I find it interesting that we can list a multitude of ways that Apple Maps in iOS 6 Beta 4 is superior to Google Maps in iOS 5 while Google Maps proponents continue to focus on their sole argument of superiority, a feature which 50% of a tech savvy subset (Twitter followers of a tech blogger) of users were unaware existed on the iPhone.
A lot of the comments can probably be chalked up to iOS users of Google Maps not realizing that Google does already offer most (all?) of the features shipping with iOS6 Apple maps and more, but just not for Apple devices. The reverse is probably true for Android-owning commenters who don't know that Apple's version of Google Maps is handicapped and believe the article is being more dishonest than biased. Whether that's due to Apple rules or Google is open for debate, but the fact users of iDevices don't have access to the same features and quality of navigation and mapping as Android users of Google Maps isn't.
So yes Apple's maps application shipping with iOS6 will be a big step up for iOS users. By the same token if Apple were to offer their maps application as a standalone product for Android owners I don't see any obvious advantages over Google Maps for Android, but lots of areas where Apple's product wouldn't yet be competitive.
By melding building model outlines with photos taken from satellites or low flying aircraft, C3 figured out how to create virtual models without necessarily sending cameras down the street.
C3 doesn’t “meld model outlines” with satellite/aerial photos. That’s not how it works. The whole point of C3 technology is that they don’t use any “model outlines” in the first place.
C3 uses specialized software to reconstruct 3D models from multiple aerial photos captured with a multi-camera setup (much like human stereo vision works). Everything is reconstructed automatically—buildings, bridges, trees—any arbitrary 3D structure of arbitrary complexity. That’s the beauty of it. Since the process is completely automatic, it is also very cheap. Before C3, it was envisioned that 3D models of cities would be crowd-sourced—that’s why Google acquired and promoted SketchUp. However, C3’s automatic 3D reconstruction completely disrupted the manual approach, and Google sold SketchUp in April 2012, focusing on their own C3-like technology.
Short-term, Apple is probably going to add as many cities as they can and improve the resolution of on-board cameras to approach the detail level of Google Street View. Long-term, they might attempt to scan the whole planet surface.
Regarding Google's privacy concerns, do you not think the government has more advanced technology that has been watching you for years? Any technology that has been released to the public is obsolete by government standards. They just don't advertise it for obvious reasons, and in reality there is nothing you can do about it. I'm not talking about the technology (Windows, MS Office etc.) that low-level federal office workers use, but the advanced covert surveillance tech (satellites, cameras etc.). One cannot be linked into the world without someone monitoring the traffic. That the government chooses to ignore the average Joe does not mean the information is not gathered, cataloged and stored. At least with Google, you have the option of not using their services (with the exception of the Safari issue of course, but that has been dealt with albeit softly). /end conspiracy theory rant.
If Apples tech is better, then more people will use it. If Google's tech is better then the reverse will happen. I would never count Apple out though. When they choose to enter a particular technology arena, they usually don't do it half-arsed. Of course, every company has their "Ping" moment, but for the most part Apple usually delivers.
Regarding Google's privacy concerns, do you not think the government has more advanced technology that has been watching you for years? Any technology that has been released to the public is obsolete by government standards. They just don't advertise it for obvious reasons, and in reality there is nothing you can do about it. I'm not talking about the technology (Windows, MS Office etc.) that low-level federal office workers use, but the advanced covert surveillance tech (satellites, cameras etc.). One cannot be linked into the world without someone monitoring the traffic. That the government chooses to ignore the average Joe does not mean the information is not gathered, cataloged and stored. At least with Google, you have the option of not using their services (with the exception of the Safari issue of course, but that has been dealt with albeit softly). /end conspiracy theory rant.
If Apples tech is better, then more people will use it. If Google's tech is better then the reverse will happen. I would never count Apple out though. When they choose to enter a particular technology arena, they usually don't do it half-arsed. Of course, every company has their "Ping" moment, but for the most part Apple usually delivers.
While I agree with your comments about the data that the governments of developed nations are able to capture, there are additional concerns about Google.
While such information is gathered by competing products and services, Google's vast range of "products and services" uniquely positions Google to collect more information about consumers than any other company. The problem with Google's vast network of information gathering is that Google has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of concern for consumers through their policies and practices. Furthermore, Google has consistently used very expedient methods to comply with or meet demands whether those of stockholders or governments. The vast amount of information collected by Google has arguably made Google the greatest threat to privacy ever known, a vast unsecured treasure trove of information that attracts hackers and online thieves, and; most worrisome; governments.
