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Comment by eggbrain | Hacker News Reader

What I want to know is -- why did they release the app in the state that it was in vs partnering with someone like Microsoft?

Let's assume that Apple's contract with Google was ending soon, and that Google had failed to deliver features for Apple (turn by turn, etc), meaning Apple wanted to go a different direction.

Sure, Apple then started buying up mapping companies, building their own product, but they must have known they were on a tight schedule. My question is -- why didn't they partner with Microsoft to use Bing maps?

Microsoft gets a huge win in that suddenly 40 million people are using their service. Apple gets a win in that they have a pretty comparative product out of the gate to Google Maps, and it gives them time to build up their own service.

But instead, Apple released maps that had 1/3rd the quality of the maps they had before. Where's the logic in that?

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They don't want to partner with anybody. All that would do is recreate the problem they faced with Google: losing control and sooner or later negatively affecting user experience as New Partner Co. begins to favor its interests over whatever future interests Apple may or may not have.

Far better to rip the band-aid off now, tune the dataset over time, and ultimately emerge with a better overall experience that you now control completely. Already the system-wide integration of mapping is far superior in that regard. That just wasn't going to happen with Google or any other partner which would forever live as a walled garden of an App.

Inaccurate mapping data is, after all, a (relatively) finite problem.

> Inaccurate mapping data is, after all, a (relatively) finite problem.

Not if you live in the area that has very low resolution maps. IMHO "finite problem" is an antithesis to accurate maps. Mapping requires constant improvement. For example roads in the area where I live have been modified 3 times in last 5 years.

The rate of map refining will always be quicker than the rate of building roads.

Always? No. That does not happen by itself, that only happens if you are willing to invest vast resources to see it through.

On average. Not in the tails.

>>They don't want to partner with anybody

They run iCloud on Windows Azure, why not run their map service using Bing Maps data?

Azure is a redundancy service. They have their own data centre that hosts iCloud.

Just curious: is that "known as a fact" now? I'd imagine that means that their own data center for iCloud is running Windows Server, too. Which doesn't really seem any less likely in today's world than Linux servers but it would be interesting just in terms of how much you could blow Apple fans' minds if you could travel back 15 years and tell them that.

EDIT: I'm wrong, as pointed out below; Azure isn't just for Windows Server.

You can run Linux in Windows Azure.

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/linux/

I had no idea! Thank you.

Not just that, there are a whole set of Azure storage APIs which are just HTTP/REST.

You could use them from any OS that has a HTTP stack. Apple are probably using just this.

Isn't that a very recent feature?

As far as I can tell, iCloud and Linux on Azure were both announced in June 2012.

Mapping isn't a finite problem. If you read about the Coastline Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox), every map is based on abstraction. You can get more and more detail but there will always be parts that are simplified and abstracted. It's like trying to get to the door by going half the distance each time. Eventually, it'll be a small distance (and not a big problem, which is generally the case for Google Maps) but you'll never completely solve it.

1/3 the quality? Have you used the maps? I agree that they're not amazing, but in my experience the complaints about low quality seem overblown.

It's a first generation product. By putting it out there and getting actual user feedback, this should accelerate the development.

Maps become exponentially better the closer they get to accurate.

Even if Apple has, let's say, 90% of the map data/information that Google does, the minute you are sent to the wrong location, or to a store that doesn't exist, or try to get transit directions and can't, or get routed via the most convoluted route possible to your destination, the Maps app has failed.

I've experienced every one of those scenarios in the last week. And I live a few miles from Apple headquarters!

Turn by turn navigation is awesome though. Once they've worked out the kinks I'm sure this experience will be better overall.

I keep hearing from iphone users that phrase almost verbatim: "Turn by turn navigation is awesome though".

If it's so awesome, why didn't you buy a standalone GPS or an Android phone over the last few years? Because it's nifty but for most iPhone users this is not a must-have feature. Which is why Apple can get away with shipping a crap maps app.

Or, even easier, a navigation app from Apple's app store...

Do any of those work with Siri? That's the big value for me. When the new Maps work it is pure magic (sorry for the iMeme but it really is).

