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Apple

Apple is Rebuilding Maps From the Ground Up (techcrunch.com) 140

Apple hasn't given up on Maps. After a rough first impression, an apology from the CEO, several years of patching holes with data partnerships and some glimmers of light with long-awaited transit directions and improvements in business, parking and place data, Apple Maps is still not where it needs to be to be considered a world class service. Apple is aware of this, apparently, it told TechCrunch. From a report: Apple, it turns out, is aware of this, so It's re-building the maps part of Maps. It's doing this by using first-party data gathered by iPhones with a privacy-first methodology and its own fleet of cars packed with sensors and cameras. The new product will launch in San Francisco and the Bay Area with the next iOS 12 Beta and will cover Northern California by fall.

Every version of iOS will get the updated maps eventually and they will be more responsive to changes in roadways and construction, more visually rich depending on the specific context they're viewed in and feature more detailed ground cover, foliage, pools, pedestrian pathways and more. This is nothing less than a full re-set of Maps and it's been 4 years in the making, which is when Apple began to develop its new data gathering systems. Eventually, Apple will no longer rely on third-party data to provide the basis for its maps, which has been one of its major pitfalls from the beginning.

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Apple is Rebuilding Maps From the Ground Up

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  • LOL (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 29, 2018 @12:04PM (#56865872)

    It's cute how apple keeps trying with maps.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I say this as an ardent Apple product user and shareholder:

      Apple, just stop with the maps. We have Google Maps. Thatâ(TM)s enough. You finally let us use it with CarPlay, for which we are very grateful. That is all you needed to do. Spend your Maps resources on something else. Thank you.

      • Re:No shit (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Arkham ( 10779 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @03:21PM (#56867260)

        I say this as an ardent Apple product user and shareholder:

        Apple, just stop with the maps. We have Google Maps. Thatâ(TM)s enough. You finally let us use it with CarPlay, for which we are very grateful. That is all you needed to do. Spend your Maps resources on something else. Thank you.

        Apple Maps isn't very good. However, I trust Google less and less with each passing day, and I would just as soon have them out of my digital life entirely if it were possible. I switched from Google search to DuckDuckGo and haven't been any worse for wear. I've stopped using Google Drive for iCloud Drive + Dropbox, and I've largely abandoned Google Docs. Maps and Gmail though are really hard to get rid of today.

        I hope that they and the HERE people persevere and make a viable alternative to Google Maps/Waze (one and the same company now really). Having only one viable choice in the market is bad for everyone. I wish Apple would offer mail as well with import from Gmail -- I'd get Google out of my life forever.

        • Gmail is easy to get rid of. Go to a commercial email provider. A year of Fastmail is less than the cost for one person for a good meal out.

          Granted, a good free email provider isn't that easy to find. There must be some reason for that. Hmmm.

          • Zoho.com - There's a limit on space but I haven't come close to filling it. Single accounts are free but if you want more than five or 10 accounts on a domain then it starts to cost. They have other group tools available such as financial and CRM. I just have my email there using my domain and it's free. Very good service too.

        • by martinX ( 672498 )

          Google Maps is OK, Apple Maps is horrible, but neither of them hold a candle to whatever it is in my Mazda's in-built GPS. The phone-based ones are handy for a "click and go" destination, especially one that has an ambiguous address, but for something with an easily defined address, the GPS is so much better. Downside is the cost of upgrading maps.

          Also, as a generally happy Mac/iphone user and family, I'm not sure if Apple CarPlay is a move in the right direction. I've been driving a rental with it, and it

        • by philml ( 589423 )
          Fastmail [fastmail.com] is excellent. $50/year for 25GB storage. Works excellently.
      • On the App, google maps does not even include a scale.
        So you can not judge as a pedestrian how far stuff is away, you have to plot a route, ha ha ha!

        Both Google and Apple have interesting spots wrong. It simply is a no go if a "Starbucks" is 300 or 400 yards off position (in Paris the rule, and in Frankfurt, too)

        • If you are in Paris, what are you doing drinking Buckstar coffee??

