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Comment by kjackson2012 | Hacker News Reader

kjackson2012

No, you're wrong. It's not with the data. It's with Apple's ability to search. Like I said below, look up "Pier 39 San Francisco". This is a dead simple query, extremely specific, and they point you to a really bad area of SF. This isn't Tom Tom data, it's how Apple resolves this query to something useful.

Search is Google's domain expertise. Apple needs to basically start from scratch and figure out how to create a search engine that will return relevant data based on queries.

It's the same thing with Apple's App store search, it's also terrible. But because we have no choice, we are forced to use it, and hopefully it will improve. But because Google's is so nearly perfect and getting better all the time, why would someone go ahead and use Apple's terrible search engine to help them improve their search?

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Apple Maps also doesn't handle small spelling mistakes (transposed letters) well. That's been one of the most annoying things.

Having played with a toy geolocation feature detector for text, I can safely say it's extremely hard to do well.

My first attempt is inspired by Peter Norvig's spelling corrector using a corpus built from the places2k.txt file, but it gets confused when the words are transposed. My guess is that Google is using some sort of n-gram based approach for maps and search, where as their little sidebar map is similar to what I built. (Or only applied to the most clear-cut n-gram—a little while ago there was a search for the movie "The end of the world" that would return a definitive date, which went slightly viral.)

Try searching in Google for "San Francisco" versus "Francisco San." Maps is fine, the search is fine, but only the first version brings up the little related info sidebar on the search page.

I'm surprised that Apple had such a hard time dealing with search, since they have some experience with Siri. I should have trusted this guy's opinion more:

http://wesnerm.blogs.com/net_undocumented/2011/10/siri-techn...

> Try searching in Google for "San Francisco" versus "Francisco San."

On the other hand, that's not a mistake you can make, because "San Francisco" in the minds of people really is "Sanfrancisco", a single word. Why would anybody spell "San Francisco" as "Francisco San"? In fact Google should differentiate heavily between these 2 terms, as they aren't similar at all.

Google also does a lot of other neat things, like translations for city names. Searching on google.com for "Bucuresti" (my town) brings up the sidebar for "Bucharest".

And on GMaps, I'm never afraid of using "str", "strada", "soseaua", "sos" which are different Romanian words and abbreviations for "street". The results aren't the same in these cases (nor they should be actually) but because Google also searches within the addresses of businesses it's usually able to give me an accurate answer to what I mean.

That's true about San Francisco versus Francisco San but I wonder how well Apple Maps does with "4485 Belmont Portland" versus "Portland 4485 Belmont" and the like.

It gets more complicated when you realize "oh, yeah I need to add 'NE' because it's in the Northeast part of the city". So now it's "Portland 4485 Belmont NE". If you were to think about it before you started typing, it'd be "4485 NE Belmont Portland" but correcting on a phone is so painful that you want to just keep typing.

I'm using a Galaxy Nexus and have been very happy with the standard Maps app. Last weekend the family was walking on trails and it got us back to the trailhead using walking directions. Neat. I've been less than thrilled with how poorly the phone seems to do with finding and keeping a GPS signal, particularly in a car on the freeway in areas I don't know.

Ah, Portland is lucky. Here in Seattle, we have roads that are 1235 NE 40th St (for E-W streets) as well as 12345 University Way NE (for N-S avenues). The latter, as you would suspect, totally breaks Apple Maps.

That is on top of the issue of searching for something like "1st and University", which takes me to some L'ecole in Paris, France rather than the intersection that is a block from me. It's as if they don't factor in your current location at all. I know on the desktop I frequently look at maps of faraway places, but I'd suspect that people tend to look for things near them while on mobile devices.

Apple Maps doesn't know what you mean when everything is spelled perfectly, they have a lot to do before worrying about typos.

"why would someone go ahead and use Apple's terrible search engine to help them improve their search?"

Because at the end of the day I want to make choices that result in more flexibility down the line. I do not want to live in a world where Apple is the only OS provider for mobile devices. Likewise, I don't want to live in a world in which Google is the only reasonable choice for map searches.

So is your strategy to always use the worse of two services to ensure competition for the future?

This. Arguing to use an inferior product so that better products don't succeed "too much" isn't how things work.

Markets work this stuff out, you don't necessarily have to balance market share and consequences in your head (not that you as an individual really matter that much in the end anyway!). Just enjoy the products you like.

Nope. Apple Maps isn't particularly worse for me. The directions have been fine, and I like turn-by-turn. I miss transit directions quite a bit. I thought about what I was missing and I thought about how dominant Google is in search, and I decided the tradeoff was worth it for me.

I wouldn't make fun of someone for making the other choice either.

That Pier 39 San Francisco search is an Australia-desert-type disaster waiting to happen to tourists.

Speaking of tourist disasters in SF; when I was there back in May, there were a few blocks somewhere around (IIRC) Post/Van Ness where the GPS in my Galaxy Nexus would actually pick up a mile or so off from where I actually was. Realized what was happening right away and still know how to read maps[0]; but could easily be a problem for anyone who isn't paying attention to everything.

[0] Semi-related: whoever decided to stamp street names into SF sidewalks: thank you.

