[quote name="Disturbia" url="/t/158797/apples-ios-7-3d-maps-leave-google-earth-nokia-maps-3d-looking-old-fashioned/40#post_2371347"]Even Google's name is old fashioned![/QUOTE]
How? It's a misspelling, but old-fashioned?
I love the irony that the largest search engine in the world is a misspelling because they couldn't remember how 'googol' was spelled… and couldn't look it up.
It's been what, a year? and Apple Maps has already come this far.
All of this in a year, against a competitor that apparently specializes in this sort of thing, and Apple is apparently putting them to school in a number of areas within this service.
Google has always focused on the underlying data, but didn't really start taking presentation seriously until Larry Page took over as CEO.
The 3D Hoover dam image is the perfect litmus test to portray the insane discrepency between the coverage of Apple and Google products. The distorted image was used to headline pretty much every single negative Maps article, I must have seen it posted thousands of times, accompanied with mockery and denigration. The image was supposed to show just show shitty Apple maps was. Every single fandroid and apple hater reposted it with glee, over and over again, and used it to troll about how bad the product was. Major news sites such as CNN also used it, feigning shock and contempt.
Meanwhile, Google has had the SAME image with pretty much the EXACT SAME distortions- on a product they've been working on for 7 years. Noone ever noticed, and the ones who did didn't give a shit. Even now, almost a year after Apple maps was released and this imagery was mocked, Google STILL hasn't fixed theirs, and again- noone gives a shit or cares, especially Google cheerleaders. Meanwhile, Apple's version looks perfect, with an insane level of detail.
This 1:1 comparison is pretty rock-solid evidence for how intellectually dishonest critisism against Apple tends to be, as well as the different standard they're held at, even by people who claim to despise the company. Its incredibly sad and childish.
I agree that the media coverage of Apple's Maps based on the Hoover Dam images was intensely biased, but I don't agree that the whole Hoover Dam thing is a valid test or comparison between the available products as presented in this article.
Google Maps and Nokia maps have the same problem with Hoover Dam that Apple had in their original maps because all three use the same technology and the same technique for rendering it. Outside of Apple's flyover areas, they default to simply showing the satellite images projected onto an elevation map which is exactly how Google maps and Nokia maps work as well outside of areas where they also provide additional meshes of objects placed in this landscape. The road dips down simply because it's a flat picture projected onto a mesh of a canyon.
Where the article argues that Google maps had been "released seven years earlier, and regularly updated since," and then further argues that it "still isn't accurate," "a year later," it's really being a bit disingenuous. There are no updates to the technology being used here that would "fix" the Hoover Dam problem and it's really just a perception of a problem in the first place, as opposed to an actual problem. Apple fixed this perceived problem by adding in a 3D model of Hover Dam and dropping it into the surroundings, but that's really an entirely different thing from assuming that updates to the original mapping technology and process would do. This same "problem" is true of pretty much any bridge, anywhere in the world that crosses a river or a canyon outside of Apple's flyover maps coverage or outside of Googles Google Earth or city building coverage. The solution in all cases is to use a different technology to build meshes for the bridges and drop it into the simpler, satellite map. Since there are millions of bridges in the world, this will take an impossible amount of time.
The Hoover Dam fiasco is more of a media problem than an actual mapping problem and just a high profile example of the limitations of the technologies being used by all parties. To suggest as the article does that it's simply related to how regularly Google updates it's imagery, or that because Apple fixed Hoover Dam that they are intrinsically "better," or have better technology than Google is wrong. Apple was responding to a media issue by fixing Hoover Dam, not a mapping issue.
I do beleive that Apple has better technology available, and that moving forward they will come up with the best mapping solution, but the Hoover Dam fiasco is a red herring IMO and doesn't prove anything.
I love the irony that the largest search engine in the world is a misspelling because they couldn't remember how 'googol' was spelled… and couldn't look it up.
I always thought it was "Google," as in "Googly-eyed" (because the two "o's" remind me of glasses), and thus spelled correctly.
"The 3D view is nice for showing off, but it really doesn't have the utility of street level photos. For example, often when I am taking a road trip, I will "drive" the route near the final destination inside of street view in order to visually memorize the landmarks I need to recognize."
