Irish Minister for Justice considers Apple’s iOS 6 Maps dangerous | Hacker News Reader

Irish Minister for Justice considers Apple’s iOS 6 Maps dangerous

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57 pointsk-mcgrady52 comments

This was just a publicity measure for the guy's constituency.

No pilot flying in VFR conditions is going to need to rely on a consumer map application running on a smartphone or tablet in the event of an emergency, because they're trained to know their alternate airports and to look out at the ground to identify suitable emergency landing areas.

Similarly IFR pilots are required to file flight plans which often require explicit identification of alternate airports in the case of an emergency and they carry so much redundant equipment that a need to fall back on Apple Maps isn't a realistic scenario.

If you want to highlight the real dangers of people relying on maps with faulty data there are far better examples. For instance in the city in which I live Google Maps for years showed a high-end hotel as being in a really, really bad part of town. Unsuspecting tourists could get themselves into a bad spot just following what their maps app was telling them.

With people relying on the built-in maps apps on their phones to an ever-growing extent, Apple needs to put in a lot of effort to fix Apple Maps and they need to do it fast.

It sounds like you're a US pilot, are the regulations similar internationally?

Though I have heard of some pretty ridiculous landing decisions [1], I doubt this map error will increase Airfield's chances of someone landing there. So I totally agree, the situation described is rather preposterous.

[1] http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_northern_az/other/dps-p...

I have experience with the regulations in South Africa, but they are similar internationally as a result of co-operation through the ICAO and other agencies. Most of the world also follows the lead of the US FAA and European JAA in terms of civil aviation regulations.

And yes, pilots have had to make some bizarre emergency landings over the years, but if you're in a situation where the engine quits and you have to get on the ground safely quick the last thing you'll be doing is looking down at your phone or tablet. So yep, preposterous.

My first thought was that it's ridiculous to assume pilots would ever be reliant on Apple Maps when trying to land their aircraft.

Then I remembered a few similar occurrences:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianoce...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDgC4FMftpg

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Queensland-Floods-Helicopter-...

Quite a few airlines have handed out iPads to pilots already. It wouldn't be a stretch for that to happen eventually...

The pilots are not using the built-in Maps app.

Pilot here. I will confirm this, and also add that there are many other ways to find an airport (paper maps, atc, handheld aviation gps, built-in gps, airport beacons at night, and also just looking out the window). In an emergency, the last thing I'd do is have my head down in an ipad/iphone. From the aerial shot it appears clear that it's not an airport, but it is probably the largest field around, so it would be a target in an engine failure scenario regardless.

Everyone is laughing now, but the Keyhole satellite imaging application is used by military planners. The consumer version is known as Google Earth, since Keyhole inc. was acquired by Google. The resolution and geo-references might not be as good as the Keyhole Military version, but it isn't "dangerously" bad either.

A pilot could quite reasonably use geographic way-points for a respectable approach and landing.

Could happen in an emergency, and that is the point.

If you are out of other options, you use whatever you have to keep yourself alive.

I'm not going to say that nobody would ever do it, but I will say that any pilot who relies on a smartphone's built-in mapping app to find airports deserves the outcome he gets.

It's a hazard to others.

What if the pilot has a feature phone with no maps at all??? Think of the children!

There's a big difference between using consumer maps for rescue operations when no other charts are available, and flying in the UK where there are high-quality VFR and IFR paper charts (which all pilots are expected to have for any areas they're flying through, either for primary navigation or just in case the GPS dies), certified cockpit GPS data, as well as radar services available to help you find a suitable airport.

Somewhere, there's an intern with "While at Apple, developed state of the art automated feature identification algorithms for mapping team" on his resume.

> Somewhere, there's an intern with "While at Apple, developed state of the art automated feature identification algorithms for mapping team" on his resume.

I feel worse for the intern with ``Microsoft Windows Notepad'' on his resume.

In fairness, Notepad manages to basically do what you expect it to.

It has an annoying file size limitations, though.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/59578

> It has an annoying file size limitations, though.

> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/59578

The link you submitted is for:

    Microsoft Windows 3.0 Standard Edition

    Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.1

    Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11

My bad. I can assure you that they persisted long after that, though. I hardly ever used 3.1 and I replaced Notepad long ago due to them.

Vim is far more useful, anyhow.

Responsibility for an application that's been used by tens, if not hundreds, of millions of users? You could do worse on a resume.

Notepad is 179kb of awesome. I have Android applications that do much less and take up megabytes of storage.

> on his resume.

This is Apple. The resume will simply say 'worked at Apple Inc. developing software.'

This is all hilariously overblown and silly. And not about "feature identification algorithms". It's about one error on a map, which Apple probably has already fixed, and will soon if it has not yet.

Have you seen the other thread(s) on the new Apple maps app?

