mapping
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Microsoft may turn to mobile gaming for crowdsourced mapping data
Keeping map data relevant's a full-time job -- just ask Nokia, Google and, yes, even Apple. Which is why Microsoft may be gearing up to offload some of that heavy lifting to users in the augmented reality guise of mobile gaming. Or at least that's one possible future outlined by a recently surfaced patent application. The USPTO doc, filed back in June of 2011, clearly lays out a crowdsourced "data collection system" whereby users sent on virtual missions to specific real-world targets would aid in the gathering of up-to-date geo-location data. With its thriving Xbox gaming arm and reinvigorated inroads into the mobile space, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for Microsoft to leverage a bit of corporate synergy to make its own mapping service more accurate, or simply license the data. Whatever the case may be, it's all up in legal limbo for the time being. So, for now, you'll have to content yourselves with AR missions of the Ingress kind.
Google updates Maps for 10 European countries and regions, claims 27.9 million miles of road under its belt
Google's just flipped the switch on updates for its maps of ten European countries and regions: Andorra, Bulgaria, Estonia, Gibraltar, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. As part of Page And Co.'s Ground Truth project, the refresh increases the accuracy and detail of maps by combining human input with a wide array of data, such as satellite and Street View imagery. With the refresh, Google's cartography has been spruced up with building outlines, walking paths, ferry lines, park boundaries, new highways and more. The update brings the number of countries mapped as part of the search titan's Ground Truth initiative to 40, and pushes the total number of miles of road cataloged in Google Maps to 27.9 million.
Explorers hunt mystery island depicted by online maps, draw a deep blue blank
Was it submerged after the satellite made its sweep? Did those volcanic-black pixels crumble and drown under their own weight? Have military censors deliberately obscured the truth? Australian explorers who sailed the South Pacific for 25 days in search of the landmass known as Sandy Island, after spotting it on Google Earth, have returned none-the-wiser. And it's not just Google that is apparently inaccurate -- a Coral Sea island in the same position also appears on Yahoo, Bing and even iOS maps, as well as on the Times Atlas of the World under the eerily appropriate name of Sable Island, which could be interpreted as "Very Dark Black Island." The depth of the ocean is around 1,400 meters at these coordinates (-19.225583, 159.938759), which is precisely why the the University of Sydney's maritime researchers went looking -- it would be an extremely unusual outcrop if it actually existed. One down-to-earth explanation is that the entity is the cartographic equivalent of a watermark, allowing the mapmaker to tell if his work has been pirated, but no doubt there are other possibilities. Dr Maria Seton, fresh from a fruitless month on the waves, insists she plans to "follow up and find out."
TomTom unveils location based services, portal to help put developers on the map
Thanks to a certain fruit company and its cartographic woes, many folks are aware that TomTom provides mapping services to third-parties. Now the navigation company is offering cloud-based services like map display, routing, traffic and geocoding to all, alongside a developer portal with the tools to program them. That'll pit it against rivals like Nokia and Google in providing location data for fleet management, traffic planning or geolocation analysis apps, for instance. Naturally, there's a fee to be paid for all those goodies, but to get you hooked, the company's offering a 90 day free evaluation of its SDK and API. Need directions to the PR? Take the first left, then head after the break.
Updated Google Map Maker accents neighborhoods, shows changes in Activity Stream
Google wants you to think locally with its new Map Maker update featuring neighborhoods and an Activity Stream to track mapping changes. The site now launches into My Neighborhood mode, suggesting places you've rated or searched on Google Maps and allowing you to add and edit your own haunts. From there, a list of your changes (or those of other users) can be viewed in the left-hand pane and filtered by review, date or category. You can also see additions anywhere in your current map view by panning, zooming or searching and even help other users out by reviewing pending edits. If you're ready to channel your inner cartographer, check the source.
Google Maps adds natural terrain by default outside of satellite views, reminds us the world isn't flat
Everyone knows that Google prides itself on mapping accuracy. If you hadn't checked beyond the base maps in the past few years, though, you'd have thought the terrain was charted in the "here be dragons" era -- it's been as flat as a board. Take a second look today. Google has overhauled Google Maps worldwide to show hills, deserts and lush zones by default, as well as label the geographical features that hadn't previously been identifiable in a sea of white. The map overhaul isn't so nuanced enough as to remind us how steep the hills can be in San Francisco, but it will remind us that Gobi refers to more than just a chipset.
