Google Maps downloaded 10M times in first 48 hours on iOS App Store - Page 2

I downloaded the ap. It's okay, as long as you buy into the ads and tracking. However, it doesn't do one thing that Apple Maps, Garmin, Tom-Tom, Waze, Bing, the U.S. Postal Service, Fed Ex, and UPS can do. It can't find my address, even though the street has been here at least 13 years. Comparing the map to the satellite view, the streets are incorrect and none of the street names are available.

I suspect Google maps are probably superior just due to the amount of effort they've put into it. But a lot of the imagined difference is just the Google reality distortion field. Techies think they can do no wrong. Your mileage may vary. Be careful.

 

That's not really an argument. It's not like government only has access to data from Google but not Apple. There's no advantage of using Apple's softwares in that regard. 

 

To me I'm still using the old Google Maps app from iOS5, not upgrading to iOS6 even with Google's new map apps. Being jailbreakable is still the most important thing for my iPhone. 

 

It clearly varies by location. Despite a couple of glaring road errors (old data) in my area, when I tested the two apps side by side, Apple maps had better routing and more consistent business location success, so Apple maps is still my primary mapping.

Most likely, 10,000 Google employees downloaded and deleted it 1,000 times each.

It's a iPhone app not a iPad one.

 

Yep, they were praising it up and down 5 seconds after it became available.  And they talk about iSheep.

Of course Google slapped a "beta" label on their Maps app - precisely because Apple didn't. This move "shows Apple up" for not doing so, and possibly suggests dishonesty on Apple's part (whether they were dishonest or silly or neither seems to have been a matter of considerable debate since Apple's Maps app was released).

So Google cashes in and can be seen to be riding in gallantly to save those who are perceived to have been put at a disadvantage by Apple's version. As you can probably guess, I find Google's move suspect.

I have an iPhone 4, so have never used Siri. I'm not missing TbT, but I'm not viewing not having TbT in either a positive or negative light.

The journos are raving about Google's iOS maps app because (1) it's from Google, the "all-shining and mighty", and (2) it's not from Apple, and is therefore fodder for Apple-bashing, an apparently favourite sport in lots of places.

Didn't you hear that you can use Siri to ask a route on Google Maps by just adding 'via transit' at the end of your query?

The always perfect Google maps.

 

While messing around with Google maps I came across yet another example of it's perfection and paramount need to be on the iPhone with it's inferior maps.

 

 

 

It pointed me to the lost Optus store, who knows what treasures lay in this Eldorado, the fabled store inthe jungles at the back of the overflow staff carpark, a place only accessible during the Christmas season.

 

 

 

Steeling myself I began the journey through 80 degree heat under a blazing hot sun, few had braved the heat beating up from the sticky tarmac of the overflow carpark and beyond, into the wilderness, it's there somewhere in that forest in the distance, the mythical lost Optus shop.

 

 

 

It was then, at the halfway point that I gave up my quest, looking back at the shopping centre in the distance, I brought my water bottle to my cracked and parched lips and was left to ponder why Optus didn't put their store in the shopping centre with all the other shops?

 

Today's tale has been brought to you by Google, makers of indispensable mapping perfection.

80 degrees? That's close to boiling .

 

I translated it for the Septics, maybe I should leave it as 27 and brave a blizzard.

I suggest the "I do whatever Apple wishes" people to stop defending what cannot be defended. I consider Apple products superior to the competitors, and that's why I use them, by I won't applaud Apple when they made a mistake, and releasing Maps in alpha status was a _mistake_. I use their products, but also criticize them when they're wrong.

 

GoogleMaps is great. If you won't admit it, well, do whatever you like, but just wait, and you'll realize how many people is using Apple Maps a year from now. You can uninstall GoogleMaps if you wish, but the vast majority of iPhone users won't. Don't applaud Apple mistakes. Criticize them loudly when they're wrong, so that they don't do stupid things again.

 

I've Streetview on my iPhone. It works. The satellite view also works on GoogleMaps. However, on Apple Maps, most of the time I'm getting the infamous black grid with no photos, I've to wait ages for images to appear, while GoogleMaps displays imagery fine. Apple Maps doesn't work as fluid as GoogleMaps. People notice this. They use Apple Maps and it's not satisfactory. Then they try GoogleMaps and it works like they expected. They notice this, and they choose accordingly.

 

...and I won't applaud Google when they make mistakes:-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...but, what the hey, any excuse to bash Apple right?

 

Reminds me of the old days, when the Internet was just starting out, before Google when it was Microsoft vs Apple.

