Motorola ad slams Apple's iOS 6 Maps as 'iLost' - Page 4

Google has done me pretty well in autonomous regions that don't officially exist, derelict industrial wastelands and enormous Soviet steel works. When in doubt, I use the satellite image which is generally good, even in remote areas, and far clearer than the Apple Maps images of central London and major conurbations in Europe. Google Places allows me to plot locations on my computer and sync them with an app i my unlocked iphone 4 with a local sim.
 

Just a bit concerned that although it may get someone in the US from Dunkin Donuts to their local gun shop, there is a world out there, and Google has it pretty well mapped, even in countries where there's no 3G, slow wired internet and a dictator in Office. I'm all for a new map system to evolve but it's a petty that the google maps app wasn't left on iOS 6 in the interim. Some people rely on accurate mapping

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Originally Posted by d-range 

What I don't understand is what kind of idiot comes up with sad advertising like this. ........ 

When Motorola sees 5 million iPhones sold in the first weekend they reach the rightful conclusion that they are getting pounded in the marketplace and therefore start grasping at straws. When one starts to grasp at straws .... they make unwise decisions, don't they, DH.

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Originally Posted by smiffy31 

I reported a problem near my house in the south of france sunday evening about 8:00 and when I looked this morning about 10:00 it  has changed.  and again since this morning several other things have changed.  Thats the fourth change I have noticed within 2 miles of my house since updating to iOS6 on wednesday.
 

i have reported a problem with the wrong (switched ) names of two streets in my neighborhood. Not fixed yet... But then shitty ass google maps had two other streets misnamed in my neighborhood since day one and has never fixed it. Google also placed my house at the wrong position by over 500 feet.

Anyway we love iOS 6 and maps is no problem for us after dealing with google anyway.

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Originally Posted by elehcdn 

Did you follow the link? It goes directly to a Google users forum with Galaxy S3 users complaining about the issue. There is no headline there ... it is the forum header for a Google support forum.

You're the one who didn't read the linked discussion carefully, it would seem.

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Originally Posted by rosstheboss 

Google has done me pretty well in autonomous regions that don't officially exist, derelict industrial wastelands and enormous Soviet steel works. When in doubt, I use the satellite image which is generally good, even in remote areas, and far clearer than the Apple Maps images of central London and major conurbations in Europe. Google Places allows me to plot locations on my computer and sync them with an app i my unlocked iphone 4 with a local sim.
 

Just a bit concerned that although it may get someone in the US from Dunkin Donuts to their local gun shop, there is a world out there, and Google has it pretty well mapped, even in countries where there's no 3G, slow wired internet and a dictator in Office. I'm all for a new map system to evolve but it's a petty that the google maps app wasn't left on iOS 6 in the interim. Some people rely on accurate mapping

Rosstheboss, I am trying to figure out how you are getting accurate map information from a mobile device when you don't have any type of data connection. Everytime I have used Google Maps it requires some sort of internet connection to pull up data.

oth, as I understand it, Apple has some sort of plan for offline maps in their mapping program in the future. For Google, that is not a great option since their business is all based on driving you to their websites.

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Originally Posted by elehcdn 

Actually, the water is there. It's just not been colored blue, but you probably know that since you selectively zoomed to not even include the water in the iOS shot. Hopefully, Apple will learn to color the lake areas in blue so that you don't walk into the lakes when you are walking blindly forward with all of your attention directed at your maps program.

 

As far as the transit apps, I have seen an interesting thing ... Apple is using a lot of location information to determine what to put on the map. When you get to the routing page, if you choose walking or transit, it brings up a list of apps that provide the mapping information. Once you choose that app, it becomes the default app for providing that information once you choose your mode of transportation. This is how Apple is working on bringing other partners into their mapping strategy ... unlike Google that looks to control everything and gather information from their partners while charging them for access to their data.

 

In this case, I would think that if there is a local provider for transit information in Beijing, once you go to the routing page, you would get more information.

Try zooming in all the way, water isn't there, just tan colored ground.  I tried...you should too.  Regardless, this is just one city's example.  In many examples they might have natural land/sea boundaries showing but they are not even accurate and don't show even 1/2 the level of detail of Google Maps.  And that brings up some other interesting annoyances with iOS 6 maps.  You can see building footprints when you zoom in enough, but many times you have to zoom in so far that all you see is a single building...or at best a 4-square block.  Not useful at all.