Google Trekker goes to the Grand Canyon, takes Street View souvenirs back home
You might remember Google's unveiling this spring of the Street View Trekker, a seeming cross between a backpack and Van de Graaff generator that lets the mapping team produce 360-degree imagery where even trikes dare not tread. The portable camera ball is just going on its first trip, and Google has chosen the most natural destination for a novice tourist -- the Grand Canyon, of course. Staffers with Trekkers are currently walking trails along the South Rim of the canyon to provide both eye-level points of reference for wayward hikers as well as some breathtaking, controllable panoramas for those who can't (or won't) make it to Arizona. Once the photos make it to Street View sometime in the undefined near future, it'll be that much easier to turn down Aunt Matilda's 3-hour vacation slideshow.
Google draws 25 million new building footprints in Maps, shapes up your neighborhood
The fine, well labeled lines of Google Maps may show a clean layout of your neighborhood, but without buildings, it looks too much like a two-dimensional spread of undeveloped tract housing. Google's finally filling in the gaps, outlining 25 million building footprints in cities all across the United States. Residents of Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Detroit and other cities can now see the familiar outlines of their local stomping ground on the services' mobile and desktop maps. Most of these buildings were algorithmically generated from aerial photographs,locals can pen in their own content by using Google Map Maker to add new buildings or tag their favorite local eatery. The tweak sounds minor, but it certainly makes the standard map's criss-cross of roads look more familiar. Check out the official Google Lat Long blog below for more details.
Visualized: Google Street View car fleet gets ready to conquer (and map) the world
Ever wonder how Google can make such grandiose claims for the sheer amount of Street View imagery it collects? Here's how. Google's Masrur Odinaev has posted a snapshot of a central mapping car parking lot that shows dozens of the camera-equipped Subaru Imprezas amassed ahead of future runs. While it already represents more Street View cars in one place than anyone outside of Google would normally ever see, what's most impressive is remembering that this addresses just a portion of the entire vehicle mix -- aside from the local cars you don't see in the photo, there are extra units worldwide providing street-level coverage alongside tricycles and underwater expeditions. Odinaev's look reminds us just how much effort is needed to make Street View a common feature -- and that there are are legions of Google staffers whose low-profile work goes a long way towards making our navigation easier.
Street View comes to Google Maps web app on iOS, just like they said it would
While the hubbub surrounding Apple Maps on iOS 6 has been somewhat sedated, some people who made the move to Google Maps' web app had been further encouraged by word that it'd be getting Street View imagery soon. And what do you know, barely seven days into the estimated "in two weeks" and here it is. Search for a location (no long press yet), and you'll spy the familiar icon bottom right. This appears in both Chrome and Safari. While perhaps still not quite as slick as the good old app of yore, a definite panacea for all those iOS toutin' virtual tourists.
Google offers up more high-res places in Maps / Earth, intros additional 45-degree imagery
Google's mapping offerings are getting a little bit better this week. The software giant's announced the addition of a slew of high-res aerial and satellite images for 17 cities and 112 countries / regions -- it's a long list, so your best bet is accessing the source link below to check out all of the offerings. Google's also adding 45-degree imagery in Maps for a total of 51 cities -- 37 in the US and 14 outside -- letting you check out the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the buildings of Madison, Wisconsin from an all new angle. Forget the plane tickets -- all you need for your next vacation is a browser and an overactive imagination.
MIT's real-time indoor mapping system uses Kinect, lasers to aid rescue workers
We've seen the Kinect put to use to help you find your groceries, but the sensor's image processing capabilities have some more safety-minded applications as well. The fine minds at MIT combined the Kinect with a laser range finder and a laptop to create a real-time mapping rig for firefighters and other rescue workers. The prototype, called SLAM (for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) received funding from the US Air Force and the Office of Naval Research, and it stands out among other indoor mapping systems for its focus on human (rather than robot) use and its ability to produce maps without the aid of any outside information, thanks to an on-board processor.
