Inaccurate Apple Maps directions causes 'life threatening issue' for travelers, says Australian... - Page 5

 

More hysteria, chicken little.

yes....hysteria cuts both ways does it not......some will defend something based on a imagined personal emotional attachment. Even ignoring public evidence to the contrary that is readily available to them.

 

Evidence has been presented...did you not see it?

I think your own link shows that your arguments are flawed when:

1 - it admits that it's only relevant to a single Canadian province (you're making claims about the entire world);

2 - It mentions a test that shows completely contradictory results even in that Canadian province;

3 - It states that Apple Maps fails at the most basic of tasks, which is to search for data that does not precisely match the data in its database.

Please stop name calling.......no personal attacks. Is there a moderator on this thread?

Again, Maps powered by Google were not perfectly functioning. People had complained about TbT and vector mapping since at least when Android Maps started offering it. There were errors in Google's backend. There still is, as noted by people comparing searches between the two over the last few months.

Google's location data is better, but you know it is and you know why it is.

As you now state, "it failed expectations" which is not the same as the product is defective and unusable.


Show me evidence that users were forced to upgrade from 5.x to 6.0.

 

Safari preferences defines which browser opens URLs - check the setting. The default is Safari. Is Safari installed and working?

Of course I don't have to do this because I had the foresight to save my SHSH blobs before Apple stopped signing my iDevices for iOS 5.x, but still, as you can see, they're forcing the upgrade.

Please see the text in red above. I have never said Maps is unusable. It does not meet user expectations....even Tim said so when he apologized for the failed expectations.

If a product (Apple Maps) is launched especially by a billion dollar corp like Apple that prides it self on the users experience.....then fails to meet those expectations. then the product launch failed....it is defective by the failed expectations.

 

Hmm.

 

Does no one use the report button anymore? It's like a call button in a hospital or the 'assistance required' button on a plane or the popcorn preset on a microwave. Fastest way to get one of us in here.

 

"But you didn't change or delete it…"

 

Because it isn't an insult, really. It's the same as calling someone a conspiracy theorist "tin-foiler" when outing their conspiracy. That last part is crucial, of course.

This is a good example of why maps are so hard. Apple Maps isn't actually displaying anything incorrectly. The user entered "Mildura" with nothing else to narrow the location. Apple Maps returns the biggest, most general "Midura" it can find. In this case, that happens to be Mildura Share, an administrative area similar to a US county. It displays it with a pin. If you supply either an address or even a postal code, then it would return the actual town of Mildura.

 

Apple Maps isn't inaccurate in this case, but it is behaving poorly. Ideally, it would show the region with borders highlighted like Google does. If it can't do that, it should at least refuse to provide driving directions to the centre of a region like that.

 

If you try a little, you can find many instances where Apple Maps returns the centre of a region like this. The "errors" that people like to post usually involve situations like this where there are different places with similar names. If you don't give a precise address, it tries to pick the best match it can find, given the information you provided. While this is correct in a purely academic GIS sense, it is not appropriate for end users. These are the kinds of errors that Apple is apologizing for. It is correct, but not useful.

 

I hate that. I hate that A LOT.

 

No, I don't see any objective evidence presented to support your assertions. They are entirely baseless, as far as anyone can tell. Yet, you repeat them loudly and continuously. It sure sounds like you are simply being hysterical.

 

 

But, what it does not show, is that Google Maps is better, or that Apple Maps is worse. and, as for your point 3, it also points out that Google often returns results for searches that don't, "precisely match the data in its database," that are completely nonsensical. Which is worse, nonsense or nothing? That might depend on your point of view, but no one has produced any objective evidence to support the claims that Google Maps is better, let alone significantly better.

 

And everyone else is waiting for you to provide a side-by-side comparison that proves it not to be inferior.  Can't we just agree that sufficient objective testing hasn't been done yet?  

 

Methinks you really do protest too much in regards this issue however.  It's painfully obvious to anyone who isn't located in the USA that Apple's map data (or Nokia's map data or TomTom's map data or whatever the source is), basically sucks.  It's not a trivial thing either, the mistakes are huge and important.  The omissions are glaring and disappointing.  

 

Personally, it's a little irritating to me that you (presumably an American sitting somewhere in the USA), presumes to tell the rest of the world that the map data is fine, or as good as Google's when we can all see that it is not.  You say you haven't seen proof of this yet, but you have no proof of the contrary either.  

 

The issue has never been with the data inside the US but the data outside the US.  The single survey that anyone points to that purports to measure the accuracy of maps outside of the USA was this which was a single, small, quick study done informally and located in the most popular and populace region of Canada.  Even then it came out with mixed results and has specific caveats saying how it may not be representative of anything at all.  This is not good evidence of anything at all.  