 

Well, the app may be beta, but the underlying data certainly is not.  I have had plenty of errors with Google maps, too (original iPhone Maps app, iOS Safari, MacOS Safari, IE, etc).  And Google has always hidden behind the "beta" label, anyway.  Don't forget they're an ad company.  All they really have to do is get their "beta" on gadgets.  Users allow Google to collect information because the they think those data will go to improving the product.  Meanwhile Google is monitoring your habits and activity, so they can shove ads in your face--and whatever else they do with your data. 

 

With regard to Apple, how often in Apple's history have they called products "beta?"  I think Siri was really the oddball.  I'm not saying Siri wasn't beta--just odd in that it was touted as such.

I didn't know that. Thanks.

 

If this had actually happened, you'd have a point. If Apple Maps at launch was worse than Google Maps at launch (it wasn't; it was far better), you'd have a point.

 

80% of them.

 

 

Because they're too lazy to figure out how to uninstall something? That's the only reason I can think of. 

 

The app is nowhere near beta. It's the sixth release version of the app; the data would be the only thing whose status is argued over.

 

 

OS X, iWork.com, Siri… That's all I can think of.

Not sure that is the right way to look at it.

Don't know where is the number of 400 million iOS devices coming from, but even if there are that many iOS devices in use today, not everyone is being used for maps. If they make 100 million, that is huge success.

In addition, US iOS users are much more likely to use Apple maps, but for the rest of the world... not yet. Since Google maps app came out, I've upgraded my 3Gs to iOS6 and played with maps a bit... here in New Zealand, even for Auckland (which is the biggest city in NZ) a lot is missing. Streets, locations... Just as a simple example, I've just tried to find Glenfield Westfield Mall, which is around for decades and, until recently, was the biggest mall in Auckland's North Shore. It doesn't show on map, nor in search. It does show in Google maps and search.

And please keep in mind this is Auckland. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if smaller places are suffering even more. Yes Apple maps are behaving nicer on my ageing phone, but scrolling smoothness cannot beat amount of available info.

Heh. It has to be observed relatively to current situation. Google maps, on release, had nothing to compete against. Apple maps do have. Because if you look at it that way, Windows Phone App Store is bigger than iOS or Android stores on their release, so surely that means it is brilliant. It would be back in 2007, but now we compare it to current AppStore and GooglePlay, and it is mediocre at best, as it is right now.

In US... maybe. How many iOS users are in US, though?

 

Not by a frigging long shot. Yahoo! Maps. Mapquest. There were plenty of mapping services back then, and they covered more of the planet than Google Maps at launch.

 

Apple did the entire world at launch. It took Google years to include even half of that. I'd venture that Apple has a lower percentage of inaccuracy than Google Maps.

I wonder how many people are going to be sending error reports to Google so that Google Maps (or its data) can be improved? And how many people won't, as a result, be sending error reports to Apple so that Apple Maps (or its data) can be improved?

As I see it, there is a pretty clear-cut choice: you either use Google Maps and actively support Google, or use Apple Maps and actively support Apple. Where it becomes tricky is in those places where Apple's maps appears to be lagging (e.g., India, parts of the UK, parts of Oz, parts of NZ, SE Asia, Japan), if Google is supported by the majority in those places, Apple may never catch up.

It large part comes down to what you want, folks: a decent mapping solution from Apple or a decent mapping solution from Google. I've decided to vote with my fingers and stay with the Apple solution.

And I really think that a web-based version of Apple Maps for data correction would help immensely.
Edited by AlexN - 12/19/12 at 3:40am

Yes, I realize that. However, in the app description, it stated "iPad." Personal quibble - it should clearly state "iPad with 2x magnification," or something similar.

Some people will interpret a lot of downloads to be people having an issue with Apple's Maps but like you and others have said, I'd get it just to have another option in case any of the others had a problem. There's not much reason to turn down good, free apps.

I find it interesting how Apple's designs always seem to be better than the alternatives. The icon sitting there among the others just looks so much nicer. It almost looks exactly the same as the OpenMaps one but the styling on the OpenMaps one doesn't look right. To keep doing that over and over shows they have some of the best designers around (and this was Forstall's app too).

 

Agreed, but I'm surprised at how few (none) trolls have jumped onto the fact that the icon tells you to crash through a barrier and plummet off an overpass. 

 

We joked about it here when it was first released, but I've seen no one attack it since errors started popping up.