The iOS 6 Maps app is why my next phone may be a Samsung, not an iPhone 5
My next phone won't be the iPhone 5 I've been dreaming of for a year; it'll be a Samsung Android handset. Why? Two words: Google Maps. This isn't a political statement. It's not an empty protest over how bad Apple's Maps app is. It's because for the first time I've lost confidence that an Apple product is the best choice for my needs. In iOS 6 and on the iPhone 5, a significant feature -- one that tens of millions of people rely on daily -- does not work as it should. In fact, calling it "a feature" doesn't do it justice; it's a necessity for any smartphone. For me, it's as important as email and phone calls and surfing the web. Maybe more important -- mapping tells us where we are in the world and where we are going. As of iOS 6, this capability we've come to rely on so heavily can no longer be trusted. The iOS 6 Maps launch has underlined what we already knew: No one does maps like Google does -- not even close. By leaving Google Maps off iOS 6 Apple has done a deep disservice to its user base. That user base, by the way, is orders of magnitude larger than it ever was when the Mac dominated Apple's product line and profit margins; this is something that potentially touches hundreds of millions of users around the world. Apple Maps is not a finished product. I wouldn't even call it a beta product. It misplaces airports and schools and roads. It leads me in the wrong direction. It doesn't show me stores or schools or parks that are clearly right in front of my eyes. This obliterates the user experience on iPhone. I've used every iPhone that has ever existed. My current phone is an iPhone 4S and I pre-ordered an iPhone 5 on launch day. As of yesterday, I've canceled that pre-order and am planning on picking up a Samsung phone this week. Now, before I get into the reasons for my leap to Android (and why Apple Maps are so bad), before someone accuses me of being an "Apple hater," I want to explain how hard a choice this was for me -- and how I am the last person who'd choose to dump on Apple. I write for TUAW. I've used Apple technology almost exclusively for the last 12 years of my life. I also spent half a decade of my life working for Apple. I still have dozens of friends at Apple in design, marketing and sales. Besides my personal and professional connections to the company and its products, I also have a financial interest in seeing the company succeed; I've been steadily investing in it for the last 11 years. But like most other people, if you eliminate all my personal, professional and financial connections, I really only ever went by one criterion when deciding to use an Apple product: I believed it was the best product for my needs; it performed the best out of all the other products out there for what I needed it to do. In short, as Steve Jobs used to say, "It just works." With Apple Maps, it no longer does. With Apple Maps, the iPhone is significantly hampered. Apple's new Maps is a black mark on the company's stellar product record in the Steve Jobs II era and beyond. Sure, Apple has released some iffy stuff (Ping, MobileMe) and hasn't been immune to its share of engineering faults ("Antennagate") or not fully baked features (Siri). But those things didn't hinder a product we were depending on in a significant way for a significant number of users. Apple Maps does. What's so broken about Maps? Sure, it looks different than Google Maps -- Apple would say "better than" -- but it's easy to get used to the way Maps looks instead of the yellow, reds, and greens of Google Maps. And yeah, the elimination of transit directions is also a significant setback, but there are plenty of third-party apps that work better than public transit directions ever did in Google Maps, covering most urban and suburban areas with transit services. The real failure of Apple Maps comes from the fact that it is still clearly an alpha product (not even a beta like Siri -- an alpha) that should never have been released in its current state. Now, as my colleague Michael Rose pointed out, Apple may have had some legitimate reasons (like turn-by-turn navigation that Google didn't allow under its API) to create its own mapping solution. But another significant reason is Apple wants to wean itself off of any dependance it has on Google. Will it be a win for users? Maybe, but only when the entirety of Apple Maps finally works as well as Google Maps does. Unfortunately that's not going to happen any time soon. It feels like Apple put corporate strategy ahead of user experience -- granted, that's happened before (No floppy drives! No serial ports! No optical drives!) but generally in the service of something readily perceptible. I mean, this is a company that says it sometimes doesn't release great products they've created in the labs because they weren't quite right or didn't fill a need that users could better get from someone else. "Not quite right" is an understatement when referring to Apple Maps and "can't get it better anyplace else" is just flat out wrong as long as Google and its mapping data is around. Same location. Apple Maps, left. Google Maps, right. So how bad is Apple Maps? There are Tumblr blogs and Twitter accounts dedicated to how bad Apple Maps is. I thought they were funny and not a big deal -- at first. But then I stepped out over the weekend doing my usual stuff (going to work, meeting friends, traveling) and found out just how hampered my iPhone had become. I live in London. It's the biggest city in the UK. It's one of the capitals of the world that tens of millions of travelers and tourists pass through every year -- not to mention the 10 million people