 

Vancouver, the third largest city in Canada and the main city on the west coast of the country is full of huge errors, even downtown.  The parks are all in the wrong place.  The bike routes aren't mapped, whole streets are missing.  80-90% of the businesses don't show up.  There are so many errors it's simply not worth asking for directions unless you are in a car.  

 

Just because this evidence is anecdotal doesn't make it irrelevant.  Especially in the absence of any real tests.  You may be right about Apple maps being overall as good as Google maps.  You may be wrong.  Two things seem abundantly clear to me though:

 

- Anecdotal claims suggests HUGE problems

- No solid evidence to contradict these claims exists.  

Bad directions?! Shut it all down and give the money back to the shareholders!

 

Well, if I used the "report" button every time I've been accused of wearing a tin foil hat, I'd never have time to post. Interestingly, most of those accusations, in the past at least, were related to things I said about Google. Now, most of them are just accepted as true.

See, proving that one is better than the other is only relevant to your argument, not to mine, because as I stated before, the expectation is that Apple Maps would be as good as Google Maps. It can be better, but it can't be worse anywhere in the world. It only takes a single case where Apple Maps is worse to make it fall short of people's expectations, and these expectations are made reasonable by the fact that Apple effectively replaced the service on their platform without providing an option to go back, potentially degrading its quality for some users while selling it as something better to everyone.

 

I provided a link to such a comparison. And, yes, that's the whole point, sufficient objective testing has not been done. Yet, we sit here and read an endless stream of hysteria claiming that it's all proven that Apple Maps is horrible and Google Maps is 100% accurate.

See post #173......that is the latest one but there are numerous posts by numerous others pointing out the same conclusion. You just don't see them because you are hysterical......blind with an perceived emotional attachment to Apple....now go back to drinking the kool aid.......

To be clear, you are claiming that everyone running iOS 5.x was forced to install iOS 6.0 and no option to continue running iOS 5.x?


I asked you what you meant you meant by defective. I inquired if you simply meant "imperfect", which would mean that every mapping solution is defective, or if meant a more extreme use of the term defective. You seemed to imply the latter.

 

Well, necessarily, for one to be better, one has to be not as good. So, neither of those has been shown, and while yes, people might expect Apple Maps to be perfect, there's no evidence anything has been degraded as a whole. (Clearly, no one expects anything from Google to be perfect, so they aren't as easily disappointed by the endless stream of flaws.) However, your entire post depends on a confusing back and forth between words like 'better' and 'expectations' (when have we seen that before), but, in the end, you're either wrong, or saying nothing meaningful.

 

Post #173 does not contain any sort of objective comparison data. I'm beginning to think you don't even understand what an objective comparison is.

I move that we nominate Eric Schmidt to sainthood. It's the next logical step.

here you go doing what you do best....attack attack...make things personal.....dude get a clue. did you read the posts? Do you know how to read?? Show data to prove YOUR point. But oh please be OBJECTIVE....do you know what that means? Or are you drunk on apple kool aid???? I am beginning to think you are just hysterical.......do you know what that means?

No, I said that Apple is forcing everyone to use iOS 6, and they're employing all methods they legally can in order to achieve that (they can't install software without my permission). Anyone who has not saved their SHSH blobs back when Apple was still signing iOS 5 installs won't be able to restore from iOS 5 to iOS 5; anyone who upgrades to iOS 6 is stuck there (except for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 users); new iDevices come with iOS 6, regardless of generation; and if an iDevice is sent for repair, it will come back with iOS 6, so yes, they're forcing the changes down everyone's throats, because if for some reason your iOS 5 install gets corrupted and you don't have your SHSH blobs, you can forget about ever having a stable iOS 5 install on that iDevice again.

Your hate is immaterial. I think it is a cool feature. A polygon cannot be represented as a point in its centre. If that is the best Apple can do, then it needs to just remove the polygons from data.

Yes, the Midura info is really bad on iOS map. It is ridiculously off for this specific case. But on the other hand, don't people have some common sense? If Midura is a city, the iOS map shows it is in the middle of nowhere. No roads lead to it. Didn't people suspect something? How can you even build a "city" without any roads? How did these people even get there in the first place? Horses?

Is this a "made up" story for the City to gain publicity?

Google Maps isn't perfect either, but they don't have click-bait websites like this one ready to pounce on every defect in an organized effort to embarrass Google. Nor does MapQuest, Bing maps, or Tom Tom for that matter. Apple does.

 

Do you have a point to make?

This has already been refuted in this thread, by me no less, and any further arguments you can think about when it comes to this case and my refutation of it have also been refuted. Google Maps does not have to be perfect because it did not replace anything.

