<drivebyfanboyism> Ovverrated my white pimply behind, it’s freaking awesome. Don’t be jealous. ;) </drivebyfanboyism>
The pictures are bad enough, but some of these stories show that the problems go much much deeper than simply level of detail and aerial photos:
Just awful.
Waze is cool in concept, and does a good job of warning you about traffic issues and cops/accidents, but its routing is really suboptimal in the Seattle area, especially given that it’s traffic aware. I find it most useful to use when I actually know the route, as an alert against traffic jams, speed traps, etc.
In all fairness, Google Maps isn’t PERFECT. It’s far better than this, but it occasionally makes some pretty comical screwups. For instance, at least in early 2010, I don’t think it took elevation into consideration.
I had just bought a Droid 1 (almost entirely because I wanted a GPS at the same time I was up for contract renewal on my phone plan) and needed to go back to the Verizon store to grab an accessory for the lady-friend. Buying the phone was the only time I’d ever actually been there before (had switched from AT&T to them when I got the phone), so I decided to use the fancy new navigate feature of the phone.
It ended up taking me a wildly different route than I’d gone on before to get to the place, but I figured it was just being more efficient until it dumped me out on a small residential road and said, “You’re here!”
The Verizon place was in a strip mall with a large parking lot, the back of which sat beneath a rather steep cliff, at the top of which was a residential neighborhood. . . and the road that Google Maps took me to.
Only took me five minutes to figure out how to get down via actual roads rather than vehicular suicide, too!
I’d say it’s likely improved since then. Sure, it’s not the best, but being free and so damned well intrgrated into the OS, I dunno if i’d wanna use anything else.
OK, lots of complaints about the Maps, everywhere I read. I think that’s well understood. Moving on, is there anything you guys like about iOS 6? Or other issues besides the Maps?
I really like the ability to launch apps via Siri. I’ve honestly got too many apps on my phone now, and this way I don’t have to work too hard to keep everything optimized on the first page or two.
I’m kinda screwed on my iPad right now for watching YouTube. Unfortunately, the official Google YouTube app is iPhone-only, and the iOS update removed the built-in Apple app leaving me with… no way to watch YouTube? I haven’t tried the Web site in Safari, I suppose that’s my solution.
Google Nav on Android overrated? Bitch, please.
It is far and away better than anything else out there at any cost on any platform.
www.youtube.com/mobile. Seriously.
Ephriam, I was actually using the mobile website for YouTube before they released their app, as it worked better than the iOS 5 app. The website works fine on the iPad.
I thought my favorite iOS 6 feature was the cool way it showed the moon phase next to the time. Then I realized I’d just accidentally left “Do Not Disturb” turned on.
This isn’t the topic to get into a debate, but I much prefer real GPS apps that let me store the maps on my phone, for when I’m, like, out of coverage, or in Canada.
Google Nav has offline support. You do have to do some work to tell it which areas to precache so it isn’t quite as seamless as having dedicated offline maps, but that’s a small price to pay for map data that is constantly updated as opposed to most GPS/map providers which are often rocking 3-5 year old map data.
Doesn’t Jelly Bean have limited support for taking some parts of a map and making it available offline? I know Nokia maps on Windows Phone 7.5/8.0 have the ability to do so too.
Yeah, you can long-press map sections to save them locally; I think it’s something like 25mi^2 chunks.
Thanks for telling me about Waze guys - looks really nice.
A lot of these look like those really shitty-looking flight sims from the 90s where they took low-rez satellite imagery and just contoured it over the terrain. The results look, well, absolutely shitty.
Of course, all the examples Apple showed were of major cities (San Fran, its practical home, and London.) But if you don’t live in a major burg? Fucked.
Steve Jobs would have thrown a fucking hurricane of a hissyfit, fired people, and sent the rest back to making it look good.
And the sheer number of location errors, typos, and omissions is hilarious.
Oh, Apple.
I think this map thing is going to reach critical mass in the next 48 hours or so. Apple is going to have to do something.
What that is, I don’t know. But this is going to start affecting sales of the iPhone 5, and people are going to not upgrade to iOS 6 because of it.
Or they could go beg Google to release a stand-alone maps app.
Yeah, maybe it’s romanticism but I can’t imagine this happening with Jobs at the wheel. He’d never accept it.
That would be DELICIOUS. ;)
This maps thing has actually shifted me to wait for the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE with Jelly Bean. Oh Apple. I once loved thee.
I’m almost certain Google will launch an iOS maps app. They can’t afford not to, the location data they gather from the hordes of iPhone users and the local searches which provide people directions RIGHT TO THE STORES are way too valuable for them to sell to advertisers. They will not avoid serving a huge chunk of the market out of spite.
So, they’ll let Apple stew for awhile, then launch a slightly crippled version of Google Maps. I give it a week.