Additionally, you're totally missing the point i'm making with transit.  It's not about time-tables or finding a route.  I'm perfectly capable of quickly glancing down at my phone to see the subway line overlaid on the old maps.  Now I have to open a new map, and then hope that App uses iOS 6 maps to overlay onto.  Many don't...many are just pdf files and are not very interactive.  Not to mention most local App Dev's aren't availabe in multi-lingual formats.

Sure there are plenty of Apps out there, but on iOS 5 maps, you didn't need them.  And you didn't need to change Apps to look and see where the transit exit dropped you out into the city.  Now you do.  And that's makes the root iOS Maps App totally useless except if you're driving.  And from what i've read from user comments (even on this thread) that doesn't work well either.

And don't give me that excuse to use a Google Maps home screen app, because that's not a solution that works in some countries...especially in China.

Let me give you this example.  For whatever reason, iOS 5 Maps worked flawlessly in China.  Yet, if you went to you web browser and opened maps.google.com, it's blocked by the Chinese Government.  Don't ask me why it works that way because they both access the same Maps data.  Go figure.  Other mapping apps are no better.  There's going to be quite a bit of pissed off Chinese people when iOS 6 makes its way there.

It may seem like a fair strategy to you and to Apple, but to the end user, it flat-out sucks.

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Originally Posted by softeky 

I live in Brooklyn, NY and the result I get (the same as in the above picture) on iOS 6 is also in Brooklyn. This looks to me like a correct search result. I will try the same search tonight when I am in Manhattan and see if Apple is taking my current location for clues to how to complete the incomplete search request used as the test.
When I use a complete search request:
315 e 15th st manhattan ny
I get the same result as the Razr
I seem to recall in the early days of Google maps, leaving out a comma before the "ny" would result in an incorrect location. Building a maps database from scratch is a huge undertaking. Apple have hit the mark running, I'm sure they will address (pun intended) these kinds of issues as they are brought to their attention. Having said that, I'm not sure Apple's returned result is incorrect as specified.

So what we really need it to overhaul the US Postal system to do away with duplicate address and street names etc and start using UUIDs for each location - no, no, I don't live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC I live at 38.90x-77.04 - hmmm do we need North and South in there as well? N38W77 

"In one example highlighted by AppleInsider, a search for the city of Columbia, S.C., returns the city of Santiago De Cali in the nation of Colombia."

Of course, if you correctly enter Columbia, SC it works fine ...

I just typed "315 e15 ny" in Google Maps on my MBP and it gave me 315 West 39th Street.

Google Maps has frequently given me wrong instructions.  It seems to have a particularly hard time with addresses in Queens, NY.     It's also frequently given me correct instructions and is an invaluable tool.    If you think about the complexity of the problem, especially for routing, I'm amazed that anyone can do a decent job.    Most of the time, I know immediately when it's wrong.    Some years ago, I was driving from Vermont to New Hampshire and it gave me instructions that once I got there, I knew had to be incredibly wrong.    Good thing I went with my instinct as Google would have taken me in the opposite direction from where I needed to be.     It also got lots of small roads wrong in Cape Cod - showing them as continuous roads when they were actually dead ends.  

I played with Apple's new maps at the Apple Store over the weekend and I found their maps on the new iPhone to be better looking in both map and satellite views than Google's and far faster to navigate.   If you combine that with spoken turn-by-turn, Apple wins IMO.      Personally, I think Apple should let Google sell or give away an app so users can make a choice based on how well each application serves their needs.     If Apple's is truly superior, than people will use it.    I do think Apple MUST add public transportation to their maps.   I know that California is still mostly a car culture (in spite of the new Los Angeles subway), but Boston, New York, San Francisco (to some extent) and almost all European, Asian  and many Latin American cities have very strong public transportation systems.   I think they also have to add bike routing, which Google had in Beta.    That shouldn't be difficult because it's not that different than routing for pedestrians.  

On my old 3G, Google's Maps app was almost always useless, because it was incredibly slow and would constantly lock-up.   By the time it found something, I was there. 

I think people are confusing two different issues.    If you type a street or location and it gives you the wrong place and it's obvious that it's the wrong place, I think that's far less of a problem then when it gives you the wrong route to a place.   When it's obvious, as in the Google case above, you can retype a better search and find the correct place.   