-Looking straight ahead, grab phone and hold down Home button. -Siri chirps -"I need directions to foo" -"Here are directions to foo" -"In X miles turn Y on N"

The only time I touched the phone was to hold down the Home button. Never once looked away from the road. It's amazing.

A quick test on my Android phone (Desire HD running 4.1) shows that Google Now works the same way. Voice search always existed on Android, but it was certainly less polished around 2.2. Can't tell how it worked before as it never understood my accent, but then again, neither does Siri.

Edit: Two presses if you want audio instructions. Google Now opens maps which doesn't do audio instructions apparently rather than navigation which does. There's a button for navigation in the maps app.

Maps is a smartphone killer app - I remember my friend being able to map (in a rudimentary displkay) nearby restaurants on a 2004 windows mobile phone and thinking how awesome that was. Just like I was amazed when the iPhone completely blew away the competition in 2007.

However, is it a mission-critical app? What percentage of the userbase actually needs maps on a day to day basis? What did you do in 2005 when your GPS completely failed? You call the destination... it's not like you don't have a phone in your hand. Failing that, you ask a nearby stranger.

I presume Apple went ahead because Maps is likely less important to their userbase than, say, the Music app and definitely less critical than the browser.

> However, is it a mission-critical app? What percentage of the userbase actually needs maps on a day to day basis? What did you do in 2005 when your GPS completely failed?

It's not "mission-critical," but by that criterion neither is any part of iOS that's not talk and text and maaaybe basic web browsing. Mapping is surely one of the bigger raisons d'être for smartphones, otherwise people might as well buy an S40 Nokia.

I know, right? They're about 80% as good as Google maps for me. They do all the same things, but admittedly I haven't done obscure turn by turn (then again, it didn't do turn by turn at all before...).

I have not once heard people complaining about Apple Maps complain about the turn by turn.

From a user's perspective (which is what I am in this context, as are the rest of us) it's a sixth-generation product that's a substantial step backwards from the fifth generation.

From a reality perspective, Apple Maps is a first-generation product.

And while you may have considered it a "fifth generation product", Google Maps went virtually untouched between iOS 1.1.3 and iOS 5.1. Although its map data was very accurate, its feature set was sorely lacking when compared to Google's map app on Android.

I sympathize with people who have encountered inaccuracies, but that hasn't been my experience so far. Hopefully, this will get worked out and we'll end up with a map app that is both accurate and has a competitive feature set.

I'd say it's much worse than 1/3rd the quality. It's absolutely terrible! The data for London, where I live, is full of misspellings; at least one tube station is missing (Monument, in the heart of the financial district); and it fairly often seems to use an arbitrary street name as the name for an entire district. I wouldn't trust it to navigate me anywhere!

Easily 1/3 the quality. What good is a map if it is incorrect? An incorrect map isn't 1/3 worse than a correct one, it's just worthless. Actually worse than worthless since with no map you at least know when you're lost. Apple's maps are riddled with errors and inaccuracies and thus it's not usable (to me at least). I won't set off to a destination with a map I don't trust, so for me the difference between the two is a map I can use and a map I cannot use.

I'm glad nobody told that to Google when they were getting started.

Even in 2010, 5 years after they launched, they got the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica wrong. This rendered Google Maps worthless. They should have just shelved the whole project right then.

Don't even get me started on Waldseemüller. So much worse than worthless!

If Google had started their mapping service by removing working maps for tens of millions of people it would have been a major disaster too.

When the CEO of the company writes a personal apology, I think we can stop saying complaints about low quality are overblown.

Sure, why assess the issue directly when we could infer things from a reaction to reactions to the issue?

There are two companies that have done the legwork to acquire a really really good database of mapping information:

* TeleAtlas, which is in bed with Google

* Navteq, which is owned by Nokia, which has a deal to provide maps to Bing

So now maps is one of the few areas where both Google/Android and Microsoft/Nokia have a blatant advantage over Apple. Why would they want to give that up?

Err... What? Teleatlas is owned by TomTom who is currently in bed with ...Apple!