1. Google has shown lack of regard for for consumers when censoring information or providing information such as censoring information in order to placate the Chinese government to allow their services in China or removing links to an anti-Scientology site after the Church of Scientology claimed copyright infringement or providing the records of some users of its social-networking service, Orkut, to the Brazilian government, which was investigating alleged racist, homophobic, and pornographic content.
2. Google has demonstrated many times that security is not an concern they deem important which is manifest upon reviewing the Android platform.
3. Google has more aggregated personal information about users than governments or other businesses have about consumers as a result of data mining, including: bypassing privacy settings to capture cookies; emails; calendars; capturing Wi-Fi network traffic; contacts; map searches; navigation; photographing a large number of street addresses; purchase history at brick-and-mortar stores; purchases of apps, books, movies, music; social media; web search; etc.
What sort of half wit would call Street View "creepy"? I use this all the time to identify places I need to go and it is outstanding. So far with the iPhone 5 we get an odd shaped phone where we get to see less of the page than before, we loose the best map service on a smart phone ever, we loose you tube's app. And it's ugly.
I really feel bad for all you people who have to rely on a mapping program to find your way and better yet, you need pictures to know if you on the right street or in front of the right store or restaurant. Are you completely lost if your battery dies? Yeah most guys hate asking for direction, but it is not that hard to find a location, you all know streets have names and building have numbers.
I will tell you and I have seen this with Google maps a number of time, it takes you to the wrong physical locations, it will say a place in one locate and the stupid street view is correct for where you are standing but, the actual place it down the road a piece with the correct address and all. So you can be standing there looking at the map with the pin and a street view picture showing you are in the right place but you did not find what you were really looking for. However, if you were just looking for house or building numbers you would have known you were not there yet.
The best part of this, I personal seen these Google maps mistake in Mountain View CA the home of Google, you think they would gave their own neighborhood perfect.
I assume that you live in a city with a building structure such as NYC, or a town with one main street and a single traffic light.
When I travel into NYC there is no substitute for StreetView. Whether I'm on the train or driving. You can waste so much time finding your destination by wandering around, looking for a number on a building which may not exist, where construction blocks entrances, and various other things.
Westchester County (north of NYC) has so many hidden driveways, unmarked entrances to buildings that you can't even see because of trees, parking nightmares you want to avoid (such as in Yonkers).....the list goes on and on.
I imagine your pity is lost on the vast majority that find StreetView useful.
The other day I was reminded just how bad Google maps can be, when I had to go to a Motor Registry, I ended up finding it without any help from Google.
To give you some idea of the scale, this map is over 100 miles wide and almost 200 miles high, all screenshots and the photo were taken at the same blue dot.
I am much more comfortable with a "street view" that consists of highly detailed 3D models, almost indistinguishable from reality, than with actual photos, which yes are a bit creepy, not to mention technically not as good as a proper model.
I use street view all the time. But, there are many views where the glass is dirty, or the view was in winter, some even at night. They could employ hundreds just to retake all of them.
I use street view all the time. But, there are many views where the glass is dirty, or the view was in winter, some even at night. They could employ hundreds just to retake all of them.
And multiple thousands more to actually finish the job they set out to do… driving every road on the planet.
Apple was entirely correct to move from an inferior, crippled product to their own mapping and navigation architecture and infrastructure including their own database of points of interest which has far more business listings than Google. (1)
And I will feel entirely justified in using it as little as possible, because one of the most useful features of Google Maps - Street View - is quite simply impossible for Apple to replicate in any reasonable timeframe, even if they wanted to.
I use Street View all the time on my iPhone. I think it's a mistake to eliminate it from the iOS maps app. Flyovers do not provide the same level of detail, and that's the problem, no matter how much DED wants to spin it. Apple is going to put iOS users at a disadvantage to Android users, and this seems like an attempt to gloss over that and make it seem like a genius decision. C'mon people, not everything Apple does is perfect.
As for Street View being creepy, no. I was actually photographed by a Street View car outside my house several years ago. For a long time you could make out my face enough to know it was me, BUT, that was only if you knew to look there. And then it would only let the user know I was there at the given time that the imagery was taken. I honestly don't get the hangup people have regarding the technology. It's only imagery that anyone could photograph legally by driving down the street. And, you really can't see into houses; the images aren't that good.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
As you can see in my post, his statement that Google has more business listings was erroneous at best and a falsehood at worst.