          • I was not drinking that coffee, it was a meeting point because my appointment was american and thought that would be an easy to find point.
            However the street had two of them close together, and the one we wanted to meet was misplaced on the map into another street ... luckily it was only 100m away and when I put up my glasses I found it :D
            OTOH: if you are at Starbucks, they have excellent tea. At least in Germany, never tried in France.

    • I didn't even realize Apple had maps, I just assumed they used Google same as any one else.
  • Why bother trying to maintain their failed maps system when there are several others they could partner with?

    Though I suppose I wouldn't want them to get too involved with something like Mapbox. Apple would fuck that up too.

    • Re:But y tho? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @12:29PM (#56866052)

      Google is a a software company that makes some hardware.
      Apple is a hardware company that makes some software.

      Google hardware isn't bad, and neither is Apples Software.

      However the approaches to problems are different.

      The Google Pixel uses more software to correct the image and focusing from its little camera. Apple is more likely to put more hardware behind a better camera, and less on the software.

      It is like giving a problem to both a Carpenter and a Welder. They will solve the problems with what they feel best at doing. So we can have one solution made out of wood, and the other made out of metal, with the advantages and disadvantages of both methods.

      I doubt Apple will ever get Maps to the quality as Google Maps is. It isn't money or resources, but how the company culture approaches the problem.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        > Google hardware isn't bad, and neither is Apples Software.

        I see you're not an iTunes for Windows user.

        • > Google hardware isn't bad, and neither is Apples Software.

          I see you're not an iTunes for Windows user.

          It's pretty bad on MacOS too.

          • by tsa ( 15680 )

            At least iTunes on MacOS works as you expect, which can not be said of iOS's Music and Podcasts atrocities.

      • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @02:02PM (#56866638)

        Google is a a software company that makes some hardware.

        Google is an advertising company but if you call them a software company it's not far from the mark.

        Apple is a hardware company that makes some software.

        No they are not [youtube.com]. They are a software company that only sells (most of) their software with a piece of hardware. But the hardware is just the packaging - not the secret sauce. Apple doesn't make hardware - they outsource that. There really isn't much difference between Apple's hardware and the competition. They DO make software - it's the core of what they do. You can tell what a company's core business is by what they do themselves versus what they buy from others. Apple's software is what people pay for. Few would buy an Apple computer without OS X and few would buy an iPhone if it ran Android. Hardware is critical to Apple's business model but calling Apple a hardware company is to misunderstand the company at a fundamental level.

        I doubt Apple will ever get Maps to the quality as Google Maps is. It isn't money or resources, but how the company culture approaches the problem.

        I agree with this to an extent. Apple isn't really culturally oriented towards organizing information like Google is. Apple is good at interfaces and design and user experience. Arguable among if not the best. But they never have been the best at applications and big data. Not to say they are incompetent but others do it better. Apple is exceptional at some things but they tend to pigeonhole themselves with design dogma and are more focused on building integrated devices than worrying about the information that goes on them.

        • Apple doesn't make hardware - they outsource that.

          Citation, please.

          • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

            Citation, please.

            Name one Apple factory. Quod erat demonstrandum.

            • Citation, please.

              Name one Apple factory. Quod erat demonstrandum.

              It all depends on what the definition of "Makes" is.

              Does AMD make CPUs and GPUs?

              The point is, Apple outsources the manufacturing process, just like AMD does. But those Ax SoCs and those MacBooks, iMacs, iPhones iPads, Apple TVs, etc, simply wouldn't exist without Apple, no more than those ThreadRippers, Radeons and Vegas would exist without AMD.

              The difference is, in this scenario, as in life, Foxconn and TSMC as well as whoever AMD uses as its fab are utterly replaceable Contractors; but Apple and AMD are n

              • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

                It all depends on what the definition of "Makes" is.

                Hardly. You'll notice all Apple's products say "Designed by Apple in California," not "Made by Apple." While you may be willing to stretch the definition of "make" beyond reason, most others are not, including Apple.

                Does AMD make CPUs and GPUs?

                No.