I do often have a data connection, I put a local sim in my unlocked iphone 4 and I used EDGE where available as 3G often isn't. Or I cache as much map as I can from the occasional bit of wifi I can find. With a wired internet connection in a hotel I can activate internet sharing on my old MB air and connect my phone like that to cache maps and sync Google Places.

Google Maps also seems to be much faster to render pages than Apple Maps, particularly over a slow connection. GPS will work with or without a data connections. GSM helps with accuracy.

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Originally Posted by eksodos 

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Originally Posted by Harbinger 

To be fair, Apple has done it too. Remember that they based a whole campaign on mocking Microsoft?

 

Yes, of course. When you're the cool underdog, that's what you do. Apple isn't the underdog in this space, they are the leaders, so they don't speak of competitors in commercials. 

 

I think the Samsung ads are well done. And quite funny. But maybe that's because I can't picture myself in a long line waiting dozens of hours for Apple to sell me a new phone. 

 

You also can't blame Google/Motorola for having some fun at Apple's expense over this. It's an open goal people, why wouldn't they stick one in the back of the net?

Yeah... What goes around, comes around... I wonder if Motorola will be around when it does...

Quote:

Originally Posted by elehcdn 

Rosstheboss, I am trying to figure out how you are getting accurate map information from a mobile device when you don't have any type of data connection. Everytime I have used Google Maps it requires some sort of internet connection to pull up data.

 

oth, as I understand it, Apple has some sort of plan for offline maps in their mapping program in the future. For Google, that is not a great option since their business is all based on driving you to their websites.

Google Maps for Android allows you to download up to 6 map segments of 80MB each to use as on-board maps. Useful for those times that you may not have a cellular or wi-fi connection.

... and yes you can apparently call up navigation directions to locations on those maps and do POI searches without a data connection. Just make sure GPS is turned on.

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Originally Posted by zoetmb 

I played with Apple's new maps at the Apple Store over the weekend and I found their maps on the new iPhone to be better looking in both map and satellite views than Google's and far faster to navigate.  

I find the aerial views in Apple maps much inferior. They are at least a couple zoom levels less than the Google Maps. That is for places around Irvine California, where I work. As far as Central America is concerned, forget about it. What used to be clear high res color views in my area have been replaced with horrible grayscale blurry low res images which are completely useless. Before I was able to see the individual shrubs in my yard and the individual branches on the trees where as now I can't even find my house.

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Originally Posted by JCK75 

Seriously, if the shoe were on the other foot and Google or Samsung or whomever released a mapping product with this many problems, errors, and incorrect information would the response this board be "Give them time"?  Especially if the company was boasting that their product was superior?

 

I think not.

I wonder why Samsung phones ship with Navigon pre-installed?

Why are they giving away an alternative to Google maps, if they are as "essential" as you would like to make out?

Originally Posted by Vaelian 

Apple had GPS issues of their own on the 4S. Most of the complaints about poor battery life stemmed from defective GPSes. A friend of mine got one of the affected phones, and her battery problems disappeared as soon as I told her to shut down Location Services (also told her to have the phone replaced, but she didn't appear to care enough).

Originally Posted by Vaelian 

Pretty sure I'm not talking about apps.

"Location Services" refers to the software and "defective GPSes" seemingly refers to hardware, so which is it?

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Originally Posted by Vaelian 

Pretty sure I mentioned the iPhone 4S specifically, and you even quoted it.

Originally Posted by Vaelian 

Apple had GPS issues of their own on the 4S. Most of the complaints about poor battery life stemmed from defective GPSes. A friend of mine got one of the affected phones, and her battery problems disappeared as soon as I told her to shut down Location Services (also told her to have the phone replaced, but she didn't appear to care enough). Not saying the problem is the same here, but your personal experience doesn't mean anything.
"Hi, I'm a Mac! And I'm a PC..."
I have, and to me they suck as they can't even find mine or any of the neighboring streets here, it's even worse than finding them elsewhere, which would be acceptable because these streets are all named after cities in other countries, and without being able to perform reliable searches the app is pretty much useless, because search for addresses is what I use it mostly for. The fact that these streets are all charted on the map and this issue has existed since day 1 in the beta makes the situation even worse as it's not just the data that's crap but the software as well. Lastly the software is noticeably slower and power hungrier than the old maps, and despite the move to vectorial data (which was supposed to reduce the amount of data one needs to load from the Internet), it's actually loading slower than Google Maps ever did and rendering at a much lower frame rate.
Apple ditching Google may be good for them, but I am not them and I don't work for them, so it's not good for me and it actually degrades the quality of their service. Like the first poster mentioned, Apple is putting their politics ahead of their customers and deserve the crap they're getting over this.
I'm sure you can report cases where Google Maps can't even find stuff that's perfectly charted on the map, then.
Folks forget that Apple bought several mapping companies and is licensing data from a lot of third party providers. The current solution doesn't differ much from what they got from Google, but the user experience does.