What Google does have is that they partner with whomever has the best available information in the area of interest (check out the copyright info when you scroll around the world on google maps on the web) and augment that with streetview, Yellow Pages, crowdsourced info from Android, etc (and vetted by hand)

Thank you for this input that seems obvious, but appears to be overlooked by most in this thread.

It also strikes me that Apple Maps do not have a web interface (unless I'm wrong). In my experience, anytime something I care about in my neighborhood is misplaced on Google Maps, I use the web interface to correct the location. Without this ability, I imagine that it could take Apple a long time to reach parity with Google Maps.

Microsoft's #1 enemy right now would most likely be Google -- Balmer has been waging a war on the online front with Bing, and so far, has been losing pretty badly.

As they say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend -- partnering with Apple would boost their Bing Maps market share into double digit percentage growth, all the while taking Google's map market share down. Even if you know the relationship won't last long and that in the end you'll have another competitor in the space, the rewards far outweigh the risks.

It's far better to take down the king and fight for the throne than to always be a peasant.

Yeah right. Ask Steve Ballmer if he'd rather be beating Google in search or Apple in mobile. Latter pie is much, much bigger.

Exactly. All the big players are in competition with each other. Amazon and Google are at loggerheads over Android. But Amazon and Apple are competing in the online media delivery market too (Google is playing there too, but is a distant fourth right now to those two and Netflix). Microsoft doesn't care about Amazon, but wants a piece of the mobile OS market and the internet search world. And there are a hundred other smaller software companies and hardware OEMs trying to catch the stuff that drops out of the hands of the big folks.

There really aren't any major "alliances" right now. It's a mess.

Nokia is having a bit of a cash flow problem, and an additional maps deal would probably be welcome income to give it a bit more margin to try and recover.

Amazon recently licensed Nokia/Navteq maps for the Kindle tablets.

I've not seen any problem with the information about roads or directions, rather every error that I've seen is connecting a business or place name to a physical location on the map. Which is quite confusing, because Yelp will have the proper location for a business of interest, but the new iOS Maps will place it at the same address but in a different municipality, or something crazy like that. I'm not sure what problems others are experiencing, though...

Those companies do not have good data for Asia, afaict. There are many other companies and data sets that would need to be integrated to provide even something resembling what Google has today with it's Maps service.

It could be the Goldilocks problem for Apple with their own - supposedly - high bar for quality that made them end up with their own vastly inferior product. I imagine we'll see some scoops on the inside baseball in a few weeks.

It is really not 1/3 the quality. It has errors, without question, but so did Google Maps when it first launched. To partner with another company and then, in a few years again switch to their own maps and start over or partner again with yet another company doesn't make sense. It's an unfortunate situation, but not something that can't be gradually fixed. There are several features I prefer actually. The city I live in is broken into subdivisions I wasn't previously aware of. It looks nicer. And the yelp reviews are useful, perhaps even a good way for businesses to quickly become featured on maps. I have to be honest, none of the people I know who have purchased the 5 have complained much about maps, they realize its not as good as google but they feel the other features more than make up for it.

You haven't used iOS 6 Maps in non US/EU countries. The OSM map data in Asia is much less accurate. There is no Yelp outside of the US. Think global. iOS 6 Maps is worthless in Asia.

Do you have a source for that? All the chatter I've heard is that Apple Maps is actually really useful in China.

EDIT: Blog post from someone living in China extolling the virtues of iOS 6 maps http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2012/9/24/ios-maps-and-china....

Isn't that because they have China using a local dataset, that doesn't even have the rest of the world on the map?

Apple is using AutoNavi (not TomTom) for its map data in China (which Google is using as well). Here's a blog post from someone who lives in China describing why he likes iOS 6 maps more than Google Maps.

http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2012/9/24/ios-maps-and-china....

Even here in Dublin, Ireland it is pretty hopeless. The zoo is now in the centre of a shopping district in town (rather than a few km outside), and loads of smaller roads are missing / have the wrong names. There is pretty much no point searching for anything...

> The city I live in is broken into subdivisions I wasn't previously aware of.