                But those Ax SoCs and those MacBooks, iMacs, iPhones iPads, Apple TVs, etc, simply wouldn't exist without Apple, no more than those ThreadRippers, Radeons and Vegas would exist without AMD.

                No, they simply wouldn

                • haha... you think that mobile device fabs are utterly replaceable

                  No, actually, I don't.

                  I fully (well, at least reasonably-well) understand that the capability of specific silicon fabs are inextricably linked to the design-process of today's high-density SoCs, CPUs and GPUs.

                  And while I agree that even the best design is "but a dream" without the manufacturing process, it is also just as true that the Contract Manufacturers and Fab-Houses would dry up and blow away if there wasn't a steady-stream of "Designs", too.

                  So, perhaps it is more like a symbiotic relationship than

                  • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

                    haha... you think that mobile device fabs are utterly replaceable

                    No, actually, I don't.

                    Literally what you yourself wrote, and conveniently clipped out from your reply.

                    And with that, nothing that you say is worth addressing, because none of it can be taken as representing what you actually think. *plonk*

                    • haha... you think that mobile device fabs are utterly replaceable

                      No, actually, I don't.

                      Literally what you yourself wrote, and conveniently clipped out from your reply.

                      And with that, nothing that you say is worth addressing, because none of it can be taken as representing what you actually think. *plonk*

                      Oh, get me t o a doctor, fast! I don't know if I can survive the burn!

                      Grow up.

                    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

                      Grow up.

                      You first. Start by abandoning the "I don't mean to be wrong, so if what I've written is wrong, I didn't actually mean that" mode of discourse.

      • I doubt Apple will ever get Maps to the quality as Google Maps is
        Google Maps is utter shit.
        Especially when it comes to public transport ...
        Just to many clicks and stupid UI and in the end half of the information is wrong.

      • Apple's culture panders to a small higher-paying slice of the population. So their mapping will be uneven, concentrating on the 'richer' areas and missing entire swaths of the midwest. The fact that this new effort will just cover northern California at first is telling. Don't take your Apple phone on your trip across Missouri and into Kentucky. Forget about Alabama, because Apple will.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Google is a a software company that makes some hardware.
        Apple is a hardware company that makes some software.

        TSMC is a hardware company, Foxconn is a hardware company, Apple is a marketing company.

    • Re:But y tho? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @01:06PM (#56866266)
      >> Why bother trying to maintain their failed maps system when there are several others

      Maps aren't a service tech companies want to provide to get you from point A to point B anymore. Instead, tech companies want to know where you are so you will be directed to nearby businesses (paying advertising fees) that will sell things to you. In other words, it might be best to say that Apple is reinvesting in a marketing platform that uses maps.
      • Wow, I had NO IDEA that when I typed in an address for a destination that Maps was going to send me to an alternate business to buy things! Who knew that typing 45 John Glenn Drive, Concord, CA wouldn't send me to the Crowne Plaza in Concord but instead I'd be sent to the Hilton at 1970 Diamond Blvd!
    • Why bother trying to maintain their failed maps system when there are several others they could partner with?

      Because you don't want to depend on third party vendors for something like that if you don't have to. Not at Apple's scale anyway. For mobile devices these days it qualifies as critical functionality. The importance of it almost cannot be overstated. So yeah it makes sense for Apple to be rolling their own so to speak.

      And frankly their maps system hasn't failed. Far from it. It's got flaws of course but it's been getting the job done just fine for lots of people. The problem isn't that it is terrible

    • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      Why bother trying to maintain their failed maps system when there are several others they could partner with?

      Why does Apple continue to invent new interface standards and protocol/configuration methods when they could just use what literally every other company does and contribute their ideas back to the whole to improve them?

      It's starting to feel more and more like they do it just to "be different". Not that their their way is necessarily better, but it has to be "special" in some way so that Apple's gullible users can convince themselves they are getting something more than just another version of the same thing

      • by swb ( 14022 )

        when they could just use what literally every other company does and contribute their ideas back to the whole to improve them?

        Last I remember, technology is a competitive business, not a hippie co-op. Once you're dependent on someone else's products they suck the life out of you like the mafia.