 

Really?  That's your full post above.  Looks like you mention your friends 4S but don't say anything about what your phone is... I see you mention it in a later post.  Maybe you were just confused?

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Originally Posted by Vaelian 

There are plenty of them all over the Internet. Take this one for an example. Same thing happens where I live, a search for my own street returns nothing despite the fact that it is correctly charted on the map and dropping a pin shows the correct address. For obvious reasons, I will not reveal my location.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know Apple was so poor they couldn't afford to actually pay Google for extra Maps services while at the same time being able to afford paying lots of third parties to offer a clearly subpar service...
Yes, but searching for a street name that's right outside my window complete with city and country name copy-pasted from the address returned by a dropped pin isn't one of them.

The example you link is where someone typed in a city without a country.  That happens when you search in Google as well-- I put in "Ontario" and it give me "Ontario, California" instead of "Ontario, Canada".  Guess Goggle is the worst maps on Earth then and we should all run away screaming.

I didn't ask for your home address-- you said "they suck as they can't even find mine or any of the neighboring streets here," so I figured you'd have tons of examples.  Guess you don't really have any examples of your own.

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Originally Posted by Vaelian 

I'm beginning to question the cognitive abilities of the people in this forum. Do you really think I alone would be able to pull 25k views of Google Maps in a single day? Don't you understand that those restrictions are in place to prevent developers from using Google Maps to serve several people at the same time without giving anything in return?

Haha... yeah, it's HIS cognitive abilities that are at question.  From TFA:

A site is not a person; it's a site.  YOU don't get 25k views; the SITE gets 25k views.  See the difference?  Every time a page on the site loads with a map it contributes to the 25k total.  After that 25k the developer pays.  If a site has more than 25k visitors a day, and everyone sees even a SINGLE map, the developer pays money.  Is that clear?

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Originally Posted by Rob55 

 

Yeah, but the "I'm a Mac" ads spoke the truth. ;)

So does this one, whether we like it or not. :) (Truth wasn't the point of the comment.)

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Originally Posted by allmypeople 

Apple's grudge against Google > Apple's users
Competitors are right to hit them for this.
GMaps was soooooo important in my daily life and Maps doesn't cut it AT ALL where I live in Canada.
I'm not a jailbreaking type of person but I most definitely will now, to get GMaps back.

You don't need to, open Safari and go to maps.google.com

IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE!

If you like Google Maps then for God sake use Google Maps, we aren't stopping you, Apple aren't stopping you.

Apple adverts - Look at what our products can do.

Competitor adverts - Look at that silly mistake that Apple made.

It's worth noting that the error noted by Motorola has been fixed.

Originally Posted by elehcdn 
Thank you Motorola for your crowd sourcing submission. Your ad was accurate for about 36 hours.

This is what Apple means when they say that Maps will be improved by people using it.

Apple Map is unusable in Japan. Tokyo's main domestic airport labeled as a paper factory, a museum located in middle of a river, Tokyo Bay renamed "North Pacific Ocean," subway stations that do not actually exist, random place names shown in Korean (no, I do not have Korean locale enabled anywhere on my iPhone)--and these are just what I personally encountered over the past week in Tokyo. It's really too bad, as the software seems to be well written and smoother than the old Map app. But a map app is only as good as its data. 

I bought an iPhone 5 anyway because the built-in map app is not a deal-killer--there are plenty of replacements. For the past week, I've been using Google's web app , which works just fine. That does not excuse Apple for releasing the most useless piece of crap software I have seen come out of Cupertino since, oh, QuickDraw GX and OpenDoc. (Well, OS X 10.0 was pretty bad, too, but we all knew that was developer beta in all but name.)