who live here -- and Apple Maps hardly functions here. This is in the biggest, most important city in the UK. Now think about the smaller cities around the country where Apple's data providers have misplaced entire airports, or located villages miles from where they should be. Let me give you an example: today I was in central London and I ran a series of searches on my iPhone 4S in Apple Maps. Every single search query I entered either turned up no results or misplaced results. I was meeting a friend at Circus Space, which I know is somewhere in the Shoreditch (east) area of London, but Apple Maps showed it was located across the city on the west side. Moving on, I decided to do a search for O'Neills Pub. O'Neills is a series of chain restaurants in the UK. In London it's hard to walk for 10 minutes without passing one. When I did the search, Apple Maps showed only three locations (two of them wrong) and all miles from where I was (and where a majority of O'Neills are). I then tested Maps again by searching for "Pret," a series of popular sandwich eateries in London. Pret is even more ubiquitous than O'Neills. Apple Maps returned half-baked results -- only showing me three in the area and totally missing the one I was standing two feet away from. There should be a Pret where the blue arrow is pointing. I know because I was standing right next to it (and even took a photo of it). I've got friends coming to London next month to visit me and over the summer I've been telling them that no matter what they do they need to bring an unlocked iPhone with them because it'll make navigating London so much easier. But now, that won't be the case anymore. Using Apple's Maps on their iPhone is just going to get them lost in London. But this isn't just about London (although, Apple, how hard is it to use Tube icons for tube stations like Google, Bing and Yahoo do?). Apple Maps data is horrible across Europe and Asia. My friend from Singapore was visiting London this weekend and we were exploring the new features of iOS 6 together on our iPhones. Within 30 seconds of using Apple Maps to check out his home city of Singapore it was obvious (and somewhat shocking to him) just how misplaced things were. This doesn't bode well for Apple and their hopes of continued expansion in Asia. [Mike's fellow Brit and former TUAW contributor Nik Fletcher is visiting the US at the moment, and noted on Sunday's Talkcast that he had to throw in the towel on iOS 6 Maps during his first day walking around New York City. He ended up searching for sights and destinations using his wife's un-upgraded iPhone instead. –Ed.] Now to be fair, some people don't have a problem with the new Maps. Indeed, the turn-by-turn directions are very nice, as are the 3D views. But the people saying the new Maps is just fine seem to live in the suburbs of American cities where they rarely use Maps on a daily basis (they only drive from home to work or home to the grocery store or places they already know), or they live in smaller cities where they know where most things are already. However, if you live in a major city or are a business traveler Maps is probably the most important app on your phone. And the fact that you can't trust it anymore and it doesn't work as it should is devastating. Why this is such a big deal In the five years since Apple introduced the first iPhone, mobile maps in our pockets have become a major selling point and a necessary feature for any smartphone. Depending on what study you read, mobile mapping is the number one or number two most-used feature on smartphones (ahead of surfing the web, texting and calling). And Apple, a company known for ease of use and putting their users first was at the top of the pack. The company had the foresight to work with Google, the best mapper in the world, since the first iPhone OS. That's changed in the years since. Apple and Google don't like each other now. It didn't change because Google said, "We're out of here." It's because Apple said, "You're not giving us what we need. We're doing it without you. See ya." As noted above, Google wasn't willing to allow iOS to offer turn-by-turn navigation on Apple's terms, and perhaps the search company was insisting on more access to user data than Apple was willing to give. But negotiations go both ways, and maybe three years ago Apple thought this would be easier than it is -- or that users would be more forgiving than they are. Maps on a smartphone are a necessity. But maps are only as good as their accuracy, the depth of their data and the ability to search for that data. Apple Maps handles direct addresses (full address with ZIP or post-code) pretty well, but available data (businesses, restaurants, etc.) and search are horrible. How is Apple's mapping technique different than Google's mapping technique? The reason Google Maps is so much better than Apple Maps is because of the amount of time each company has invested into mapping, how they cull their data and the resources they've put behind the problem. Apple got into the mapping game in the late 2000s when it started buying up companies in the field. It then took technology and data from these separate companies, leased data from about 20 other companies and threw that all together into their new Maps app. When Google started mapping almost 10 years ago, it originally went the route Apple is going now: buy up small companies, merge all the different sets of data and just hope things work. However, Google soon found out that that was the wrong way to create reliable maps. So Google started mapping from scratch, scouring the earth with Google Street View cars, constantly refining data and integrating its core strength -- search -- into Maps. The result is arguably the best non-military map of the world that's ever existed. Another reason Google was able to quickly build the best mapping system ever is because it had, at its peak, nearly 7,000 people working on Google Maps. That's certainly a much bigger field force than Apple has working on maps, yet both companies are trying to cover the same planet. I'll tell you the analogy I used with a friend today when she asked me why Apple Maps is inferior to Google Maps: if Maps were a novel, Google would write its book from line one on page one, refining the prose along the way, and only stop when it reached the last period on the last page. Google would write the book through completely, telling the entire story as best as possible. Google's writers would be Proust and Tolstoy and Hemingway. Apple's book, on the other hand, would be cut and pasted together from 20 other already written books (fiction, non-fiction, Sears catalogs from 1993), hoping overlays matched and not caring if the editor turned on spellcheck or not. The editor of Apple's book would be E.L. James. How Apple can fix this mess (and Google's stand-alone iOS Maps app). It can't. Well, not anytime soon. It took Google seven years and thousands of people to build up a good mapping service. Apple is not going to fix its Maps in the next three or even 12 months. It's not likely anyway. And what actually scares me is Apple Maps wasn't just thrown together in the last year. It's the result of already at least three years of work and it's still horrible. It's still an alpha product. So no, Apple is not going to fix this any time soon. I mean, we're talking about correctly mapping the entire planet here. That's going to take a lot of time and a lot of manpower. So, if you rely on Maps, I hate to tell you this, but don't think iOS 6.1 in January is going to get Apple's Maps close to the level that Google Maps hit on the iPhone even back in 2007. If you ask me, it hardly competes with MapQuest in 1995. But just because Apple can't fix this mess soon doesn't mean it can't fix this mess faster. Apple can tackle this in one of two ways: 1) Money and manpower. 2) Google. Apple has almost $120 billion in the bank. Everyone on Wall Street says Apple can't possibly ever begin to spend that money. Well, now it can. And it needs to, because the "It just works" mantra of the iPhone is very much on the line. What Apple needs to do is take a chunk of its cash hoard (5 percent? 10 percent? Multiple billions.) and throw it into mapping. Hire the talent and build the fleet to start replicating Google's street-level intelligence, at least in the major cities. Then hire lots and lots of mapping engineers. Give the Google team members a call and offer to double their salary if they jump ship and come work for you -- in fact, it looks like this may already be happening. But even if Apple throws $12 billion at the mapping problem, it's still going to take time to fix (though not as long). In the meantime what Apple really needs to do is crawl back to Google. No, Apple isn't going to get rid of the new Maps. The company's got too much pride for that (and maybe one day, some years from now, Apple's maps will have grown in to something much better than Google Maps). But until then, for the users' sake, Apple needs to get Google Maps back on the iPhone for those who want it. For some users, the Google Maps web app usable in Safari may be a reasonable workaround for the faults in the dedicated iOS Maps app. Unfortunately, for me it's just not a substitute. If you combine it with Google's Search app, it's not horrendous -- it's just very inconvenient. There are now many, many more taps to do the same thing that the native Maps app can do quickly. Then there's the hypothetical standalone Google Maps app for iOS. Except that it's not hypothetical. Two high-level sources inside Google have confirmed to me that the app exists. Where the employees disagree is on the status of the app. One tells me that Google has sent the app to Apple for approval, but Apple is just sitting on it. The other tells me that he believes Google has yet to put the finishing touches on the app and has not submitted it to Apple. But either way, it's a real thing. If Apple still respects its users and really cares about the user experience, like I suspect it does, the company will approve the Google Maps iOS app right away and without further delay. And if Google has yet to submit it, then Tim Cook needs to get on the phone and call Larry Page today and tell him to do so. This is no time to let pride get in the way. Oh, and the statement Apple released a few days ago saying "Maps is a cloud-based solution and the more people use it, the better it will get" is a cop out. A necessary feature like Maps shouldn't be rolled out until it works relatively well; if I reported every Apple Maps mistake in London (like the app allows you to do) I would need to give up my job and personal life because there's just not enough time in the day to correct all of the Maps mistakes in my area and still live my life. When Apple released that statement, I wrote "Some people have called Apple's Maps the company's 'Vista' moment. Though I am quite annoyed by the downgrade, I liken Apple's Maps more to iMovie '08. That's when Apple totally revamped iMovie and turned it into the start of something better, but it didn't start surpassing the old iMovie until the next iteration of the new app." Boy, was I wrong. After a weekend of really using them, the current state of Apple's Maps is way worse than Vista. Why I'm going to Samsung You never miss anything -- and realize how heavily you rely on it -- until it's