        • Once you're dependent on a single companie's products is when your life gets sucked out of you.

        • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

          Last I remember, technology is a competitive business, not a hippie co-op.

          Many of the connectivity interfaces Apple eschews are developed by partnerships between major technology players. It literally is a co-op.

          Once you're dependent on someone else's products they suck the life out of you like the mafia.

          They all contribute their own know-how to the standards and they all benefit without having to seek out licensing agreements with other companies directly to adopt a specific feature, because it becomes part of the standard. For an example of companies not following this logic, look to the cell phones that use USB-C but only support fast-charging via Qualcomm's proprietar

  • "Every version of iOS will get the updated maps eventually and they will be more responsive to changes in roadways and construction, more visually rich depending on the specific context they're viewed in and feature more detailed ground cover, foliage, pools, pedestrian pathways and more"

    That's great and all, but the real problem with Maps is its endemic PoI database. It knows half the Tim Horton's and Canadian Tire's in the area. If you're Canadian, you'll understand what that means.

  • We know the plan, but what's the real benefit?
  • by methano ( 519830 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @12:26PM (#56866032)
    That's good to hear. Maybe the new maps will have all of I-140 around Wilmington, NC. It opened last year before Thanksgiving and still isn't showing up on the map. You can see the damn road in the satellite view. I even sent them an email asking them to add it about 2 months ago.

    As an aside, I've noticed that few kids these days, with their iPhones and maps (probably from Google), know where they are. But they all know where they're going.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Good luck with that. The street I live on has been drawn as going through someone's house since Apple Maps released. Apparently the monkey who drew the map based on satellite imagery mistook someone's driveway for the street, so the entrance is drawn as going straight through a house. Has been for years. No amount of reporting it to Apple has gotten the issue fixed.

      But the bigger issue I have is with Apple's geocoding. Sometimes, despite giving it the full address, it will randomly substitute a different ci

    • You can't just add it yourself? I've added stuff to Google maps. This isn't crowd sourced? I guess all Apple users will just have to move to Northern California to be inside the walled garden.
    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      That's good to hear. Maybe the new maps will have all of I-140 around Wilmington, NC. It opened last year before Thanksgiving and still isn't showing up on the map. You can see the damn road in the satellite view. I even sent them an email asking them to add it about 2 months ago.

      As an aside, I've noticed that few kids these days, with their iPhones and maps (probably from Google), know where they are. But they all know where they're going.

      I thought Google maps taking a whole 2 weeks to add the Shinfield bypass in Reading was taking a while. To be fair, the Shinfield bypass was opened early and for that 2 weeks it was practically my own private motorway.

  • Unless thay think that San Francisco is the world

    Someone cannot do basic math: square Km to cover / number of people doing it.

    On a side note: basic GIS is something that should be demanded to the government (thae use it anyway) and should be free to use for anybody.
    Maybe Apple should join with Open Street Map instead, that would be a "think different"

    • So you would apply the same number of people to cover 1 square mile in New York as 1 square mile of desert in Arizona? That doesn't seem right, yet your formula of

      Someone cannot do basic math: square Km to cover / number of people doing it.

      would do exactly that.

      If you're going to throw stones, try to get your story straight first. Basic logic and all.

    • I use Open Street map mostly and open topo map ... the only draw back of open topo map is, they use the local script to describe cities and streets, a bit complicated in Asia :D

  • ... a piece of cake for Apple to pull off. After all, they've got obscene amounts of money on the bank.
    I wish they'd give back some of their data to the OSM project that saved their ass a few years back when they ditched Google maps, but that's probably to much to ask for.

    Anyhow, competition in the maps space can't hurt. It's Google, then a massive gap and then some nifty OSM stuff. If Apple can throw a third maps thing into this, it's all for the better IMHO. Google can use some top-tier competitor pissing in their territory.

    • No, it's not about just doing directions, it's about doing it in a visually rich manner that visually simulates where you're going, and then nags you about entering a donut shop address rather than that quinoa and kale smoothie shop next door...
    • ... a piece of cake for Apple to pull off. After all, they've got obscene amounts of money on the bank.