Having served in the Army and being an expert in land navigation I find the 3D view far more useful since it provides a better view of the terrain. I almost never need to use street signs and I find the shape, dimensions and elevations of terrain, street, blocks, buildings and landmarks far more useful. Of course it's a skill that requires some practice but it's far superior but anyone can master it.
Street view can be helpful but it's like a trail of bread crumbs, miss one and your next to lost. It also requires too much interaction with the screen while driving.
This is the alternate view that most are missing, because it involves the right-hemisphere view of the world, which is walled-off territory for those raised on 2D media for all their lives, i.e., most of us. Apple is going for the right brain first, no doubt while they peck away at the left-brain "breadcrumb" details that have to be there too, maybe overwhelmingly for most people.
The dual-hemisphere approach goes back to the birds. They use their right eye/left brain to peck for food, pick out details, and their left eye/right brain to scan the horizon for threats and to keep track of their mate or group within the whole picture. See Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary.
I'm familiar with whole-picture navigation, as in landscape, cityscape, sun direction, and was more or less trained by using paper maps and doing the navigating on road trips with my father, who always wanted to take the back roads wherever we went. We never had a compass on the dash. They lied, and besides it would be cheating. If it was cloudy you kept track of the sun by remembering the turns and picturing yourself from above.
To this day, I never use GPS. Forget relying on a machine for turn by turn. Use the overhead view in your head. It helps enormously to see the map of where you're going from above, the more 3D the better.
studentx, I imagine you used stereo aerial-view maps in the army. These are good therapy for left-brained dominant people to wake up their right world-view hemisphere. So are Apple's 3D flyovers, but it would be better if they were in true stereo rather than rendered perspective. Brian May, guitarist for Queen and a 3D scholar, has done some stereo extractions from Apple's flyovers. Very interesting.
I love the irony that the largest search engine in the world is a misspelling because they couldn't remember how 'googol' was spelled… and couldn't look it up.
Amazing how many people Google has on their payroll as evidence by comments in response to this editorial.
Apple Maps has improved dramatically around the world wherever Apple iPhone is popular.
Furthermore, Apple has pushed Google to develop much better maps. You are welcome all you poor, foolish individuals although I feel somewhat ill knowing my purchases of Apple products and services have helped Google and their gaggles of groupies.
Your comments about photogrammetry are amusing. The paneling markers themselves would be a huge (and might I say expensive) job involving not only common plane surveying but taking into account the curvature of the earth. There is also the minor problem of foliage and inaccessible terrain. These special cameras do not get the kind of resolution you want while trying to get "thousands of square miles at a time".
Interesting but my phone does not yet have a Ctrl key or left mouse.. LOL. I am interested in navigation solutions that are available for use in my car and then easily taken to the train, bus, etc. from where I might walk. I can't see any of this with a laptop and certainly not a phone.
1) Street View cameras record both photos, and LIDAR. Foliage is an issue, but there are ways around it. There are lots of research papers floating around on street level extracting of 3D models and facades, just do a search.
2) The original article used the Web version of Google Maps for Earth beta which does allow free rotation. Google Earth (just checked on my iPhone) also allows free rotation with a two-finger gesture.
The most important difference between Apple and Google maps is in the SDK used by third party app developers. Google places loads of restrictions on the developer and can even turn off maps entirely if an app gets too popular. Apple has very few restrictions via their SDK and are mostly aimed at preventing out of control bugs from overloading their servers. With Apple's SDK, you can create a route between two points and access each point on the line. It even gives you alternate routes and an estimated travel time. Apple also allows developers to create map images and save them wherever a user wants. Apple's forward and reverse location look up also have very few restrictions unlike Google's that must only be used with a Google map.
The point of all this is while Apple's Maps app is very nice, there will soon be a lot of really great third party apps built on top of the new SDK in iOS 7 which will certainly put Google's very limited map to shame.
Is Google Maps eight times better than Apple's first effort?