Mine too, but because Apple is incorrectly naming the subdivisions with random POI. Like a small condo building becoming the name for a whole neighborhood. It seems random and almost entirely incorrect.

Well, they had two choices in front of them. Suck it up and partner, or suck it up and risk this situation.

Whilst I'm sure they'd have gotten a 1-year licensing agreement with Microsoft I can only guess it'd come with a steep price tag on. Plus they'd just been burnt by dealing with a third party. Plus (again, sorry), they need to have the Maps application being used by people worldwide to improve the quality. It doesn't get better with time, it gets better with users moaning.

FWIW, I've read elsewhere that Google has had 1000 contractors in India cleaning up map data for 5 years. People using it isn't going to clean it up with "moaning". Apple is going to have to throw a LOT of resources at fixing this.

More people moan the more likely it is Apple will throw resources at it. It needs people using it and complaining to show where the data isn't working.

Do they actually have a system in place the allows users to report enough detail to fix something? Personally I don't consider bug reports moaning.

From trying it there does seem to be a reasonable level of detail.

I don't of course just mean the bug reports, I mean every email going into customer support, every snarky comment directed at Apple and so on. It'll encourage them to dig deep, hopefully.

There's a "report issue" button if you hit the bottom right corner of the map. It allows you to drop pins where issues are and gives free text fields to enter information.

Apple would be in exactly the same problematic position with Microsoft as they were with Google. Not worth the pain for no gain.

Now that they've already queered the deal with Google it's too late, but playing Google and Microsoft against each other they could have gotten sufficient leverage from at least one of them.

I suspect that cutting the google deal short was intentionally done leave Google flat footed with no map app on iOS. Simply put it cuts google out of that market for a while leaving Apple the only major player on their device.

While it isn't perfect being the only big map player in that system means that over time customers will just accept that is their only option, and those with problems will see improvements. By the time Google releases a map app many customers may already be committed to the default experience.

Some folks may continue to make comparisons between the two and switch back, but the majority may not and thus an easy win for Apple where if there were a competing Google Maps they would face a far steeper challenge even with time to improve their own product.

As for partnering with MS I think Apple simply wanted to go on their own considering that they were already were severing a partnership over maps.

> leaving Apple the only major player on their device.

> over time customers will just accept that is their only option

As Tim Cook mentioned, there are already map apps available for Bing, MapQuest and Waze, and turn-by-turn navigation apps from all the major players. Google announced that they have not submitted their own maps app for iOS.

Unless, perhaps rightly, you're considering Google the only major player. More reason for Apple to switch now.

I disagree with the cutting the deal short. The Maps app was in beta for months, was announced in April and I bet that Google knew it was coming even before the official announcement.

Quite frankly, Google has had plenty of time to be working on a Maps application for iOS. It's not like they have to reinvent the wheel with this, they have iOS development teams and experience with mobile mapping applications.

I think that Google willfully chose not to have a product ready. It's a good explanation when you realize they had months of lead time, and when you factor in all of the CEO "I don't know nothing' about no app" comments.

Wasn't there a rumor Google has a maps app waiting for approval by Apple?

I think Eric Schmidt denied this rumor.

Worked at a location based services company, we were aware of an upcoming Apple Maps application before the iPhone 4S came out.

Google's business interests are weird here. They presumably were getting _paid_ by Apple for maps integration. Do they really want to say "Sure, stop paying us, and for free we'll make sure to provide an app of our own to your customers that's just as high quality?" On the other hand, Google is certainly otherwise often in the business of providing free apps to people that they try to get as many people as possible to use on other people's devices (I mean, Android. On the other hand, even though Android is theoretically free, i think every device maker that uses it has a paid contract with google). It's pretty unclear what Google's interests and plans are when it comes to this stuff.

That's a good point. Certainly the average iPhone user is now learning the value of a good mapping app vs the value of a crappy mapping app. If they launch their free map app a few weeks after iOS6 launch, they've taught Apple and a lot of people a lesson...

Google is in the strange position of wanting to get a piece of hardware into the hands of every person while at the same time having services that they want everyone to use because that is how they make their money.

They are constantly biting their own hand because making any service Android specific limits it's use and making services available on competing hardware limits their own hardware penetration.

