> I love this type of article, and the effort put into it - but the main thing I can't help but do is wonder what kind of person is driven to exhaustively research Apple Maps over a 5+ year period.
I'm under the vague impression that Justin O'Beirne works in this space, so this isn't just a hobby. Can anyone confirm?
He is also listed on several mapping-related patents for Apple over the past several years.[1] It seems surprisingly un-Apple-y to allow someone in that position to publish articles detailing the flaws in Apple maps, speculate about where they get their data and how the quality problems might affect unannounced future products.
> It seems surprisingly un-Apple-y to allow someone in that position to publish articles detailing the flaws in Apple maps, speculate about where they get their data and how the quality problems might affect unannounced future products.
That tells me he no longer works at Apple. If he did, why would he need to speculate about Apple's internal processes based on what they publicly release? This article (https://www.justinobeirne.com/a-summer-of-google-maps-and-ap...) from 2017 even has him noting hits from Apple's website and tracking how long it took them to correct gaps he outlined.
Those two articles I linked were dated 2016 and 2017. Looking at his website, before that time it seems like he was mostly writing about Google Maps. So maybe he wrote about Google when he was at Apple, then started writing about Apple when he left.
There’s certainly overlap between the date stamps on his articles and his Apple patents. Not sure if someone might be listed as inventor on a patent filed after they left.
There are probably a lot of teams working on different aspects of the maps, so he wouldn’t automatically be privy to everything because he’s worked on one aspect of the product.
1: https://patents.justia.com/inventor/justin-o-beirne