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The Blame Game

daringfireball.net

50 pointssuperchink48 comments

> (This I’ve heard from numerous sources, from both sides of the negotiations.)

Nope, doesn't work that way. You can't be both an opinion blog and a journalist. While DF probably does have insider sources most do not, he doesn't have journalistic integrity and can't ask his readers to take his word on something being true that confirms his own bias.

> he doesn't have journalistic integrity

Can you provide any examples of Gruber blatantly lying or misrepresenting his sources? (Serious question)

Do fox news pundits blatantly lie? No, rarely. What they do is spin the facts using many different techniques - omission, misrepresentation, innuendo, etc.

Likewise, Gruber is just an Apple pundit and spinmeister. Useful when you want to find out what's going on at Apple, or get the day's talking points, but useless for everything else.

Regarding integrity, check his iPhone 5 review. Is there any mention of the Apple Maps app being a farce?

Regarding inside sources, are there any examples of him breaking an exclusive story of substance? For example, what is happening to the (new) Mac Pro?

Why would Apple Maps have anything to do with a review of new hardware? Just over a week later, though, he did write at length about the maps situation [1]. How does this show a lack of integrity?

[1] http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switc...

iOS 6.0 shipped with the iPhone 5 and Apple Maps was a major new feature touted by Apple and presented in-person to journalists.

That wasn't my point. DF isn't a journalistic publication. It's purpose isn't to inform. You can't comment on the news and be news at the same time.

> Can you provide any examples of Gruber blatantly lying or misrepresenting his sources? (Serious question)

It's not just that, it's also the fact that if he receives information that goes against his bias, we don't really have any reason to trust that he would disclose that as well, given his well-documented bias.

I don't really get why people think that. Of all the pundits I follow, he's the most likely to fess up when he got something factually wrong.

[TFA is basically content-free, but ...]

This is the don't-make-your-company-dependent-upon-one-service thing we see happening around Twitter, but writ much larger. That's not too interesting or too hard to see.

What I hadn't considered before is that the situation is somewhat a natural outcome of Apple's have strategy of limited-set-of-apps-for-core-functionality. If Apple has fostered/encouraged multiple great mapping applications rather than promoting just one this situation might not have occurred. Of course, then they'd have multiple mapping apps and users might be confused.

I understand that maps are valuable to mobile devices, but I don't think they're core to mobile devices. Apple treated them as core and didn't seem to have planned well for serious changes to maps.

Maps absolutely are core to mobile devices. Besides communication, mapping is the other primary use case of my mobile device and I know I'm not alone on this one.

Communication, mapping and calendaring are also the three primary "intents" built into the device since day one. For example, every "maps.google.com" link from any application is captured by the OS and routed to the native maps app instead of Safari.

By core, I mean that it's critical to have control of them for success/viability of the device (ie. strategic components). I certainly do think that maps are important, but I don't think it would matter which mapping application is used on a device or think that it's critical for Apple to control that application. The UI, settings, notifications, phone app, SMS app [maybe], location services seem like just about the only core bits. Treating a giant, very complicated application built by another company as core means that you're probably signing up to build that functionality in the future. As Apple is doing...

In hindsight, I suspect Apple would have been happier had they launched with Google Maps, then had gotten Garmin, MapQuest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc to build great mapping applications. I don't know how building a mapping infrastructure is a good idea for Apple [but perhaps I just haven't thought about it enough yet].

If these other players could "build great mapping applications", I suspect some of them would have by now. Google really is in a class by itself here.

>If Apple has fostered/encouraged multiple great mapping applications rather than promoting just one this situation might not have occurred. Of course, then they'd have multiple mapping apps and users might be confused.

Apple could have done this from the beginning... if they didn't rely on Google's data. That would have really opened up the market for quality map applications.

The hard part of any maps application isn't necessarily presenting the data to the user. What really counts is your backend's data. Right now, Google is pretty much the king of that data, which is why everything that used their data, even Apple's old app, was pretty good. Honestly, I don't know how Apple could have come out looking good with the new maps. Even if it had been in development for years, it wouldn't have been nearly as full featured, or as good as implementations based on Google Maps. Apple's simply too far behind to come out swinging.

It's not just the app -- it's location services in every app.

Agreed. But that's not mapping, right? [See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4995 . Location services are used by apps such as Maps.] Location services do seem like a core feature for phones since the phone has the radio and electronics to do the positioning.

Does Apple really protect its users' privacy more than Google?

I think it's accurate to say that their business interests are different, and thus the applications to privacy are different. For example, Safari defaults to "Block cookies from third parties and advertisers". Chrome defaults to allow all cookies by default.

Not to mention that Google ad servers actively worked to undermine Safari's 3rd party cookie blocking default.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/16/how-google-tracked-sa...

I'm not personally terribly concerned about browser tracking and take no steps to block it (I work for an advertising supported business and on the whole would rather have targeted ads than not), but it is completely fair to say that Apple does more to protect privacy (as it's commonly understood online) than Google.

