Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

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OSM doesn't do 3D

For most people the 3D is an amusing toy, not really useful. I'd be happy without it frankly.

OSM doesn't do elevation

See 3D above

OSM doesn't do geocoding

They have data for searching on street addresses and towns, and the data is available separately for postcodes etc (TomTom for example will have sold a solution for this to Apple, so they could have gone down that route). Google has this down, as you'd expect given their search expertise, and Apple would have done better to pay them at least for access to this service if nothing else as it's a complicated area.

OSM doesn't have a cleaned up dataset of Points of Interest

Yelp does, and that's who Apple are using for POIs

One other point you didn't mention is that OSM doesn't do satellite data (their stuff is from Yahoo isn't it?), so that is a big area Apple would have had to sort out from another provider.

While you're right that there is no one-stop shop for mapping services, and it's a really complex area (i.e. just choosing OSM would not solve all these probs, as you point out) I do think Apple have missed a chance to form a symbiotic relationship with OSM and enhance the quality of their maps with an open process rather than relying on the often out of date commercial data available and having to either fork the commercial data from this point on, or merge changes. Dealing with all these fixes will suck up a lot of time they could spend on improving the app itself.

>For most people the 3D is an amusing toy, not really useful. I'd be happy without it frankly.

The complaints about the "zigzagging" are about the 3D viewer, hence, my comment about 3D.

>They have data for searching on street addresses and towns, and the data is available separately for postcodes etc (TomTom for example will have sold a solution for this to Apple, so they could have gone down that route). Google has this down, as you'd expect given their search expertise, and Apple would have done better to pay them at least for access to this service if nothing else as it's a complicated area.

To have good geocoding, you need to have line segments with correct ranges and topologically accurate (for example splits in the right intersection taking in consideration overpass/underpass and grade changes - the 3D stuff you don't care about - along with no dangling edges). If you think OSM fits this bill in a world-wide dataset you are incorrect. Go ahead and download the entire dataset and see for yourself planet.openstreetmap.org.

> Yelp does, and that's who Apple are using for POIs

Actually, yelp only has coverage in the US and in the few outside countries they are in. Most of the world is not covered by Yelp's POIs, so sorry, but "Yelp" is not a worldwide solution for POIs - which is what Apple needs.

> One other point you didn't mention is that OSM doesn't do satellite data (their stuff is from Yahoo isn't it?), so that is a big area Apple would have had to sort out from another provider.

Yahoo, nor google, nor anybody else have their own satellite providers. That data usually comes from GeoEye, Digital Globe or any other satellite image provider. But yes, you are right, "OSM" has nothing to do with raster data as a whole (except for the elevation-derived contours they have in some places).

Fixing OSM for anything else than displaying maps is a huge undertaking. Then, when you are done, you basically have to share the data with everybody else (including Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Mapquest etc etc). OSM is the GPL of databases, so for some use cases, it is not the best choice, for other ones, it is.

The post I replied to claim "Apple just pick OSM", and my answer remains... it would not have solved any of the issues that people are complaining about.

The post I replied to claim "Apple just pick OSM", and my answer remains... it would not have solved any of the issues that people are complaining about.

It didn't say 'Apple just pick OSM' (which implies picking OSM would solve all their problems), and as I've pointed out, there are problems with data which it would solve. Here are some examples:

Puna, Peru, roads in the water http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-15.8559322357178&lon=...

Cayman Islands, no road data http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=19.2949&lon=-81.343...

These are serious problems with data which Apple will have a nightmare fixing as there are just so many holes in their data outside the US, and they're now waiting for mapping companies like tomtom for updates, or they'll have to fork and then try to merge with tomtom/etc data later again.

For many (I'd say most) users of the maps app, the order of priorities are something like:

1. Accuracy of map data

2. Coverage of map data

3. Accuracy of map searches (streets, postcodes, POIs)

4. Routing (this is hard problem though)

5. Satellite imagery (for some this would be above routing)

6. Streetview (for some this would be higher)

7. 3D stuff

OSM would help with the first three points (along with other sources of course, just as say tomtom needs supplemented), and would also help in future as other people would do the hard mapping and updating work for apple, which will otherwise prove to be a mammoth task.

Everything else is far less important than getting the basic mapping data right first, including 3D renders of major cities, and even satellite data (nice to have, but less important than basic search and display of accurate mapping).

If they used OSM data and imported (say) every month, they could just tell people to visit OSM to make corrections, and problem areas would gradually get better. As it is they're going to have to sift through hundreds of thousands of reports of missing roads etc which just say 'this is broken, fix it', and they're likely to just be submerged under that workload. Anyway, I don't think we're saying such different things - I'm not saying OSM would cure all Apple's problems or even most of them, just that I thought it would be the best choice for them for the most important facet of their map product, the basic vector data, which is sorely lacking at present and unlikely to rapidly improve.

Your arguments all sound perfectly logical and valid to me. Love of the "spirit" of open source projects and other things have no place in making decisions that can have such a gigantic effect on all manner of people / outcomes of project/ etc. Not if you're going to actually be responsible for dealing with bad decisions personally. Geocoding I know is definitely a giant furrball of fuck I've learned in the past year. Thinking of building a map app and associated services like this is mind boggling to imagine.

I am offended. How could you mix up GPL with OSM? Is this some kind of a troll? If so it is very bad taste.

OSM data is licensed under ODbL. It has nothing common with those "license terrorists".

The ODBL license change was done 8 days ago and took 2 years to change. I was referring to the CC-share alike license it had before for the past several years. This was in reference to Apple using it (if they wanted to fix the data, they would have had to share it). I have not had enough time to study the ODBL license yet since as of 8 days ago it was not relevant to me.

The 3D flyover actually is hugely useful, more so than street view in my opinion, when trying to figure out one's way through the layout of streets in a metropolis.

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