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by zmmmmm
5007 days ago
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Problem with this analysis is that if the replacing maps on iOS6 was always going to be this year then it just compounds the culpability of Apple for shipping it half baked with no fallback. ie. in trying to assuage the criticism of Apple for shipping maps too early (what I read as the main point of his piece here), Gruber only begs the question of why they weren't better prepared for it. |
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The original Google Maps was pretty bad. Mapquest beat it much of the time. There was one road in my hometown, and none in many countries.
Google devoted enormous resources to acquiring data (petabytes worth), processing it, correcting it, to give us the product we have today.
Even though Apple acquired some neat companies that made data look good, they obviously underestimated how much data was required to make it useful. No amount of QC could have prepared them, frankly.
The upside is that Google has been fairly closed with their map products. They're miles ahead of Apple, who will need every partner they can find to close the gap. Hopefully it will give the data providers a bit of leverage to get refinements back out so it can be used in endeavours other than showing where the nearest pizza joint is.