This holds true for some time but now it looks like an excuse. By the same logic, when Google Maps will be 28 years old, Apple maps will be only 20 years old. Will you accept an inferior Maps from Apple then?
iPhone was a winner from the word go, iPad was a winner from day one. Yes, Apple Maps needs time to improve but it should have been labeled a "Beta" rather than presented as a finished product.
This holds true for some time but now it looks like an excuse. By the same logic, when Google Maps will be 28 years old, Apple maps will be only 20 years old. Will you accept an inferior Maps from Apple then?
iPhone was a winner from the word go, iPad was a winner from day one. Yes, Apple Maps needs time to improve but it should have been labeled a "Beta" rather than presented as a finished product.
Let me understand this logic.
Apple labels Siri as a public beta, people complain
Apple doesn't labels Maps as a public beta, people complain
Google labels many of their products as public betas including some labeled as public betas for years, no one complains
Seemingly, whether Apple labels a product beta or not is irrelevant. Gaggles of Googlers will complain.
[Quote]When Google Maps' satellite imagery is taken into perspective (above), it simply appears as a flat, confusing distortion of the overhead view.[/quote]
Oddly, that's the exact same behavior you get from Apple Maps when you put it in 3D/Flyover mode in an area that has no 3D data. Doesn't that make it just as much a "confusing distortion" in Apple Maps?
I'm still not sold on the value of 3D when it comes to navigation. I actually prefer the 3d gray form buildings in Google Maps because a) they still provide a sense of building geography without the bandwidth overhead of full 3D models and b) Google had the wisdom of making them transparent so they don't block the most important piece of navigation information, the roads.
Google maps continues to blow away Apple maps when it comes to traffic data. Apple continues to present only two levels for traffic: the red dashes that represent a traffic issue and nothing which indicates either there's no data or no problem with no distinction. Google meanwhile presents 5 levels: nothing for no data, green for no traffic problems, yellow for light traffic issues, red for serious issues and red/black for extreme traffic issues like road closures. Which of those sounds more useful? Google was lacking individual incident reports but added them on the most recent release.
Which brings up another point where I feel Google Maps is superior. Google can add features to its map app at anytime. How often can you expect an update for Apple Maps? Once a year with the new Version of iOS. In theory Apple could update Maps out of cycle with iOS but it most likely won't.
Comments
How? It's a misspelling, but old-fashioned?
I love the irony that the largest search engine in the world is a misspelling because they couldn't remember how 'googol' was spelled… and couldn't look it up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quadra 610
Astounding.
It's been what, a year? and Apple Maps has already come this far.
All of this in a year, against a competitor that apparently specializes in this sort of thing, and Apple is apparently putting them to school in a number of areas within this service.
Google has always focused on the underlying data, but didn't really start taking presentation seriously until Larry Page took over as CEO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slurpy
The 3D Hoover dam image is the perfect litmus test to portray the insane discrepency between the coverage of Apple and Google products. The distorted image was used to headline pretty much every single negative Maps article, I must have seen it posted thousands of times, accompanied with mockery and denigration. The image was supposed to show just show shitty Apple maps was. Every single fandroid and apple hater reposted it with glee, over and over again, and used it to troll about how bad the product was. Major news sites such as CNN also used it, feigning shock and contempt.
Meanwhile, Google has had the SAME image with pretty much the EXACT SAME distortions- on a product they've been working on for 7 years. Noone ever noticed, and the ones who did didn't give a shit. Even now, almost a year after Apple maps was released and this imagery was mocked, Google STILL hasn't fixed theirs, and again- noone gives a shit or cares, especially Google cheerleaders. Meanwhile, Apple's version looks perfect, with an insane level of detail.
This 1:1 comparison is pretty rock-solid evidence for how intellectually dishonest critisism against Apple tends to be, as well as the different standard they're held at, even by people who claim to despise the company. Its incredibly sad and childish.
I agree that the media coverage of Apple's Maps based on the Hoover Dam images was intensely biased, but I don't agree that the whole Hoover Dam thing is a valid test or comparison between the available products as presented in this article.
