Apple scrambled to hire iOS 6 maps engineers days before launch | Hacker News Reader

Apple scrambled to hire iOS 6 maps engineers days before launch

theregister.co.uk

39 pointscpeterso44 comments

I don't care for the title. Clearly these spots aren't for engineers to come on board and fix maps in a couple days, they are there for future development. "Scrambled" implies an imminent deadline.

Another explanation is that a substantial portion of their Maps team either walked out or was fired just prior to launch, and must now be replaced.

What does Fr. Occam say?

Exactly the same thing happened with Antennagate.

Or that, once shipping a piece of software, the team was ready to re-staff for the next major release, coming in a year.

You don't add engineers on at the end but at the beginning.

There was no mass firing for "Antennagate" in fact there was no "antennagate"... like this BS maps "issue" Antennagate was just a bunch of apple haters bashing the company.

The reality is, the iOS maps app is already far better than google maps around here. Apple has terrain data and correct streets, google doesn't even know this major city exists (becuase it isn't in the US or europe.)

Which city/country are you in?

The new iOS map app is fine here in Barcelona, except that all the street names are in Spanish instead of Catalan.

It might help to verify Maps label's language configuration. It solved my English - Spanish labels problem.

Settings --> Maps

Yes, the issue was blown out of proportion

But heads rolled at Apple, ask a certain Mr. Papermaster (not only because of that)

Antenna gate wasn't real? I can reproduce the antenna fault with a significant drop in signal strength with one pinkie.

I classify that as a major fault. For a premium product, that's unacceptable.

>Antenna gate wasn't real? I can reproduce the antenna fault with a significant drop in signal strength with one pinkie. I classify that as a major fault. For a premium product, that's unacceptable.

Really? Because tens (hundreds) of millions of people found it _totally acceptable_ and made that phone the top selling phone.

Not to mention that they found that the "issue" was a non issue in practice.

I know at least 3 friends of mine that bought the 4 on AT&T and suffered through several dropped calls - they even used my Moto once and Nexus the other time to complete their calls at the same place on the same carrier.

So Antennagate was real, iPhone <5 dropped more calls than any other phone on AT&T. That's the disingenuous part about how Steve handled Antennagate - sure competitors dropped bars when holding hand over their antennas but the competitors antennas weren't badly designed such that they would be easily covered while holding the phone and their phones didn't drop as many calls.

People decided to live with it but 2 out of my 3 friends are on non-iPhones as their work doesn't afford them dropped calls.

Well, I, for one, still have an iPhone 4. Never updated on 4s (or 5). Never had any reception problems that I can recall (i.e not getting through a call).

It might be that I get a good signal where I live and work (and in 2 different countries, neither of which is the states). So, YMMV.

But, I do remember iPhone 4 owners actually reporting LESS dropped calls than iPhone 3GS:

"iPhone 4 owners are reporting fewer dropped calls than iPhone 3GS owners":

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/08/04/report-iphone-4-owners-report...

And after the media noise blew out, there weren't any complains about it --as if the forums and people forgot all about it--, just people using their phones.

And AT&T could be to blame, not the iPhone. For:

""According to a March study by ChangeWave Research, AT&T is the reason the iPhone drops calls. Users of the Verizon iPhone 4 reported a 1.8% dropped-call rate, the same rate as users of other Verizon phones. Users of the AT&T iPhone 4 reported a 4.8% dropped-call rate, 2.7 times the rate of Verizon iPhone users.""

It was real enough that Apple settled a class action lawsuit over the dodgy antenna.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-02-20/tech/tech_mobile_iphone-4...

Heh I'd be very hesitant to visit iphone4settlement.com had I not just read the article. Something about that screams malware to me..

But I guess Apple probably knew that when they bought the domain.

And since the exact same "fault" appears in 75% of the phones of that generation your point is what? Oh, nothing.