Courtesy of an article at 9to5, quick tips for using Google Maps:

 

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/helloworld/iphone/quicktips.html

Apple Maps works fine for me in the UK, and I've tested it in London, Leeds, Bristol, and Newport in Wales where I just did an evaluation of Google Maps' walking directions as well.

As usual, it's on the user interactivity front that Google Maps lags behind; after nagging me to 'Turn South!' (instead of 'Turn Left') a few times, GMaps started to recalculate an alternate route without informing me, and sent me down a steep, twisty hillside road with no footpaths and plenty car traffic, turning a 7-minute walk into a 35-minute nightmare. It did however to its credit sense my stress and displayed the 'shake to send feedback' page a few times (stressing me out further by failing to dismiss it on first tap!)

It was my error to start with, but by comparison, in Bristol when Apple Maps detected a wrong driving turn, it just displayed 'RECALCULATING' in large prominent letters so the navigator would realise a mistake had been made, and we quickly got back on track. Very subtle nag there, if you get my drift (pun intended) and see the difference.

Satellite and 3D hybrid views in my Hampshire small town are detailed and pretty in Apple Maps, and with the inclusion of Google Maps as an in-app choice for Transit, Walking and Street View as well as for my ageing 3GS and i4 handsets, I couldn't be happier with Apple Maps right now.

Another high-risk Apple manoeuvre just came up trumps again!

 

This article is claiming the error rate for Apple Maps actually is higher than Google Maps. (Apple vs Google error rates: 3.4% vs 1.1% in the US, and 30% vs ~3% in the UK)

 

http://mashable.com/2012/12/19/apple-maps-google-lost/

 

 

 

 

Commenting on the tests of the above article, the author calls Apple Maps "pretty much unusable" in the UK. (Only 50% of the locations returned results, and of the results, a third of them were inaccurate)

Edited by gwjvan - 12/20/12 at 5:58pm

So what are you doing that the government would give a crap about? Silly paranoia. The government can request the exact same data from Apple or any other company offering internet services. And again, what do you have to hide?

 

I don't know why so many people cling to this question as if it actually implies a meaningful argument.

 

One of the main purposes of privacy is to prevent abuse. Put that question in a different context, and it becomes glaringly obvious how fallacious it is: Ask a stalking victim, "What do you have to hide?", or a parent who wants to protect their child online, "What do you have to hide?"

Edited by gwjvan - 12/21/12 at 10:33am

 

First year ethics tells us this is an invalid question.

TBell, surely you don't think that Apple, or Microsoft, or Yahoo, or any ISP or telecom you can think of doesn't receive demands from police or government agencies to divulge user information. The difference is none of those will comment on it. At least Google will call attention to it in their bi-annual transparency reports. Take a look thru this:

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/

These are the kinds of privacy intrusions you should be concerned about.

 

Who else do you know that will even go to the extent of warning specific users of unauthorized attempted hacking attempts by state-sponsored agencies?

http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2012/06/security-warnings-for-suspected-state.html

Try asking Apple or Microsoft how many demands for their users private details or search histories they've received and granted. I'd be willing to wager you'll get no response whatsoever.

 

Note that just this week yet another secret US government agency was outed, this time by the Wall Street Journal. 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/national_counterterrorism_center_s_massive_new_surveillance_program_uncovered.html

Worrying that Google might direct an ad your way for something it appears you're shopping for seems a bit petty in the big picture of things, at least IMO.

I tried out the Google App on a journey where I was already fairly sure where I was going. Feedback;

 

- when I was diverted due to an accident, I had to drive around randomly until it realised I wasn't going to follow its directions to turn round and go the blocked route.

- when I reached my first destination it insisted "Your destination is on the right" even though it was clearly visible to my *left* .

- when I used it to navigate to my second destination (a large business on an industrial park), it got me to within half a mile or so then stated "You have reached your destination" and shut up, even though I was about two roundabouts short.

 

I don't know if a hardware satnav would have done any better, but I'll certainly take an A-Z with me as backup for any journey I do with Google where I *don't* already know the answer.

Is Google maps a data drain? Just wondering since it doesn't have the maps pre-downloaded onto the phone like other GPS programs like Garmin and TomTom.

Google posted another transparency report today and it shows government demands for user data are getting worse.

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/

 

68% of the government requests were subpoenas under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and required no judicial involvement.

Wow there's ads, that is horrible. Why is the Android version free of them and the iOS not. There is a wonderful program called Adfree for Android, I have yet to see an Ad of any kind with it installed, even on freeware where it is expected. Is there a similar program for iOS. I personally use Nokia Maps.