gone. That's the case with Apple Maps. Until my first full weekend of usage of Apple's new Maps in iOS 6, I didn't realize just how heavily I relied on Google Maps on my iPhone in my daily life. Whenever I needed to find anything in London, it was just there, at my fingertips. Now it's not. I can live with sometimes spotty iCloud email or a not fully baked Siri, but as it turns out I can't live without reliable maps, not when I live in a major metropolitan area and frequently travel to other European cities. And as I said, even if Apple throws billions of dollars at Maps, it's still going to take a lot of time to fix. What's the most difficult about Maps in iOS 6 is the loss of faith. Now I never know if something I'm looking for really might be close to me, but I'm just not seeing it -- or if something that Maps says is there will actually be there, which can theoretically go beyond inconvenient to dangerous. True, the browser version of Google Maps is there, but it's an inferior experience; it's slow, clunky and doesn't integrate across the OS like the native Maps does. For me, knowing that Maps is my "killer app," it's just not good enough. Don't get me wrong, I think Samsung has blatantly ripped Apple off, but that also means its got the best copy of the iPhone out there. And it uses Google Maps -- something I trust implicitly. I don't like having to print out maps before I leave the house -- like I had to today -- so I know without a doubt that I can get to the place I need to go. My phone should be able to do that. The iPhone no longer dependably does. Samsung's phones and Google Maps can. This, of course, is another problem for Apple. The company just gave Android its biggest selling point ever: "We have maps that work. We have maps that you can trust." I didn't cancel my iPhone 5 order lightly. It hurt to do so. But I did it for the same reason I originally went with Apple products years ago -- they "just work." The iPhone 5's maps no longer "just work." So that phone is not the best choice for me any longer. It's a shame too, because I was loaned an iPhone 5 for 24 hours on Saturday and it literally is a thing of true beauty. Hands down, it is the best designed phone ever. It's light and thin and fast and beautiful. But it doesn't have a critical feature that I rely on anymore. So, what should you do? If you like iOS and the iPhone and don't depend on Maps as your "killer app," by all means, stay with the iPhone. If the browser version of Google Maps, or one of the third-party nav or search apps, works for you then don't sweat it. I know I'll still be using all of Apple's other products -- because they still "just work." And if Apple allows Google Maps in the App Store, I'll jump ship back to the iPhone 5. But if you rely heavily on Maps -- especially if you live outside of America or travel a lot -- you might want to seriously think about whether you can live with iOS 6's Maps. If not, Android is now the main game in town that has Google Maps. Either way, let me know how you feel about Apple's Maps in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter (@michaelgrothaus) if you want to recommend a good Samsung phone for me.
One not-so-secret reason Apple built its own Maps for iOS 6
In the uproar over iOS 6's move to Apple's homegrown Maps service, the driving theme is user frustration (not to say outright anger). Even the most ardent apologists have to acknowledge that Maps has serious issues, and the company's critics are having a field day. Some of the challenges may be remediable in the short term, while others may take far longer to address effectively. Apple is reportedly doing deep-dive recruiting into the fallow, contract-complete engineering pool that helped to build Google Maps in the first place. Yes, this stuff is hard. We're going to dive into the Maps conundrum (and a little product launch from Friday) on tonight's Talkcast, so bring your suggestions, complaints and consolations. You can connect to us live here at 10pm Eastern Sunday night, or listen in after the fact. For iOS 6 users, especially those who upgraded without realizing that Maps was changing under their feet, things are awkward. In the short term, we're seeing a lot of workarounds and substitutions for everything from Google's Street View feature (the $0.99 Live Street View app does a fine job) to transit directions (if they cover where you live, Embark's offerings are sharp and accurate) to simply going with a bookmark to the mobile version of Google Maps itself. We're also seeing a lot of enthusiastic attribution of motives: "Apple wants to force its customers to use its own products, even when they are not as good as those from rivals," opines Joe Nocera in the New York Times. "They put their own priorities for corporate strategy ahead of user experience," suggests Anil Dash. "Apple put crapware on their most important product on purpose in order to screw a rival at the expense of users," claims Mike Elgan over at Cult of Mac. (Elgan's post suggests that Apple is obsessed with Google, but he also says that "Google+ is the Google Maps of social networks," which makes me wonder if perhaps he hasn't got some other things mixed up.) Those assertions make for strong narratives and good, meaty, angry articles. They're forceful, and have the ring of truth. But to suggest that the only reason Apple would make this change is for the sake of forcing Google off of iOS -- punishing users in the process, without a care or a caution -- is naive and mistaken. Apple's move away from Google's maps isn't about screwing users to make a corporate political point; it's about trying to give iOS users a better maps experience in the long run. What's the