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I find it interesting that we can list a multitude of ways that Apple Maps in iOS 6 Beta 4 is superior to Google Maps in iOS 5 while Google Maps proponents continue to focus on their sole argument of superiority, a feature which 50% of a tech savvy subset (Twitter followers of a tech blogger) of users were unaware existed on the iPhone.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
A lot of the comments can probably be chalked up to iOS users of Google Maps not realizing that Google does already offer most (all?) of the features shipping with iOS6 Apple maps and more, but just not for Apple devices. The reverse is probably true for Android-owning commenters who don't know that Apple's version of Google Maps is handicapped and believe the article is being more dishonest than biased. Whether that's due to Apple rules or Google is open for debate, but the fact users of iDevices don't have access to the same features and quality of navigation and mapping as Android users of Google Maps isn't.
So yes Apple's maps application shipping with iOS6 will be a big step up for iOS users. By the same token if Apple were to offer their maps application as a standalone product for Android owners I don't see any obvious advantages over Google Maps for Android, but lots of areas where Apple's product wouldn't yet be competitive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
By melding building model outlines with photos taken from satellites or low flying aircraft, C3 figured out how to create virtual models without necessarily sending cameras down the street.
C3 doesn’t “meld model outlines” with satellite/aerial photos. That’s not how it works. The whole point of C3 technology is that they don’t use any “model outlines” in the first place.
C3 uses specialized software to reconstruct 3D models from multiple aerial photos captured with a multi-camera setup (much like human stereo vision works). Everything is reconstructed automatically—buildings, bridges, trees—any arbitrary 3D structure of arbitrary complexity. That’s the beauty of it. Since the process is completely automatic, it is also very cheap. Before C3, it was envisioned that 3D models of cities would be crowd-sourced—that’s why Google acquired and promoted SketchUp. However, C3’s automatic 3D reconstruction completely disrupted the manual approach, and Google sold SketchUp in April 2012, focusing on their own C3-like technology.
Short-term, Apple is probably going to add as many cities as they can and improve the resolution of on-board cameras to approach the detail level of Google Street View. Long-term, they might attempt to scan the whole planet surface.
Regarding Google's privacy concerns, do you not think the government has more advanced technology that has been watching you for years? Any technology that has been released to the public is obsolete by government standards. They just don't advertise it for obvious reasons, and in reality there is nothing you can do about it. I'm not talking about the technology (Windows, MS Office etc.) that low-level federal office workers use, but the advanced covert surveillance tech (satellites, cameras etc.). One cannot be linked into the world without someone monitoring the traffic. That the government chooses to ignore the average Joe does not mean the information is not gathered, cataloged and stored. At least with Google, you have the option of not using their services (with the exception of the Safari issue of course, but that has been dealt with albeit softly). /end conspiracy theory rant.
If Apples tech is better, then more people will use it. If Google's tech is better then the reverse will happen. I would never count Apple out though. When they choose to enter a particular technology arena, they usually don't do it half-arsed. Of course, every company has their "Ping" moment, but for the most part Apple usually delivers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iSteelers
Regarding Google's privacy concerns, do you not think the government has more advanced technology that has been watching you for years? Any technology that has been released to the public is obsolete by government standards. They just don't advertise it for obvious reasons, and in reality there is nothing you can do about it. I'm not talking about the technology (Windows, MS Office etc.) that low-level federal office workers use, but the advanced covert surveillance tech (satellites, cameras etc.). One cannot be linked into the world without someone monitoring the traffic. That the government chooses to ignore the average Joe does not mean the information is not gathered, cataloged and stored. At least with Google, you have the option of not using their services (with the exception of the Safari issue of course, but that has been dealt with albeit softly). /end conspiracy theory rant.
If Apples tech is better, then more people will use it. If Google's tech is better then the reverse will happen. I would never count Apple out though. When they choose to enter a particular technology arena, they usually don't do it half-arsed. Of course, every company has their "Ping" moment, but for the most part Apple usually delivers.
While I agree with your comments about the data that the governments of developed nations are able to capture, there are additional concerns about Google.