Google Maps and Nokia maps have the same problem with Hoover Dam that Apple had in their original maps because all three use the same technology and the same technique for rendering it. Outside of Apple's flyover areas, they default to simply showing the satellite images projected onto an elevation map which is exactly how Google maps and Nokia maps work as well outside of areas where they also provide additional meshes of objects placed in this landscape. The road dips down simply because it's a flat picture projected onto a mesh of a canyon.
Where the article argues that Google maps had been "released seven years earlier, and regularly updated since," and then further argues that it "still isn't accurate," "a year later," it's really being a bit disingenuous. There are no updates to the technology being used here that would "fix" the Hoover Dam problem and it's really just a perception of a problem in the first place, as opposed to an actual problem. Apple fixed this perceived problem by adding in a 3D model of Hover Dam and dropping it into the surroundings, but that's really an entirely different thing from assuming that updates to the original mapping technology and process would do. This same "problem" is true of pretty much any bridge, anywhere in the world that crosses a river or a canyon outside of Apple's flyover maps coverage or outside of Googles Google Earth or city building coverage. The solution in all cases is to use a different technology to build meshes for the bridges and drop it into the simpler, satellite map. Since there are millions of bridges in the world, this will take an impossible amount of time.
The Hoover Dam fiasco is more of a media problem than an actual mapping problem and just a high profile example of the limitations of the technologies being used by all parties. To suggest as the article does that it's simply related to how regularly Google updates it's imagery, or that because Apple fixed Hoover Dam that they are intrinsically "better," or have better technology than Google is wrong. Apple was responding to a media issue by fixing Hoover Dam, not a mapping issue.
I do beleive that Apple has better technology available, and that moving forward they will come up with the best mapping solution, but the Hoover Dam fiasco is a red herring IMO and doesn't prove anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
How? It's a misspelling, but old-fashioned?
I love the irony that the largest search engine in the world is a misspelling because they couldn't remember how 'googol' was spelled… and couldn't look it up.
I always thought it was "Google," as in "Googly-eyed" (because the two "o's" remind me of glasses), and thus spelled correctly.
This is the alternate view that most are missing, because it involves the right-hemisphere view of the world, which is walled-off territory for those raised on 2D media for all their lives, i.e., most of us. Apple is going for the right brain first, no doubt while they peck away at the left-brain "breadcrumb" details that have to be there too, maybe overwhelmingly for most people.
The dual-hemisphere approach goes back to the birds. They use their right eye/left brain to peck for food, pick out details, and their left eye/right brain to scan the horizon for threats and to keep track of their mate or group within the whole picture. See Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary.
I'm familiar with whole-picture navigation, as in landscape, cityscape, sun direction, and was more or less trained by using paper maps and doing the navigating on road trips with my father, who always wanted to take the back roads wherever we went. We never had a compass on the dash. They lied, and besides it would be cheating. If it was cloudy you kept track of the sun by remembering the turns and picturing yourself from above.
To this day, I never use GPS. Forget relying on a machine for turn by turn. Use the overhead view in your head. It helps enormously to see the map of where you're going from above, the more 3D the better.
studentx, I imagine you used stereo aerial-view maps in the army. These are good therapy for left-brained dominant people to wake up their right world-view hemisphere. So are Apple's 3D flyovers, but it would be better if they were in true stereo rather than rendered perspective. Brian May, guitarist for Queen and a 3D scholar, has done some stereo extractions from Apple's flyovers. Very interesting.
http://www.londonstereo.com/news.html
Go down about seven images till you get to an iPhone map image of a tower. Also contains the best exercise for freeviewing stereo I've ever seen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
How? It's a misspelling, but old-fashioned?
I love the irony that the largest search engine in the world is a misspelling because they couldn't remember how 'googol' was spelled… and couldn't look it up.
Well ...
Apple Maps has improved dramatically around the world wherever Apple iPhone is popular.
Furthermore, Apple has pushed Google to develop much better maps. You are welcome all you poor, foolish individuals although I feel somewhat ill knowing my purchases of Apple products and services have helped Google and their gaggles of groupies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Amazing how many people Google has on their payroll as evidence by comments in response to this editorial.