one big thing that Android devices -- since 2.0, in 2009 -- have been able to do with their maps that iOS devices, natively and without expensive third-party apps, couldn't do? Realtime, turn by turn navigation. The feature that lets you replace your $100-and-up dashboard GPS unit with only your phone and your voice, included in the box with millions of Android phones. A specific, unarguable and easy-to-market differentiating feature. Droid does; iPhone doesn't. Why doesn't the Google-backed Maps app on iOS 5 do realtime nav? Well, as Ars Technica pointed out in June, it's simply not allowed in the Google API license agreement for Maps. Easy enough for Google to provide the feature to its own operating system (once the underlying map data licensing hurdles were cleared when it turned over from NAVTEQ data to its own geobase in the late 2000s), but third parties? Nope. This was confirmed as a constraint when developers asked the question at WWDC several years ago. No realtime nav, no vector map tiles, no way. But, surely, Google and Apple could make a deal to get around that pesky license? Given the special relationship between the two companies? Apparently not. As iMore notes and the Wall Street Journal delves into, Google was not willing to license turn-by-turn to Apple. Perhaps Apple drove too hard a bargain; perhaps Google's team wanted more access to user data, or to bundle the Latitude find-your-pals application into the mapping suite. Some suggest that Google wanted to keep turn-by-turn as a competitive tool for Android. But Charles Arthur's assertion in the Guardian that Apple "didn't want it" regarding realtime nav appears to be unfounded. Apple wanted it; Google wouldn't give it up. Google's role as the mapping provider for iOS was never an easy fit from a corporate perspective, but it became downright untenable when the intransigence over turn-by-turn kept the iPhone's mapping capability a generation behind the Android front line. Navigation isn't a trivial feature; getting a solid app for your driving directions can cost real money, or require an ongoing subscription. Apple's users were getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop because Apple didn't own the technology -- and that's the horse driving the cart in this case, not the other way around. If Apple can't build products that include the features users want most, they won't be insanely great, they won't delight, and they won't sell. That's the not-so-secret reason for the change to Apple's Maps. If iPhone users couldn't do turn-by-turn directions for free, Apple surmised, at some point they would stop being iPhone users. Maybe that's a crass, commercial reason, but it's not politics; it's real features for real customers. And it's part and parcel with other Google-controlled or blocked features (voice search for Maps, requiring a Maps tile to show whenever the geocoder is used, high-quality vector Maps for Retina) that were dragging the platform behind. None of that helps the current facts on the ground, as it were, when it comes to Maps in iOS 6, even if Apple should have leapt off long ago. In fact, users of pre-iPhone 4S devices may be extra peeved, as they don't even get the benefits of the turn-by-turn nav as they're sacrificing the data depth and accuracy of the Google infrastructure. This stuff is hard, and perhaps Apple's sin here is one of hubris -- thinking that the company had the smarts to solve several genuine problems at once, without realizing that the problems are actually that difficult. It's unfair and unfactual to say, as Joe Nocera does, that the Maps iOS 6 situation would not have come off the tracks the way it has if Steve Jobs were still running the company. Goodness knows, hubris -- and failure -- were things Steve had plenty of experience with, as Jean-Louis Gassée points out. But what is true is that Tim Cook and his team now face the challenge of rebuilding some user trust, explaining why they chose this path, and actually fixing the Maps app without resorting to any reality distortion fields. Thanks to Rene Ritchie for research help on this post.
Nokia stacks up its maps next to Apple's and Google's, politely suggests it comes out on top (update: more detail)
You might have noticed a brouhaha over map accuracy in iOS 6. Nokia undoubtedly did, as it's using the iPhone 5 launch to remind us that its strategy has been all about location lately. The crew in Espoo has pitted Nokia Maps from the Lumia 920 against both Apple's equivalent as well as Google Maps -- and to no one's surprise, Nokia's own platform comes out on top. In practice, it's a relatively frank comparison that doesn't try to win on every point. Nokia tends to use a liberal definition of the term "3D" that includes augmented reality, but it's otherwise willing to emphasize its advantages in offline mapping and the sheer scope of its mapping coverage. Apple's very young mapping effort struggles, while Nokia is willing to accept that it doesn't have as much traffic coverage as Google. There is, however, the slight problem of the Lumia 920 not yet shipping: unless you've been blessed with a prototype of the Windows Phone 8 device, Apple and Google are the only ones that have their latest navigation software on a phone you can actually buy. Hit the source for the full, very tall chart as well as a few sly jabs at Nokia's competitors. Update: To clarify, it's true that much of what Nokia is talking about can be found on existing Lumias. However, Nokia did mention that there will be new features coming to Nokia Maps in Windows Phone 8, including the wider offline support, an augmented reality view during navigation and better integration with Nokia Drive.