This isn't a one-off. The mapping data is all over the place.

There are a number of examples floating around that make it appear as if Apple is deriving map feature types from their names. For example, a water pumping station labelled as a gas station.

http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31933329952/the-ta...

What's that about one error being overblown?

I think his statement was more light-hearted than interpreted here.

agreed, Irish times interprets it as tongue in cheek http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0920/break...

I can't speak to Ireland, but pilots using the Maps app for navigation wouldn't "fly" in the US. There are electronic cockpit apps that can be used on an iPad, but Maps isn't one of them.

I don't think that's what the Justice Minister means. It's conceivable that in an emergency, as a last resort, the pilot of a small plane may use the Maps app on an iPad or iPhone so scout potential landing areas. Obviously it's unlikely to happen but it is a possibility (probably not on a 747 though).

I would love to hear a sequence of events that could possibly involve a pilot attempting to land on the basis of information from an iPhone map.

There's whole emergency systems in place to ensure things like this don't happen- you know, basic radio contact with the ground being one obvious example.

Irish Government ministers should be dealing with our sovereign debt crisis rather than spouting crap about stuff they've no idea about.

There is already a post on this thread about similar events already having occurred - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550431

Didn't see any reliance on a maps app for emergency navigation. In the one example the pilots printed out an image from Google Earth as a guide to the terrain of the landing area, they still used their eyes and brains to decide how to land once they got there. In the other they used the app to locate street addresses, but that wasn't critical navigation and the same could've been achieved with a standard street map.

I have yet to hear of any pilot relying on a maps app like Google Maps in an emergency.

If you can see the field, you can tell it's not an airport (although you'd know much sooner if you had your charts or cockpit GPS out), and decide if you want to land there anyway.

If you can't see the field, your iPhone GPS isn't going to be nearly precise enough to let you land safely anyway, even if it was an airport.

I don't know how Apple could expect anything less than this response. They are coming from behind with the incumbent king of maps holding a lead they couldn't possibly hope to close in a first release. Possibly not in the first several releases.

It's a hard problem. Even if you get a good source of data you still have to present it correctly to the user and the best way to fix issues is to get it into the hands of users. If you allow competing maps on the platform though the users aren't likely to use yours unless the data is at least as good and the experience is superior.

I'm not sure this was a battle they should have picked.

I'll just leave this here:

http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/

This is a common problem in Ireland. The locals are constantly using google maps and now apple maps to land their planes.

Hope no one using Apple's iOS6 maps tries to land a plane at the "Airport Strip" in Mississauga. Its a strip club.

Just be happy you don't live in Ireland.

[1] Our prime minister explaining what cloud computing is - "A wireless connection to shared storage" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzaQxLFl3rQ

[2] A senator explaining why the abundance of rain on the west coast of Ireland makes it particularly suitable as a base for, wait for it, _cloud_ technology - https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056460271

The second one was a hoax.

The site is over its bandwidth limit, here's a cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...

    "Clearly the designation is not only wrong but is dangerously misleading in that
    it could result in a pilot, unfamiliar with the area,  in an emergency situation
    and without other available information, attempting a landing."

Maybe you shouldn't have named it "airfield", then?

> Maybe you shouldn't have named it "airfield", then?

It's been there since the 1820s.

I remember a story my mom tells about her, a Montanan until her adulthood, going to Chicago with her new husband (born and raised in Skokie) and asking him what kind of planes land in Wrigley Field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Field

See, in Montana 'field' is always (or nearly always) short for 'airfield'; there's no way to tell how language will change over time and place.

I think you meant to say, maybe the aviation industry shouldn't have chosen a name that matched that of a farm.

Question: are maps in a TomTom GPS as broken as these?

Can someone file a bug to rename the farm?

Wait! There's an App for that? (Autoland?)

Legend has it that a Qantas 747 tried that.

Problem: Autoland landed rough and to the left of runway

Solution: Autoland not installed on aircraft.

Apparently, when the 747 first came out they had issues with the avionics box for autoland, and someone didn't tape-off the panel in the cockpit as unserviceable.

Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re:

Not sure where this is from, but I doubt it's true. Qantas has a fairly good safety record, and as far as I can tell (from Wikipedia and memory), only two incidents have occurred with 747s, and only one during landing: a 747-400 overran the runway in Thailand during a storm.

Sounds more like an urban legend to me.

First of all: Qantas have had more "incidents" than that. The Bangkok mishap was the first "accident" (substantial damage to the jet) since they started flying jet airliners.

A Qantas pilot explained the details of how it could have happened. If certain pre-landing checks were not done, and the module was missing, its Plausible for non-functioning autoland in a 747-200 to go unnoticed.

Accidently going off the side of the runway pavement could result in little damage, assuming the jet stayed controllable.

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