccup prevented loading the minor roads. This could have been as simple as the user's wifi going down, or it could that Apple's database servers are overloaded or have bugs.
I have been using 6 since the first beta versions and one thing I have noticed is sometimes they show up, sometimes they are misplaced and sometimes they are not even there. My rough guess that this may have something to do with the accuracy of your location seed, and the algorithm they use to place stuff around where they think you are. I would imagine they factor it in for error correction and maybe when they get a less accurate seed, it throws everything off. It's a wild guess but based on my limited observation it seems like something like that is happening, some times it nails it and sometimes you get a WTF. I usually just do another search and it clears it up, but that only works if you know what you are looking for, which is my general use case for maps.
Still, even as a Gooner, to not be able to find Old Trafford with a search for Manchester United Football Club is beyond fail. It's the most popular ground and most successful club in the country.
> That's more or less what they did, the maps are coming from TomTom and Waze.
No wonder it's so terrible. I have Waze but I see it as nothing more than a navigation toy. It has turn by turn but otherwise it's pretty terrible compared to google maps.
That may sound flip, but I'm very serious. Their app commits the cardinal sin of going out of its way to distract people who are driving a ton of metal and plastic at high speeds (what the hell is a mapping application doing with "pick-ups" on the road and why the hell is it beeping at me for it?!). It's the most irresponsible app I've seen on a phone. I don't call many companies "evil" but Waze seems maliciously so.
They've bought at least 2 map-related companies so far (Poly9 and C3) and are using existing datasets (e.g. tomtom's), but Apple doesn't actually move really fast: just look at PA Semi, we're only finally seeing their work with the A6 (allegedly, to be confirmed). Apple bought P.A. 4 years ago...
I'm not sure that's a great comparison: four years would seem about right, given PA Semi's main expertise at the time of acquisition was Power rather than ARM. Designing a custom ARM core isn't rocket science, but it's pretty close: plus you've then got to actually get the things fabricated at sufficient yield.
I am not sure they could have done things much quicker to be honest.
Apple's decision to go with an in-house map app has been a long time coming. They've been acquiring mapping companies for the last few years and have been (attempting) to build that core competency so that these kind of issues were minimal when they made the switch.
As far as Google giving them turn-by-turn capabilities-- that's really the special sauce that sets Android apart. It was probably available, but at a price that Apple didn't want to pay. Plus, Apple probably didn't like that they weren't getting their 30% on the revenue from local search in the Google Maps app.
So, in the long run this will work out for Apple. Sure, the users will be affected in the short term and it may never actually be as good as Google Maps.... but hey look, shiny pictures of 3D buildings
You know, reduced accuracy and functionaliy like that might be acceptable for an email client or a web browser (no copy and paste, other quality of life features) but not a mapping application.
Before Google Maps, digital maps were HORRIBLE. Even the first iterations of Google Maps were better than just about everything, save for a Thomas Guide. Everyone has gotten used to putting data into a map application and being returned a reasonalbly correct set of instructions or representation of data.
This is inexcusable today. As far as horrible changes you can make to a smartphone, this ranks way up there (short of having a dialer that doesn't work).
Why didn't they just buy TomTom with their war chest instead of building in-house? It seems to me like they would be familiar with navigation software.
Ultimately I imagine that Apple will get Maps solid eventually, but not delivering a solid product initially will cost them.
The issue isn't the Maps application, it's the dataset which in part comes from TomTom. Buying TomTom wouldn't have necessarily improved the data that TomTom would be using, they'd have just ended up with a GPS/Mapping company.
Incidentally they did buy a couple of companies related to mapping, so they've got some in-house knowledge of mapping but a poor dataset will always be poor no matter how many smart people are sat looking at it.
TomTom has been powering GPSs for years, someone would have noticed if the data was as bad as this before. And even if they hadn't (which they didn't because their data is fine), Apple should have. Whichever way you slice it, the buck stops with Apple, the biggest and richest company in the world and their world renowned eye for detail and software development competency.
Depends entirely on how the data is being used, what set of data they're using and so on. I've found that Maps is fine for driving instructions in my area of North East England, but that Walking directions are occasionally missing or not quite right.
Possibly could have done with being more clear instead of a quick reply.
The Maps application probably does have some flaws, but it seems a lot of the flaws are coming from it's mapping data that's stored. This is why buying TomTom wouldn't improve the situation, as the data set itself is where the issue is. In response to ZeroGravitas' statement that TomTom would have noticed before it does depend entirely on how the data set from TomTom is being used but that doesn't necessarily mean that the application is flawed, it could indicate that the data points they've been supplied with aren't consistent for what the application is trying to do.
Apple has made a mistake though, ZeroGravitas is bang on about the buck stopping there. In the UK however we're seeing all sorts of mapping data glitches causing the issues, rather than anything on an application specific level. But it's still Apple's fault, but I stand by the point of them buying TomTom not helping the bail out the boat they're in.
Tomtom might just be spouting BS (and I doubt it because they've made GPS's for years), but from the article:
"User experience fully depends on the choices these manufacturers make."
"We are confident about our map quality, as selling 65 million portable navigation devices across the world and more than 1.4m TomTom apps for iPhone in the past two years reaffirms this quality."
Building a good maps service is miles outside of Apple’s core competency, so this is all very sad – but at the same time no surprise at all.
(Mind you, all this at best explains the bad maps experience, it does not excuse it.)