Since Apple makes all their money on hardware they just don't care. They focus on making the best hardware they can and then build software on top of it. Jobs for the longest time didn't even want to put iTunes on Windows but eventually relented when people were buying iPods for their Windows PCs.

I'm not sure months is enough to just put it out.

Word has it they're working on the iOS app and have been frantically doing so.

I don't see any advantage in willfully delaying. They only shaft potential lost users in doing so. I doubt any many folks folks are dumping their iPhone due to the maps and all Google does is loose contact with customers in the process and give Apple a chance to fill the void.

Yes, they should have teamed up with another direct competitor, because that's worked so well for them in the past.

Why go through Microsoft when their data is Nokia based anyway?

Part of the rationale for cutting ties with Google Maps seems to have been to avoid being reliant on a major competitor for core functionality. Partnering with Microsoft would simply have been trading one competitor for another. Presumably this is the same reason they didn't partner with Nokia either.

Jon Gruber had a pretty good write up on this:

"But if the old agreement between Apple and Google expired in the first half of 2013 (which, again, my own sources familiar with the matter agree to be the case), that means the deal was set to expire halfway through the expected year-long life cycle for iOS 6. If Apple had stuck with Google Maps for another year they would have been forced to renegotiate with Google in a situation where both sides at the table would know that Apple either (a) had to agree to whatever terms Google demanded to extend the deal; or (b) would be forced to swap the mapping back-end of iOS 6 midway through its development cycle."

http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switc...

How does that have anything to do with map providers other than google?

That reads like an autistic kid or maybe OCD adult with a 'special interest' in trains explaining why a train crashed: "Company A always bumped the letter of the model number when releasing a new engine. Company B designated upgrades to their brakes by doubling the current model number. You can hardly blame Company C for upgrading the engine without upgrading the brakes when in the past Company C has always kept the numeric form of the engine model number + brake model number mutually co-prime."

It reads like an apologist apologising.

Gruber is a known shill who writes 50 shades of gray for Apple-fans.

I just want to know where "just works" went. Why should a consumer have to worry about contracts between corporations when all they want to do is use their phone to catch a bus, just like they have been doing for years?

To be fair: it's never worked like that. If you spent the 90's on anything but windows (or the 70's on anything but IBM), you saw the same nonsense. The best you get are brief moments of purity, where the growth of a new platform or environment is so fast that it makes more sense for all the parties to collaborate instead of compete. So in the first 4 years of the "post-iPhone smartphone" world it was nice, just like it was in the early days of the internet.

It's a maturing market now, and not so nice. We have to wait for the next disruption now.

I get that the real world doesn't work like that, but I feel like that is the reality that I was sold by their marketing. It is incredibly disappointing that they cannot see it realized.

I think Apple came to the conclusion that the iPhone is entrenched and will sell tens of millions regardless of not having new design, features like NFC or great maps. The "just works" mantra is easy to get lost when the iPhone is now a cash cow(like how Windows stagnated after Windows 95 till before Windows XP). I guess the focus is now on iTV or whatever else that's being cooked up while milking the cash cows for what they're worth.

Reminds me of Avis' slogan: We try harder because we're number two.

If that is the case the Apple is done for. Getting complacent like that means Apple is dead.

And I fear you may be right. This is not something Jobs would have allowed.

If John Gruber had not invented Markdown, he would be very high on my least favorite humans list.

Because he holds Apple in high regard?

Because he happens to fanboy for Apple? I can think of a lot better reasons to hate someone...

I think you give him far to little credit.

Oh, I don't haaaate him. I just find his opinions obnoxious, and it doesn't seem like people will stop listening to him any time soon.

He's extremely popular but also manipulates truths to tell fabrications and outright lies. I think anyone who behaves in such a manner is actively harming society by discouraging intelligent discourse. This type of behavior is seeping into many facets of life both big (politics) and small (mobile phones). He's basically FoxNews for Apple.

LOL, I agree. I subscribed to his RSS feed a while ago, and I flick through his headlines with amusement. He seems to get very offended if people diss Apple, and then happily reblogs similar nonsense aimed at Android or Windows 8 - classic partisan confirmation bias.