      But Apple lacks the experience and the talent.

      I guess you're a PM who thinks 9 women can make a baby in 1 month. Building something takes more than money.

      It took ages for Google to catch up to ESRI and that was only implementing the features they wanted, ArcGIS still does far more than Google Maps but Google Maps does 90% of what people use it for (and about 60% of what people use ArcGIS for). In the mean time, ESRI was being complacent.

      So how long will it take Apple to get to where Google current

  • by Anonymous Coward

    This seems a bit wasteful for society. We are now mapping things twice. I guess some remapping is needed to pickup changes to roads. But in our current system those fixes are only reflected in that companies maps.

    • Anonymous Cowards are wasteful to society..
    • by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @01:10PM (#56866282) Homepage

      This seems a bit wasteful for society. We are now mapping things twice.

      Not really wasteful. Since there are roughly a billion iPhones out there in the world, if Apple just gets the data from them, it basically has the mapping already, with real time updating.

      • Ding ding ding someone gets it. I would be shocked if Google wasn't doing something similar to get updated info. Yes we have all heard of / seen their cars, which provides a starting point, but after that's created, the devices can assimilate new data automatically in an anonymized way. Sort of a hive update concept.
        • Ding ding ding someone gets it. I would be shocked if Google wasn't doing something similar to get updated info. Yes we have all heard of / seen their cars, which provides a starting point, but after that's created, the devices can assimilate new data automatically in an anonymized way. Sort of a hive update concept.

          How do you think Google Maps gets realtime traffic data?

  • by onepoint ( 301486 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @12:37PM (#56866106) Homepage Journal

    someone will be able to fact check this:
    Back in the late 80's early 90' there was an amazing word processor called Wordstar. They choose to do a re-write of the code from top to bottom. At the same time Microsoft just came out with version 2 or 3 there's word processor. It was a race, and Microsoft choose to do a side by side development, where old code was upgraded with anything new they came up with, and the new ground-up version was being done with features from the old copied and tested and new stuff.

    Microsoft won because they rolled out the upgrades ( we did not ( as i recall ) have on-line MS upgrades, but disk mailed upgrades, and pirate-BBS type shareware upgrades ) , people had the latest features without much issue and no real learning curve, and they walked everyone into the new word processor.

    Wordstar flopped on the code re-write with too many bugs and people became dis-satisfied.

    I hope Apple and other reading this take this lesson and apply it

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Sure sure, once a code re-write went badly therefore Apple is screwing up according to your sense of history. Unless you're predicting the future wrong, that is.

    • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday June 29, 2018 @01:15PM (#56866310)

      In the case of Maps you are not really talking about a re-write of software so much as a larger and more accurate set of data being gathered.

      Everyone knows the big software re-writes are problematic but this is not that. It's more of a gradual improvement over what is there, walking users into new maps features as it were... there will be no learning curve here either, just improved maps over time with more features.

      You also left out a huge part of your story, which is the bundling that Microsoft did with Word making Word the default choice for Windows and leading Wordstar to starve. What about WordPerfect? It was excellent word processing software (better than Word), did not have the same re-write issue, yet it died as well. Can you honestly say there is ANYTHING Wordstar could have done to overcome the advantages Word had?

      Every iOS device (and Mac) ships with Apple Maps, that is also its own huge advantage... as is Apples very large pile of cash to be able to afford quality efforts of upgrade, Wordstar did not have a massive cash slush fund it could afford to keep improving forever.

      • And this is why I love Slashdot: Literally, there is so much knowledge within this group, I just have to recall one piece of the story and another will correct it and point me to the rest.

        Thank you for checking, I had forgotten it was WordPerfect, not WordStar. I happen to like them both back in the day. WordStar just lost to market forces and lack of cash as you say.