OMG! This has end user error written all over it as well...how could you not zoom out and look at the maps and apply common sense!? You got to be kidding me on blaming this all on Apple. If you can't read maps, you have no business in getting behind a wheel, with or without GPS or any smartphone!

 

Not sure what you are reading, but that was not personal attack, in discussions people will say that you are not proving your argument and ask do you understand, what I am asking. People reading too much into a comment or being over sensitive always happens.

 

Now all the Australians/Apple haters (latter being worse) had their 5 minutes of fame and bashing Apple, can we move on to the next topic.

And that's useless - it's nothing more than anecdotes. Not to mention that it's one sided. People will cite Apple's failures but ignore the failures of Google and everyone else.

Evidence involves a legitimate side-by-side comparison under controlled conditions.

It states:
1. Apple is not significantly worse than Google.
2. Apple and Google fail in different ways. When Apple fails, it tends to not return a result at all rather than returning an erroneous result.

But this one data point most certainly does not support the claim that you are making (that Apple Maps is worse).

There was a similar study done in San Francisco which also found Apple Maps to be at least comparable or better. Similarly, a comparison in China where they tried to pick representative samples.

You keep claiming that Apple Maps is clearly worse than Google Maps. It's not up to me to prove the converse. If you're going to continue to make that claim, it's up to you to provide evidence - which you keep refusing to do. Why is that? Obviously, because there IS no evidence to support your claim.


I'm not the one making wild claims. If I were actively claiming that Apple Maps was better than Google Maps, then it would be my responsibility to provide evidence. Rather, a bunch of other people are running around screaming and ranting and raving about how terrible Apple Maps is - yet they haven't provided any evidence to back their claims.

Citing some cases where Apple Maps fails is useless - since Google Maps and TomTom and Garmin and Mapquest and everyone else fails in some cases, too. If someone is going to claim that Apple Maps is markedly inferior (as a number of people have done), it's up to them to provide evidence that this is true. So far, no one has done so. All we have is "Apple Maps can't find some remote location in Australia when you list it by the city name (although if you list the street address, it works)" or a few other examples of cases where it doesn't work.

Until you can provide some valid evidence to support the claim, it's an erroneous claim. Claiming that there are reports of failure would be correct, but pointless. Claiming that it is worse than Google is simply unproven at this point.

 

Haven't been doing this 'internet' thing very long then...

 

Just as Apple Maps did not replace anything. You are still free to use Google Maps or Mapquest on our iPhone.

As I said, any future arguments you may have have already been refuted. This one is not an exception. The version of Google Maps that you can still use is on the web and does not perform anything like the app did, due to lack of integration with the rest of iOS, the inability to save dropped pins, the inability to rotate, and its reliance on the network connection to update your current position on the map.

yeah...but you won't get it so it is a waste of time with you.....

 

Show us other mapping systems that resulted in the local authorities warning people not to use it. 

Those Darwin Award winners are Apples bread and butter. Apple couldn't have earned billions of dollars a quarter without them. Apple knows it, that's why they are doubling the size of their genius bars.

 

 

 

If the map did its job, it would have directed them straight into town and not into a remote areas.

 

 

 

Yes inferior. Multiple motorists lost and a police warning doesn't count?

 

You're naive to think Cook (Apple) would admit the maps app is defective.

Apple never admitted fault in these class action lawsuits but the smart consumers and judges knew better.

 

Bait Apps
No Poaching Class Action
Apple to refund Australians over 'false' iPad 4G
ipodlawsuit.com
iphone4settlement.com
adaptersettlement.com
applesecuritiessettlement.com
"No Refund" Policy Class Action Lawsuit
Misleading Customers on Warranties in 11 Countries
Deceptive Siri Commercials
Ebooks Antitrust Lawsuit

 

 

 

Neither does 10,000 apple apologist make it false.

 

 

 

Obviously no product provides the best experience possible, but apple has a history of lying.  When the iphone5 was released apple claimed maps was "the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever." But they had to take it down because it was clearly false advertising.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/30/revised-apple-website-no-longer-calls-ios-6-maps-most-powerful

 

All of the class action lawsuits are conspiracies too? 

 

I fail to see why they would be subject to entirely different standards just because of precedence. Do you have any sort of argument to make other than that Apple Maps ought to be perfect but it doesn't matter how flawed Google Maps is? Because, not only is that not a compelling argument, it's entirely nonsensical.

i have..... but some can't make a intelligent discussion so they fallback on making things personal.

 

I assure you, if you make a valid point, I'll "get it". But, you can hardly criticize me for not getting it when you admit you haven't made it yet.