I think privacy is the wrong frame. That’s not what this is about.

Google wants to put ads into their maps. Apple wants maps to help sell more iOS devices. That’s it. Those different goals lead to conflict.

Whether or not they do, the point is that Google makes its money based on knowing as much about their customers as they can (to better serve them ads). Apple makes its money off hardware, which doesn't require that they know a lot of personal information about their customers.

Yes. I believe it is possible to use an iPhone without registering or signing into Apple services apart from to install apps (and you could do that on the PC so you don't even have to do that on the device). You can sync, backup and completely manage the device locally with a PC/Mac. iCloud is entirely optional, anonymous crash reports can be disabled. If you go down that route you won't be tracked by Apple.

In fact possibly the only service that would communicate with Apple is the maps service but you can disable the location services from that app just like those you download from the store.

Now if you do use Apple's services I sort of trust them to be less competent at exploiting the information they will receive and I prefer this information to be in the hands of someone who doesn't also receive all my search requests too.

Apple did have a weak spot until iOS 6 that apps could access your contacts (and photos providing location services were enabled for the app) without any control. That has now changed.

Google on the other hand requires you to have a Google account from first boot (actually I've never tried Android on a phone in anger but the Google TV's did).

You can use an Android phone without signing into a Google account. At least on all the Android phones I ever used except the ADP1.

Yes, but not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they have a completely different business model.

As someone else already succinctly put it: for Apple, users are customers, for Google they are the product (to be sold to advertisers).

But the difference goes further than that. I don't know if Apple actually cares about privacy or it's just a side-effect of their business model, but Google is blatantly politically anti-privacy, and seems to revel in provoking controversy by ignoring privacy protection laws.

Google Maps is just another example: the surreptitious way in which Google "asks permission" for exploiting location data has already come under fire as being in blatant violation with privacy laws in several countries. Google has been playing this game long enough to know exactly what they were doing.

Not sure. "Limit Ad Tracking" (Settings > General > About > Advertising) is Off by default in iOS 6. This option seems strangely left out of the "Privacy" section.

You also have to opt-out of "Interest-based ads" for iAds so they're collecting that data by default too. (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4228)

I mentioned in a previous comment that I think Apple should just bite the bullet and license Google Maps in perpetuity, in order to preserve the best experience for its users. Let Apple get access to the data that Google acquires via Maps, let Google take all the ad revenues, and fully integrate with Google, and pay them some amount one-time money... maybe $10B? $10B represents 3 months of their free cash flow in a year.

It would be the equivalent of Apple making a deal with Microsoft back in 97/98 that allowed them to stop their distracting fight against Microsoft and concentrate on making themselves better.

This whole Maps fiasco is a complete distraction to the iPhone, and it's not something that Apple is good at. They are amazing at hardware innovation. This is where their core competency is. Case in point, despite all the negative talk about how the iPhone 5 wasn't innovative, their latest iMacs are amazingly beautiful and futuristic-looking still.

Their software is okay at best, but not innovative. Their web services offerings are below average, at best.

There is no point in getting into a protracted ground war vs Google when it comes to Maps because it's a distraction and they won't be able to overtake Google. Companies like Yahoo that had way more resources than Apple when it comes to search have tried and essentially gave up. If Yahoo can't do it, how can Apple do it, where hardware wags the tail on their software? Better to keep focusing on maintaining/retaking the hardware innovation mindshare and lead.

Why should Apple do that?

You know what would be the much cheaper solution? Allow iOS users to set default apps (for maps and even other stuff). Problem solved. Google and Apple don’t even have to meet for that, agree on anything or pay anything.

Well there is an engineering cost to defining and implementing the interfaces that would make setting "default apps" work. Still probably cheaper and definitely better for users in the long run.

That cost is really low. Not even worth mentioning. It's a bit of UI in settings, and you're done. It already exists on the Mac and has for ages. We can be stupendously pessimistic about the time and say it would require ten man-years to implement (not likely) and it's still vastly cheaper than licensing just about anything at their scale.

You're assuming Google would even allow that. Google knows what it's maps are worth, why would they license that data in perpetuity to a competitor for a one time fixed cost?

That's basically the argument that everyone has been putting forward for why this whole thing happened. Google and Apple had a deal, and it was up for renegotiation. Google didn't ask for more money, they asked for all sorts of integration and data sharing Apple was unwilling to do (possibly with more money).

They knew the position they had Apple in. They tried to get what they wanted and lost their position as the iOS mapping provider. I'm pretty sure if it was just a matter of more money, Apple would have paid up. They certainly have the cash.

The need to always assign blame to an entity for some suboptimal experience is immature. It also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of business and economics.

Some things just are.

> I’d say neither company was being a "jerk" here. Apple and Google were both acting in their own interests.

If this wasn't blindingly obvious to you from the very moment this whole business showed up in public, then you should take some time to reconsider how you analyze the world.