Occasionally he also posts something which is not "apple politics" which is interesting, so for now he stays on my list of subscriptions.

invented yes, but then totally neglected it (while retaining the Markdown name)

You'd have murdered him by now had you ever read Markdown.pl or run into its hundreds of bugs and corner cases

Did you read the entire article? I thought it made sense.

Google is adding features to it's own mobile OS maps app while withholding those features from it's competitor. Google offered to include the features in exchange for ads and customer data, two things Apple has always tried to minimize. Apple historically defaults to accepting the pain of adopting new technology too early as opposed to too late.

I was referring to the `they had to switch now rather than in 6 months due to a version number dance they are mystically locked into for no explained reason`.

Gruber is using a weird empiricism to defend everything Apple does. `They were locked into it because that is the pattern!` For instance, why couldn't they have released the new maps with the upcoming iPad mini release, buying a little more time?

Historically doing something one way doesn't mean you have to rush out a turd just to keep up a meaningless pattern. You also don't have to step over every crack in the sidewalk to avoid bad joo joo.

Gruber uses these little patterns in version numbers, release dates, etc. to make predictions about Apple releases and drive traffic to his blog. He has gotten so obsessed with them that he has flipped the entire utility of them and now uses them quasi-prescriptively in proclamations of what Apple has to do or had to do.

Patterns in numbers are just something he mentions on the side. I don't really read him for the predictions, but he's pretty good in that department. The headline is obnoxious, but the content is spot on.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/09/28/told-you-so

Show me another blogger that was warning Apple they needed to get maps right back in May. That's why he gets page views.

I find it odd that many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates. There's nothing stopping two willing parties from updating an existing agreement at any time - as long as they can both agree. No senior exec at Apple would have ever said "Oh, dang it - if only the date was in a different location we'd be doing a different strategy"

> I find it odd that many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates.

The recent issue between Netflix and Starz will show you why it is a major focus.

As much as we'd like to ignore people/business issues, sometime they trump tech and social networking issues.

Yes jp but you've picked an extreme example. It was clear that was a monumental sweetheart deal. Netflix was never going to end that one day early because whatever came next was going to be multiple times higher. Apple could have, most likely did, say "Well we really want turn by turn and voice and you won't allow it. We need to bring those features to our phone. We have two choices - go out earlier than we want with our Maps or extend this agreement until XYZ date and give both sides time to continuing negotiating this." Google comes up with an amount and Apple decides which is the better choice. The date is a "forcing factor" to drive a commercial conclusion but not the immovable object that forces you to go out earlier than you want. Make sense?

I think your response shows pretty well why "many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates."

Thank you, I have been wondering what drove apple to act so stupidly.

I can easily envision Tim Cook doing this. The whole world is watching, and there is major ego on the line. The last thing on earth he'd want is for wall street to see that google had him by the balls.

Not that Jon Gruber is guarenteed to be right, but it certainly has the ring of truth.

Edit: Of course, if wall street were really paying attention, they'd see that apple behaved this badly because Google in fact had them by the balls. Thank god they're not the sharpest tools in the shed over there.

Every time I read something from aforementioned blog, I finished with a feeling of disappointment. No insights, no deep thought process, just plain apple-fanboyism.

Let me guess—you don't read aforementioned blog at all, do you? I don't see much apple fanboyism if any, but plenty of antiappleism and antigrubersim, which most often is based on zero research and analysis, just parroting some latest anti-Apple fad.

I think bhavin is saying that Gruber's blog posts are Apple fanboyism. I'm not sure how you could deny that they are at least generally favorable toward Apple.

This leaves only one simple question in my mind:

If it has come to Apple issuing a public apology for shipping a partly-baked replacement for an important core app, the old version of which they are still licensed to distribute for another year...

Why not put iOS 5 Maps in the App Store, and pull it down next summer?

> the old version of which they are still licensed to distribute for another year...

No, closer to 6 months.

Even if they put it up for another three months, that would buy them enough time to make some significant improvements to the iOS6 app.

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