Comment by brianpan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brianpan | Hacker News Reader

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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

'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.

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?

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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