While such information is gathered by competing products and services, Google's vast range of "products and services" uniquely positions Google to collect more information about consumers than any other company. The problem with Google's vast network of information gathering is that Google has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of concern for consumers through their policies and practices. Furthermore, Google has consistently used very expedient methods to comply with or meet demands whether those of stockholders or governments. The vast amount of information collected by Google has arguably made Google the greatest threat to privacy ever known, a vast unsecured treasure trove of information that attracts hackers and online thieves, and; most worrisome; governments.
1. Google has shown lack of regard for for consumers when censoring information or providing information such as censoring information in order to placate the Chinese government to allow their services in China or removing links to an anti-Scientology site after the Church of Scientology claimed copyright infringement or providing the records of some users of its social-networking service, Orkut, to the Brazilian government, which was investigating alleged racist, homophobic, and pornographic content.
2. Google has demonstrated many times that security is not an concern they deem important which is manifest upon reviewing the Android platform.
#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }3. Google has more aggregated personal information about users than governments or other businesses have about consumers as a result of data mining, including: bypassing privacy settings to capture cookies; emails; calendars; capturing Wi-Fi network traffic; contacts; map searches; navigation; photographing a large number of street addresses; purchase history at brick-and-mortar stores; purchases of apps, books, movies, music; social media; web search; etc.
I use this all the time to identify places I need to go and it is outstanding.
So far with the iPhone 5 we get an odd shaped phone where we get to see less of the page than before, we loose the best map service on a smart phone ever, we loose you tube's app.
And it's ugly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maestro64
I really feel bad for all you people who have to rely on a mapping program to find your way and better yet, you need pictures to know if you on the right street or in front of the right store or restaurant. Are you completely lost if your battery dies? Yeah most guys hate asking for direction, but it is not that hard to find a location, you all know streets have names and building have numbers.
I will tell you and I have seen this with Google maps a number of time, it takes you to the wrong physical locations, it will say a place in one locate and the stupid street view is correct for where you are standing but, the actual place it down the road a piece with the correct address and all. So you can be standing there looking at the map with the pin and a street view picture showing you are in the right place but you did not find what you were really looking for. However, if you were just looking for house or building numbers you would have known you were not there yet.
The best part of this, I personal seen these Google maps mistake in Mountain View CA the home of Google, you think they would gave their own neighborhood perfect.
I assume that you live in a city with a building structure such as NYC, or a town with one main street and a single traffic light.
When I travel into NYC there is no substitute for StreetView. Whether I'm on the train or driving. You can waste so much time finding your destination by wandering around, looking for a number on a building which may not exist, where construction blocks entrances, and various other things.
Westchester County (north of NYC) has so many hidden driveways, unmarked entrances to buildings that you can't even see because of trees, parking nightmares you want to avoid (such as in Yonkers).....the list goes on and on.
I imagine your pity is lost on the vast majority that find StreetView useful.
This article explains all the work that goes into Google's map tiles. The work they do is fascinating.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/
The other day I was reminded just how bad Google maps can be, when I had to go to a Motor Registry, I ended up finding it without any help from Google.
To give you some idea of the scale, this map is over 100 miles wide and almost 200 miles high, all screenshots and the photo were taken at the same blue dot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lerxt
"loose the best map service"
Timothus Cookius:
And Jobs' spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these lands with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let loose the best map service,
That these screaming jets shall fly above the earth
With streetview vans, groaning for burial.
Taken with poetic license from Julius Caesar Act 3, scene 1, 270–275
Originally Posted by res08hao
I use street view all the time. But, there are many views where the glass is dirty, or the view was in winter, some even at night. They could employ hundreds just to retake all of them.
And multiple thousands more to actually finish the job they set out to do… driving every road on the planet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Apple was entirely correct to move from an inferior, crippled product to their own mapping and navigation architecture and infrastructure including their own database of points of interest which has far more business listings than Google. (1)
And I will feel entirely justified in using it as little as possible, because one of the most useful features of Google Maps - Street View - is quite simply impossible for Apple to replicate in any reasonable timeframe, even if they wanted to.
The only loser here is the consumer.
As for Street View being creepy, no. I was actually photographed by a Street View car outside my house several years ago. For a long time you could make out my face enough to know it was me, BUT, that was only if you knew to look there. And then it would only let the user know I was there at the given time that the imagery was taken. I honestly don't get the hangup people have regarding the technology. It's only imagery that anyone could photograph legally by driving down the street. And, you really can't see into houses; the images aren't that good.