*facepalm*
Quote:
Originally Posted by Damn_Its_Hot
Your comments about photogrammetry are amusing. The paneling markers themselves would be a huge (and might I say expensive) job involving not only common plane surveying but taking into account the curvature of the earth. There is also the minor problem of foliage and inaccessible terrain. These special cameras do not get the kind of resolution you want while trying to get "thousands of square miles at a time".
Interesting but my phone does not yet have a Ctrl key or left mouse.. LOL. I am interested in navigation solutions that are available for use in my car and then easily taken to the train, bus, etc. from where I might walk. I can't see any of this with a laptop and certainly not a phone.
1) Street View cameras record both photos, and LIDAR. Foliage is an issue, but there are ways around it. There are lots of research papers floating around on street level extracting of 3D models and facades, just do a search.
2) The original article used the Web version of Google Maps for Earth beta which does allow free rotation. Google Earth (just checked on my iPhone) also allows free rotation with a two-finger gesture.
The point of all this is while Apple's Maps app is very nice, there will soon be a lot of really great third party apps built on top of the new SDK in iOS 7 which will certainly put Google's very limited map to shame.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GTR
Google Maps: 8 Years Old
Apple Maps: 1 Year Old
Is Google Maps eight times better than Apple's first effort?
This holds true for some time but now it looks like an excuse. By the same logic, when Google Maps will be 28 years old, Apple maps will be only 20 years old. Will you accept an inferior Maps from Apple then?
iPhone was a winner from the word go, iPad was a winner from day one. Yes, Apple Maps needs time to improve but it should have been labeled a "Beta" rather than presented as a finished product.
Maps may have had a rough start, but it WILL be the app to beat in the very near future!
Let me understand this logic.
Seemingly, whether Apple labels a product beta or not is irrelevant. Gaggles of Googlers will complain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Let me understand this logic.
Apple labels Siri as a public beta, people complain
Apple doesn't labels Maps as a public beta, people complain
Google labels many of their products as public betas including some labeled as public betas for years, no one complains
Seemingly, whether Apple labels a product beta or not is irrelevant. Gaggles of Googlers will complain.
Apple labels Siri as a public beta, people complain (because it sucked even as a beta)
Apple doesn't labels Maps as a public beta, people complain (because it sucked as a non beta)
See the pattern?
My guess is that Apple will continue to add user focused GIS services and Google will be more focused on being a global GIS navigator. We shall see.
It may be pretty, but so far, Apple Maps is still useless. Just the other day...
"Useless" is as useless (and wrong) a statement as can be.
Also:
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Apple labels Siri as a public beta, people complain (because it sucked as a non beta)
Apple doesn't labels Maps as a public beta, people complain (because it sucked even as a beta)
See the BS that Google and Samsung feed everyone?
Au contraire. I'm quite an avid apple user and supporter. I just call a spade a spade.
[Quote]When Google Maps' satellite imagery is taken into perspective (above), it simply appears as a flat, confusing distortion of the overhead view.[/quote]
Oddly, that's the exact same behavior you get from Apple Maps when you put it in 3D/Flyover mode in an area that has no 3D data. Doesn't that make it just as much a "confusing distortion" in Apple Maps?
I'm still not sold on the value of 3D when it comes to navigation. I actually prefer the 3d gray form buildings in Google Maps because a) they still provide a sense of building geography without the bandwidth overhead of full 3D models and b) Google had the wisdom of making them transparent so they don't block the most important piece of navigation information, the roads.
Google maps continues to blow away Apple maps when it comes to traffic data. Apple continues to present only two levels for traffic: the red dashes that represent a traffic issue and nothing which indicates either there's no data or no problem with no distinction. Google meanwhile presents 5 levels: nothing for no data, green for no traffic problems, yellow for light traffic issues, red for serious issues and red/black for extreme traffic issues like road closures. Which of those sounds more useful? Google was lacking individual incident reports but added them on the most recent release.
Which brings up another point where I feel Google Maps is superior. Google can add features to its map app at anytime. How often can you expect an update for Apple Maps? Once a year with the new Version of iOS. In theory Apple could update Maps out of cycle with iOS but it most likely won't.