BS maps issue? It's comforting to know that the fundamental uselessness of this app to me is, apparently, just a figment of my imagination.

This whole thing pisses me off. People can't just be content to say that it works for them. They have to declare that the problem doesn't even exist, and all of us who are actually experiencing it are somehow wrong. How do you even get the idea to do that?

Or there's a persistant shortage of software developers and Apple (like lots of tech companies) are always looking for new staff.

The advertisements for employees (whether there were or will be any actual hires is unknown) is Apple's way of controlling the narrative in a case where they have long known they would be shipping an inferior product.

Every update to maps is now newsworthy, and every piece will be themed "look at all these improvements." Part of me, the cynical part, suspects that the earlier copyright issue with OpenStreetMaps was deliberate and intended to positively brand the product with the FOSS community by drawing attention to their use of open source. It was TomTom that they threw under the bus this week.

TomTom got thrown under the bus and there were so many other players involved in making the failure. There are tens of companies that contributed to the data all of whom have gotten little exposure/blame.

>The advertisements for employees (whether there were or will be any actual hires is unknown) is Apple's way of controlling the narrative in a case where they have long known they would be shipping an inferior product.

Going out of your way to avoid the Occam razor, aren't you?

Hiring as a conspiracy to spin/control the eventual PR issues that would emerge from shipping an inferior product.

Seriously?

Somehow some job postings would make Apple "control the narrative"? Seriously? And how exactly do they "control it", now that they have made those postings?

How about using the bloody Occam Razor and saying that: Apple started work on their Maps app for iOS 6, saw it needed more manpower, and are expanding their team for the eventual iOS 7 release.

I don't know how Apple is going to catch up with Google, when Google has about 7100 people working on Google Maps

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-has-7000-fewer-people-w...

Maybe Apple should recruit these two chaps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGZ56qzXltU

There again maybe they did.

But in all fairness, Apple have stated it will get better and in that everybody believes them because I doubt it could get much worse, especialy given pictures like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/105902573976541607678/posts/iTjb...

On the plus side, they haven't found anything to realy moan about the phone, so there had to be something for the press to complain about. A company new to maps release a map that they can update as they go along and make it better, oh the shock, what was google maps like on initial beta, I know last year google maps got me lost and upon one occacion traveling thru a brick wall, bless. It'll get better and or there will be something new to complain about. Poor Apple, were is RIM when you need them :D.

This reminds me of how they "scrambled" to hire antenna engineers and similar job posts with iPhone 4 launch!

As a "Steve Jobs would", I'm pretty sure that not launching half baked products was very high in his priority list

Imagine the level of shouting there would be at Apple from Jobs after the iOS 6 maps fuckup. Is there anyway whatsoever that anyone at Apple is feeling that much heat right now?

Why does this nonsense keep being perpetuated on here.

Steve Jobs routinely launched products that were less than perfect. Hence his quote, "real artists ship".

Can you point to something (in the iOS line) that was as broken as this? I can't think of anything

The initial iPhone OS, before it was called iOS, shipped without copy and paste or 3G at a time when all mobile operating systems had both copy and paste as well as shipped with 3G on their premium models. The first iPhone certainly qualified as a Premium Device.

The original iPhone didn't have copy/paste (and it was right to ship it).

But it didn't break any existing functionality did it? There just wasn't any!

If you held the the iPhone 4 the wrong way, the signal would plummet. This was under Job's watch.

Outside the iOS line, Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) is a good example of something that shipped before being really done.

In the iOS line, I'd say iPad 1 is woefully underpowered with RAM. Browsing in Safari suffers due to repaints when scrolling and page reloads.

In 20/20 hinsight, shipping iOS without an SDK and even without a plan for an SDK. If they haven't introduced the SDK, iPhone would probably never had taken off.

MobileMe.

Also, if things didn't go the way they did, then the lack of flash on the original iPhone might have been viewed that way if Apple had to back peddle.

