Apple Axes Head of Mapping Team 372
New submitter drkim writes "'Apple has reportedly fired the head of its mapping team following software glitches which annoyed customers and rained mockery on the company.' Mr. Williamson promptly left Apple headquarters in Antarctica, and walked to his home in Middelfart, Denmark."
Nerval's Lobster adds: "Cue is also 'seeking advice from outside map-technology experts' as well as 'prodding maps provider TomTom to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple.'"
Re:Antarctica? Middelfart? (Score:2, Informative)
Google Maps was bad when it first appeared (Score:5, Informative)
I was a frequent user of MapQuest when Google Maps appeared and for a good while there were glitches with Google Maps just like Apple is experiencing so I stuck with MapQuest. Google Maps are only as good as they are now because of all the time invested but even now they get it wrong. I was visiting a friend in Alabama and Google put his street address two miles away from the actual location.
The major loss with Apple Maps is the lack of public transport directions and for that reason alone, Google Maps needs to return. Until then, my phone is staying on iOS 5.
Re:Wrong problem? (Score:4, Informative)
It would have been wiser to let it mature a bit more like Google did.
Huh? Google maps was full of errors and omissions when it came out. It improved over the years.
Re:Was it justified (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Antarctica? Middelfart? (Score:4, Informative)
In a moment of seriousness, he was fired BECAUSE Apple Maps are providing faulty and at times outright insane directions. He was the guy in charge of making Apple Maps, as the summary says.
So the joke is that he used his iPhone to navigate home to Middelfart from Antarctica, and obviously was told the distance was short enough that he could just walk.
FYI, they're about 10,000 miles apart.
Re:Was it justified (Score:5, Informative)
Google offered to do turn by turn navigation for the inclusion of google branding. I don't think it's unreasonable to be expected to give credit to a company who's product is contributing one of the most useful software features to your phone. Apple is just trying to position themselves to defeat Android. It's too late, and they've come to a desperate point where they're trying to do things they aren't currently capable of.
Re:Keep the firing going (Score:4, Informative)
Some people tried to take a photo with their iPhone 5 of him leaving Apple headquarters but there was a huge purple flare over most of it so you can't even tell who it is. They must have been holding it wrong or the sun in that part of the US actually is purple.
Silicon Valley resident here with a helpful local geography lesson.
Around here, Apple Headquarters is in Cupertino, Sun was in Santa Clara, and "All Things Purple" (Yahoo) is in Sunnyvale.
Lots of people fired at Apple under Jobs (Score:5, Informative)
I can't recall too many high profile firings during Steve Jobs tenure
You mean like Mark Papermaster [nytimes.com] over the iPhone 4 antenna issues? Or the Mobile Me team lead?
Oh.
Has everyone here got some kind of amnesia? Because Jobs stories are rife with him firing people that displeased him. The current firings seem quite mild by comparison.
Oddly people now seem to think Apple under Steve Jobs was some kind of perfect mecca of products without issues and never an employee fired. That was never the case, but Apple Haters sure like to claim it was.
Re:Not reinvention, freedom. (Score:5, Informative)
Android had built-in turn by turn for years; not only could Apple not provide it in iOS, but developers could not write apps that provided turn-by-turn directions on top of the built in iOS mapping framework (it was against Google's TOS). So the whole platform was limited for years by Google restrictions on not just what Apple could do, but what any developer could do.
do you think a company should get paid for the software they develop and the services they offer? apple didn't have turn-by-turn navigation because google refused to offer it, it's because apple wouldn't meet the licensing requirements. as far as any of us know and has been reported, the main sticking point was apple refused to have (more prominent) google branding on the app.
Re:Wrong (Score:3, Informative)
iOS has ALWAYS has the Google logo on maps. Google wanted to increase the size.
Do you actually know that? My understanding is that they wanted the app to be called "Google Maps" and not "Maps," and possibly wanted the Google logo to be more opaque instead of the previous transparent gray-on-gray that the old Maps app used. Of course, no one knows if that's really true, it's just rumors.
It already works really well for many people, especially the U.S. - it mostly needs work in Europe. But the actual navigation is very good.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I've actually used the turn by turn navigation in the US. While it was kind enough to take us past our destination, so we knew to stop and turn into it, it had decided that the restaurant was actually five blocks away from where it really was and started yelling at us to take a U-turn as soon as we turned in to park.
Plus I work near a Starbucks where iOS Maps places the address for it so far away that no one can use that "Passbook" feature, as it won't bring up their card when they're in the actual restaurant. (And, being Apple hipsters and Starbucks hipsters, they whine about it. A lot.)
I've also looked over the maps near where I live using the iOS Simulator, and the placemarks are frequently nowhere near the actual place. I even tried to submit a correction, once, after someone pointed out the gray-on-gray link where you can do it. That was, what, nearly two months ago when they released it? Still hasn't been fixed, still has the placemarker for the store on the wrong street.
And this is in the US, where the maps are "good," meaning that the streets on it actually correspond to real roads.