Is there any particular reason for the dickish tone? Are we in grade school?

> No, you're wrong. It's not with the data.

It seems to be both. I tried two locations in the Apple store, and the data for both was incorrect:

* One gave a location about 10-15 miles away (with a pop-up showing details of the correct venue). I checked the correct location, and nothing was marked on the map. (Image: http://i.imgur.com/FHVax.jpg - the proper location is just above the 'd' in Cambridge)

* One was found correctly, but the listed information (phone, website etc.) was mostly incorrect.

* Satellite images are of a much lower resolution than Google Maps in some areas (e.g. my house!)

funnily enough when typed pier 39, the first auto suggestion was "pier 39" ( the right one) - the second one was "pier 39 san francisco" which i what i thought was the correct one and tapped on , but turned out to a restaurant named 39 pier.

Surely you agree that your example is a non-standard address. The things are more important to get right: postal addresses, searches for company names, airports, schools, searches for intersections. Of course you want to get the other things right like, parks (what's the pinpoint location of a park?) and things like pier 39. But those errors don't make Apple Maps a non-starter. I've been using it in the Bay Area with 99% success.

This isn't a pass for Apple Maps- the last 1% is the most difficult and it's the difference between so-so and great. Apple has in the past been known to make things with the ultimate attention to detail and things that "just work" so if anything you could argue that they shouldn't have launched something that was below this bar, but apparently there were other business considerations.

BTW: From the Pier 39 website, "If you are using a GPS Navigation System, input: 2 Beach Street, San Francisco, CA 94133" http://www.pier39.com/Information/index.htm

If you need the user to visit the website of their intended destination to figure out how to search for it then you need to hit the drawing board.

Well, that's the point I'm trying to make. It's not a hit the drawing board problem, it's a refine the algorithm problem. How many "if you google this string, you can't find the right site" problems have there been in the life of Google search? They continue to refine pageranking don't they?

'Apple has in the past been known to make things with the ultimate attention to detail and things that "just work"'

I don't know why people continue to believe this. Apple has released versions of the Finder with amateurish bugs that delete files[1] and versions of Mail that randomly delete messages[2]. Several versions of Mail on iPhone send hundreds of copies of a message when emailing a link from Safari[3].

The Maps fiasco is not a departure from software excellence on the part of Apple, but just more of what we should expect by now: shiny stuff that doesn't work.

[1]http://tomkarpik.com/articles/massive-data-loss-bug-in-leopa... [2]http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12758081&... [3]http://lee-phillips.org/iphoneUpgradeWarning-4-2-1/

"shiny stuff that doesn't work"

Give me a break. Name an international company with 100% success in user happiness and usability with their product(s). Go ahead, try it.

Also, don't act like Android hasn't had faults and failings on their own. Or Windows.

Things aren't ever perfect. The only time there is a real binary system is CS. The world is gray, and Apple has been consistently better than bad. They've been good for me for the most part, with some minor annoyances sure, but to say that their software is "shiny stuff that doesn't work" just shows that you aren't really well versed in the domain that the hyperbole is supposed to explain.

I didn't claim that others' products were perfect. That would be strange. My point was that Apple enjoys an undeserved reputation for quality.

"Apple has been consistently better than bad"

I think my links show that this is just not true, but that might depend on what you mean by "consistently".

Their track record shows a cynical, almost sinister pattern of choices on their part: hoard $120 billion in cash while shipping software with a beautiful visual design that, under the glossy surface, is unreliable, inadequately tested, and, in some cases, demonstrably hobbled together by inexperienced or incompetent engineers: shiny stuff that doesn't work.

This is a deliberate choice, since with all that cash they could hire the best talent and make it policy to ensure that nothing gets out the door that would earn a CS undergraduate a failing grade. Instead, they've chosen to invest in maintaining the illusion that their software "just works" and is empowering, while harboring an increasingly obvious contempt for their customers.

ref 1 dates back to 2007, ref 2 is an isolated 'bug report' which no one else seems to corroborate and ref 3 seems to be written by you. You're not making any kind of case here for Apple being overrated.

"ref 1 dates back to 2007"

And?

"ref 2 is an isolated 'bug report' which no one else seems to corroborate"

It's one link to a report of a well-known, real problem. Apple Mail botched IMAP semantics just as the Finder botched file copying semantics. Both problems are reliably absent from real, mature software. And even in the one link I provide, several users are reporting disappearing messages. I would call that "corroborated", wouldn't you?

"ref 3 seems to be written by you"

It was, so you can be sure it's true.

Even with company names, they do a pretty poor job. Though it is getting better.

For example, a month or so back a search for "Northern Brewer" (homebrew store chain) made when I'm physically only about 2 miles away from their Milwaukee location would return only the location of their flagship store in the Twin Cities. Which I suppose is technically a correct result, but it's a little galling to have regressed to a mapping app that doesn't even understand concepts as basic as, "When I just enter a business's name all by itself, it just might be reasonable to assume I was looking for a local place."

Some are still really bad. A search for the Miller Brewery's bar, Miller Inn, produces a single result for a business called Fabric Inn in Miller, South Dakota.

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