iOS6 Maps - Apple takes a battering as complaints soar

Darren

Whilst Apple continue to face a barrage of criticism over their iOS6 mapping app, what isn't clear is how some of the issues came to exist in the first place.

The many errors in place and street names are particularly odd given they are correct in the original TomTom and Waze data. One hypothesis is that Apple have merged the data and in doing so these errors have crept in.

Also the lack of decent satellite imagery in places has irked users, many rely on them to locate recreation grounds and other places that traditional address lookup wouldn't find accurately.

Another area that simply isn't working is address search and POIs. Addresses can't be found, POIs are missing or show locations that have long since gone.

Where it works it works well with the new navigation element attracting particular praise. But as the map data is riddle with errors you'd be mad to rely on it. In Apple's defence, Google refused to permit Apple to uses the guided navigation feature available on Android and this is cited as the main reason they chose to develop their own solution.

The place name errors ought to be fairly easy to resolve and to fix quickly. The data is off-board so once they can identify how the errors were created they can resolve them without an update to the app itself. Similarly, satellite imagery is widely available and Apple have the cash to buy them.

But the POIs are not so easy to fix quickly and the search facility will need major work. As the title of this item suggest, it can only get better - we hope.

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Darren Griffin

tomtom_shareholder · Regular Visitor Joined: Apr 08, 2011 Posts: 64

If Berlin is on antartica, islands appear in oceans where there are no islands and even one village has streets that are all named 'fuck1ng' something went terribly wrong.

I have informed myself quite well on this subject, but it's beyond my imagination what happened here. I even heard some wispering that someone messed up with the maps deliberately. Sound rather farfetched to me really. I think Apple should give the answers.

Now their only statement is "our maps will improve because they are cloud based". That's just lame.

Tobas · Regular Visitor Joined: Oct 06, 2004 Posts: 90

I guess cloud based because the map data isn't on your iphone. They can amend the data constantly and it's instantly reflected on your phone rather than having to push an app or map update out every time as Navigon and TomTom would have to do.

MaFt · Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 3:05 pm Post subject:

MaFt · Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 3:08 pm Post subject:

Duddy · Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 8:11 pm Post subject:

More iPhone C*** ups (inc Satallite) see http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1589831_looks-like-a-bumpy-landing-apple-maps-on-iphone-put-dip-in-manchester-airport-runway
Manchester airport with a valley in the middle of the main runway
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Lui-G · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 22, 2006 Posts: 17

It is amazing that a company with such a reputation for fine detail would release such a half-baked product.

As mentioned in the article, they have the money, and they even state that they are using data provided by TomTom, so it baffles me that there's so many phonetic typos in place names... Did they hire a team in India to hand-type the information from an atlas? (That could explain many of the errors) Or maybe they got Siri 2.0 to search the Internet and build up the data based on what it could find... Those are my two best guesses as to how this could happen.

There's many cases of place names being YEARS out of date...

I really think that this is a "in-house Apple-grown" database, rushed, with typos warts and all.

As for satellite imagery - why is it that iCloud.com's Find my Phone website has satellite imagery for Brighton, but the Maps App does not... Apple already have the images, but they are not using them.

It's astounding that they could mess up to this level just one year without Steve Jobs.

Most of all, I'm disappointed. I couldn't care less for built-in navigation (I have a few good apps for that on all my iOS/Android devices), but the satellite imagery and most of all street view are what I miss the most.

On the plus side, I discovered that Bing do an iOS app which includes their great bird's eye view perspective, and streetview is available through some free 3rd party apps (none of which are great) - though I hear Google will add streetview to their mobile web site so that may solve my gripes.

Still, I'm shocked that despite all the feedback developers sent Apple since the first beta came out, they went ahead and pushed this live. iPhones in general will be known to have "bad maps" for many years to come. It's going to be a long-term costly mistake, and perhaps marks that Apple has finally peaked.

MaFt · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:52 am Post subject:

Anita · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:02 am Post subject:

MaFt · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:13 am Post subject:

AntonM · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:36 am Post subject:

Steve Jobs would never have allowed this, had he still been around. is this the start of the slipping of his uncompromising standards? I hope not -- Apple has thusfar been a major trailblazer in the PDA field.
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Anton

MaFt · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 2:05 pm Post subject:

They've apologised: http://www.apple.com/letter-from-tim-cook-on-maps/

They have also recommended using various competitors maps :D

MaFt

Andy_P · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 3:33 pm Post subject:

Oldboy · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 3:59 pm Post subject:

The only one I've heard of is in Austria ... and yes it's on the TomTom Maps. Smile

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MaFt · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:25 pm Post subject:

Yes, it's in Austria. It's in the middle of nowhere, a tiny village with tiny little country roads going through fields. It wouldn't surprise me that if the roads are so small that they don't have any number/name so the mapping defaults to using the village name. If you pan around the map you will see other small village areas with similarly named roads.

Here's Google's version: http://goo.gl/maps/kB15o although they seem to have changed the road names to 'Hucking'.

Navteq's MapReporter has all the road names beginning with 'f' too.

So this example is NOT an error in Apple's map. It's just an unfortunate name!!

Also, Luton in the maps - I've since seen that searching for 'Luton, Bedfordshire' shows the correct Luton. However, the one in Cornwall is a real place. So the issue is the search results and NOT the place.

MaFt

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