True, true. But the additional claims from Gruber in this is that "both acting in their own interests, Google's being 'milk you dry for information and revenue', while apparently Apple is this beatific entity, whose interest is 'sincerely caring for ... their customers'." Eye roll

It's more that for Apple, users are customers (they buy the gadget), while for Google, users are the product being sold (ads).

Apple is just as interested as locking you into their world (itunes, app store, icloud, etc.) as google is. And apple gets I believe 30% of the ads you're shown within their ecosystem so you are the customer AND the product.

Jobs' "thermonuclear war" comment left open the possibility that Apple and Google might be acting in a more hot headed fashion than the average company.

It may be that hot heads were an issue but while we're evaluating the Maps deal loggerheads, let's remember that the original Maps app completely predated Google's releasing a product that directly competed with the iPhone. And that it's not surprising that, hot heads or not, this was bound to change Apple's calculus about (1) whether to continue with Google as a Maps partner and if so (2) how deep they were going to allow it to integrate.

> For one thing, Apple sincerely values the privacy of its users more than Google does.

Ah, Gruber... so cute.

It's annoying when people with some degree of influence casually spew misinformed nonsense:

Google wanting iOS users to be able to sign in — if not be downright encouraged to sign in — to their Google account, that’s easy to understand. That’s how Google makes money, by selling ads that target us based on the information they collect as we use their services.

You agree to send anonymous data to Google for the location targeting and improved accuracy bit, you sign-in to sync bookmarks and search history. Also one wouldn't have needed to sign into every Google app separately if iOS allowed Google the same OS-wide account integration that Facebook and Twitter have.

I legitimately think I've misunderstood your comment, because I'm not following. As I understand it, the anonymous data collection allows Google to improve the maps, gather aggregate user data, etc., but is "anonymous." If you sign into a Google account, then they can track individual usage and better target ads. There's nothing particularly nefarious about this; Google does this with all their services, that's their business. Right?

Location data is anonymous regardless if you login afterward or not: http://support.google.com/gmm/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&top...

Searches, starred locations, etc. are not, though. Arguably, those are more important than location data.

Yes, but they are also not as sensitive as location data and are very useful features.

Who says that they aren't as sensitive? Where I am going to can be just a sensitive as where I am and where I might be thinking about going could be even more sensitive.

The feature may be useful and I'm not saying that it shouldn't be offered but I believe that your assertion that they aren't as sensitive is NOT universally true.

One of the first screens you get to after installing the Google Maps app on iOS is the login for your Google account. Gruber's description doesn't seem that far off, considering that.

Let's see…

• App Store, top charts, google maps, install…

• Give apple password with sufficient privileges attach to destroy my business in order to download free app. (Yes, off topic, but there it is.)

• Open app.

• Screen 1, accept TOS without reading. Ignore privacy policy. Agree to send anonymous location data to make their traffic stuff work. Tell phone I want them to share that data openly in exchange for me providing it freely, but the phone is not listening.

• Screen 2, GIANT BLUE SIGN IN BUTTON. Tiny, faint skip button hidden in upper right corner. I'll wager $20 to people with eye trackers that the upper right corner is the last corner to be processed on that screen, since you finger just acted on the bottom center. No word on what they will do with my info if I sign in, but it will share my searches and bookmarks between my computer and phone. (I'll skip and see what I have to do to provoke it again.)

• Screen 3, Popup to allow Google Apps access to location data in the phone. Of course, that would be silly otherwise. (Apple requires this.)

• Screen 4, I'm in! It found me. The map is dancing a little as the location refines.

• Screen 5, There is a little outline of a person. Street view? I like street view. Touch. Nope, profile. GIANT BLUE SIGN IN BUTTON. (I'll back out.)

• Screen 6, Try a search. It is google after all and POI is bad where I am in apple maps. See if google knows that hospital is gone. Before I can even type… map replaced with GIANT BLUE SIGN IN BUTTON. Also note: Google shows a hospital where there is none and hasn't been for a long time. I've been grousing about Apple doing this, but Google is apparently no better.

• Screen 7, There is a little forked road icon I don't understand, touch… it is routing… GIANT BLUE SIGN IN BUTTON.

• Screen 8, Try the paper airplane icon in the lower left. Oblique 3d view. Turn that back off. Something must be broken, no sign in button.

• Screen 9-12, try the slide out element in the bottom right. Traffic, satellite work, don't require sign in. No Public Transit information in my region? WTF? There is. It will even give me routes. I have no idea what's going on with that layer.

Final score: Before finding anything, you will be asked to log in twice. Before minimally exploring the UI you will be asked four times. Several of these appear that your only choice is to sign in, or cancel the task. (You can plow on through, but that isn't unambiguously obvious by the page design.)

But I'm glad I have it. It means I can go back to Manhattan sometime and confidently use the subways. (as long as I route plan before going down the hole).

Thanks for that. I couldn't remember if it was the first, or second screen, and I did sign in with my Google account, since I do use all the destination features.

So Google and Apple are fighting, and iPhone users got caught in the middle without their maps data.

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