(In retrospect, Apple won that gamble, because it wasn't that much of a problem).

The early firmwares were buggy as hell, it would crash from time to time. Heck it was imposible to type with keyboard lag that could be as bad as 10 SECONDS.

My first tweet ever was abot how firmware 2.1 fixed many of this issues, mind you this was 4 years ago

The trouble here is that, from a user's perspective, this isn't a launch. It's version 6.0 of a product, by which we expect the kinks to be thoroughly worked out.

By replacing Maps with something new that was presented as just an upgrade, they put themselves in a really tough spot that they don't normally do.

I've not seen Apple launch a half baked product in quite a long time, not like the crap that, for instance, google still ships and calls "android".

iOS Maps with its first iteration is far better than google maps, after 8 years.

The company is not perfect, but the idea that something is "half backed" is just standard issue FUD from the apple bashers.

Remember how the iPod was going to fail? The iPhone had "no chance"? The iPas "just a big ipod touch" and "reminds me of a feminine product?"

I really wonder if people foget all this nonsense. Remember "antennagate" and consume rreports selling out its integrity and honor for page views?

Noticed a pattern?

Nirvana: I usually (50-60% of the time) agree with your comments here on HN, but this time... I disagree with your first, second, third, fourth and fifth paragraphs (too much hyperbole!). Android might've been bad, but is quite allright now (in many areas, including "intents" it's far ahead of iOS. Though in ease of use, ease of development and things like Core2D/CoreData lags behind iOS). iOS maps is good IMO, but worse than current GMaps.

The company is not infallible. Apple has the best advertisement of any company (IMO), but remember those unbelievably stupid and corny Olympics ads?

I don't really care to debate it with you, because despite making a compelling argument-- that people always bash apple products when they first come out, including several notalbe examples (iPod, iPad, iPhone) where people said they were terrible... my "crime" of not bashing Apple and pointing out that android sucks (and it does. people use it for ideological reasons, I'm convinced, or because they've never used an iPhone.) my comment is sitting at -4.

HN is a site overrun with mindless, ideologically driven jerks. Your comment was fair, but the censorship means that only ideologically approved opinions are seen, and everything else is cut, so there's no point in participating here at all.

You're being silly. A very large majority of HN users use Apple products in one form or another. I can't speak for the rest but I am just not automatically going to accept each and every thing that any entity does as good. And that includes Apple.

If you think everybody around you is an idiot on a forum that contains an extremely large number of well educated and tactful people then I think you should consider the possibility that the problem lies with you.

Calling the majority of HN "mindless ideologically driven jerks" is collective name-calling, something that is simply not done here.

If there is 'no point in participating here at all' then why do you continue with your endless non-coherent tirades?

Steve Jobs: "If you're not failing once in a while, you're not trying hard enough".

iPod: "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame".

iPhone: "What? No copy/paste? No third party apps?"

OS X 10.0/.1 shall we even go there?

Apple's way was always one of iterative enhancement.

The only reason for the current regression was that they started from zero, were the previous offering was from a third party competitor (Google) with 8+ years head-start in mapping.

Why was this article written in pseudo-textspeak? Is that the style that guardian uses for technology news now?

It's written for The Register which has a much more relaxed reporting style.

If by ‘relaxed’ you mean ‘tabloid’, sure. It seems to be a requirement that any Register article about Apple products has to be dismissive towards people who use them (even though that is most people who might read the article these days):

> fanbois and fangrrls across the world branded the new satnav-like service as rubbish

1. needlessly trollsome, 2. alludes to them being irrational supporters, and yet… these are the people being critical? Maybe they're not irrational fanatics after all…?

I'd describe it as less credible. Especially articles written by Leach. A hack if ever there was one. In fact a hell-banning of Register articles wouldn't be a bad thing at all.

Cheesus H Crust. Apple has leaped over years of Google development in 1 release and people are complaining? Apple hate has no relationship to reality.

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