Nokia cops to powering Amazon's mapping service
Well, Amazon is being pretty tight lipped about the details of its mapping service, but Nokia isn't afraid to spill the beans. A spokesperson for the Finish company, Sebastian Kurme, told The Next Web that Amazon is indeed licensing the Nokia Location Platform for its latest Google-shunning product. We reached out as well and were fed the exact same official statement, confirming that Nokia is becoming an even bigger player in the mapping sphere. The platform is already the basis for Yahoo! Maps and a large portion of Bing's offerings as well. Not to mention Nokia Drive, the company's navigation software, is one of the crown jewels of the Windows Phone world. Check out the full statement from Nokia below. Amazon is licensing the Nokia Location Platform (NLP) for maps and geocoding. The Nokia Location Platform is the most advanced mobile location platform with a unique global footprint. It provides maps for almost 200 countries (with more than 100 of them navigable) and provides the best, automotive-grade map quality based on industry-leading technology and more than 20 years expertise in mapping. Amongst others, it is already powering Yahoo Maps, and increasingly also powering Bing Maps as well. Location is playing a central role in our strategy, and because of its global footprint, quality and completeness of performance (geocoding, routing, traffic) the Nokia Location Platform offers great opportunities for 3rd parties to build upon. Amazon´s decision to choose the Nokia Location Platform is further proof point that our competence in this space is a key differentiator also for other leading players in the industry to offer great location consumer experiences.
Amazon Maps API enters beta as retailer weans itself off Google
Well, that's one more option to Google's mapping service and one less company paying data dividends into the Mountain View system. Apple has already left Big G to develop its own platform and now Amazon is going the same root with Amazon Maps API. With the debut of the Kindle Fire HD, the dot-com bubble survivor is working hard to build out its own ecosystem with as little reliance on others as possible. While it will continue to count on Google, at least indirectly, for its tablet OS, most other traces of the Brin and Page powerhouse have been erased. The new, in-house developed map service is still young and may lack some of the more advanced features Google customers enjoy, but it does provide the basics -- interactive maps and customized overlays. The API is designed to play nice with Android's existing location-based API, but it's unclear if the ease of transition will be enough to convince devs to take a chance on Amazon's offering. Those who remember A9, the online retailer's doomed search portal, will be forgiven for wondering if the Fire maker can really compete with Google on its home turf. If you're a curious dev you can sign up for beta access at the source link.
Google Maps Navigation for Android hits nine MENA nations, adds Arabic voice search
If there is one thing you can't say about Google's mapping team, it's that they are a lazy bunch. Update after update puts paid to any of that kinda talk, and again, here's another example -- navigation for Android is now available in nine more countries. It's the Middle East and North Africa that get the attention this time, with Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Saudia Arabia all getting the update. The service comes complete with Arabic voice search as well as "search along route" for routes to near-by POIs that won't take you the long way round. You'll need Android 4.0 or above if you want in on the action, but it's available now for those that do.
Google Maps creation put under the microscope, reveals a human touch
They say you should never learn how the sausage gets made, but we're willing to make an exception for Google Maps. Talking to The Atlantic, Google has revealed just how much the human element figures into all that collected satellite imagery and road data. Many pieces of terrain information are tested and modified against what Google calls Ground Truth: actual driving, alternate sources and sign photos automatically extracted from Street View runs. Google isn't just making the occasional correction, either. Mapping a country can take hundreds of staff plugging away at the company's Atlas tool, even before we get a crack with Google Map Maker. The combination of man and machine helps explain why Google Maps is one of the most accurate sources of location information on Earth -- although the firm does have some catching up to do in space.
Google Map Maker adds Google+ sharing, spurs on communal world building
It only makes sense that Google Map Maker, a tool built around the internet community's map data, would eventually make it easy to share with that community. As of a low-profile update, Map Maker fans who also have Google+ identities can directly spread their Google Maps changes and reviews among their circles. Naturally, Google sees it as an important collaboration tool: update a shop location or a street, and nearby friends can fill in any missing details. The process is very nearly a one-click affair, so get to spreading the word if the local map is lacking.