        Re-writes are or seem to be less brutal than in the days of 80'- 90's due to better compilers and more programming options. Also, while I thin

        • what would be your baseline choice
          In your case: C++ and Qt, https://www.qt.io/ [www.qt.io]

        • Re-writes are or seem to be less brutal than in the days of 80'- 90's due to better compilers and more programming options. Also, while I think this is wishful thinking, I believe coders now-a-days really try to modulize the code to help the debugging teams and upgrade function teams, yes I know they will dump code for the pre-alpha to get the concept working, but then they keep cleaning and cleaning and then had it off to debugging by the time beta come's around.
          again most likely wishful thinking.

          It seems now-a-days rather than finish developing programs, alpha quality software gets shipped because "hey we can ship now and patch later". But the bugs never get patched, because the focus for the next release is to implement new features (such as more advanced user tracking, or more irritating ads), or the design guys have a new braindead idea for a UI design with an even lighter "light gray"(F0F0F0) text on a slightly lighter "light gray" (FAFAFA) background, or changing from a hamburger menu icon to

          • truly, you have saddened my day... I recall moving routines around just to get a bit of speed IE: in C-64 basic, you wrote the alpha working perfectly, and then, re-wrote or did a tricky type of copy and paste all the subroutines to the lowest number set ( but even before that, you checked to see how many times that routine was called, most common was up top first ) the c-64 read the code from top down in number order, and this trick would always give you a great boost after clean alpha.

            shit, I really miss

      • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

        What about WordPerfect? It was excellent word processing software (better than Word), did not have the same re-write issue, yet it died as well.

        You must be on crack. As someone who used WP 5.1 on DOS and tried WP for Windows, then gave up and migrated to Word, I can confidently say that WP had major re-write issues. The tales of WPfW 5.1 and 5.2 are legendary, and easily Google-able.

        • I used WP 5.2 heavily and was forced to use Word later. WP may have had re-write issues but it was still better off than Word which designed a bad interface to start with and stuck with it. My wife used WP past v5 professionally and was very sad when eventually and inevitably the company moved to Word.

    • DOS ain't done until won't run. That was the mindset at Microsoft at the time, and they did every nasty trick imaginable to make others' products break. So really Word won because the competition's software was hindered by Microsoft. That was one of the anti-trust complaints.
    • Back in the late 80's early 90' there was an amazing word processor called Wordstar.

      Back in the 90s there was this thing called the NT kernel. It had a networking stack made of jenga blocks that fell over if you looked at it funny. They choose to do a re-write of the code from top to bottom.

      It was awesome. Stability improved. Functionality improved and speed increased dramatically.

      Not all rewrites are bad. You can keep putting lipstick on a pig, but at some point it may be worth giving up on that silly idea and dating an actual woman.

  • They plan to have Northern CA by fall of this year?! Hopefully the rest of the map won't go black (or white).

    I think it's very important for Apple to start (re)investing in their software. As a person who was around the last time Apple stumbled - it was mostly due to poor software. Everyone else could do it - except Apple. The whole iOS ecosystem has very strong apps by other vendors....but iOS doesn't allow for integration. Windows-10 allows me to set the default browser (although I can't replace C

  • by Anonymous Coward

    All our effort ought to go towards OpenStreetMap [openstreetmap.org]. It's time to end proprietary map data and the anti-data commercial mapping businesses create to circumvent copyright law.

  • One of the Apple cars doing the mapping was seen north of Houghton in the U.P. of Michigan yesterday.
  • I discovered a year or so back, using the iOS Google Maps for driving info, that they aren't actual maps - like you find on paper traffic maps - but very map-looking schematics that omit things they think you don't need to know about.

    Like highway on-off ramps.

    When you use the app for directions, where it knows your destination, yes, it shows you where to get off (if you follow its directions), but otherwise these traffic connections are not shown. I found this out since I wanted to see what the next off-ram

  • Every time I read a tech company claiming they are "rebuilding it from the ground up" it tells me one thing:

    they didn't get their foundation right

    else why would they be starting over throwing away man-years spent tracking down bugs?

  • It's this type of thing that makes me think Apple has lost sight of what they offer as a business.

  • When I use Google Maps, it is very jerky/stuttery while I'm following its directions. Checked the support forums and many people have this issue, and there's no solution.

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