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by li-ch 4484 days ago
Apple map is still scarily inaccurate [1,2,3]. Why should I or anyone risk this in the car?

[1] http://bgr.com/2013/09/25/apple-maps-disaster-runway/

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

[3] http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/11/new-clas...

3 comments

To be blunt I am pretty capable of driving without any maps in the car, or at ignoring instructions that appear incorrect or dangerous. And while Apple Maps might still get it wrong more than other maps, I've never used a mapping service that hasn't gotten some things wrong.

I do hope it supports other mapping apps though, or if not I hope Apple gets pressured to support that. And I don't really see why they wouldn't, it makes their product better.

The GPS get it wrong very often too. There is an enormous amount of magic going on behind the scene to put a car on an actual road on the map.

When I'm driving on the highway with spotty coverage, I very often hear "Turn Left in 50 m" when the magic fails and the GPS (mobile phone running TomTom in this case) now thinks I teleported on a side road.

Similarly, you could get yourself lost for hours if you follow your GPS blindly in a small European city. Actually, you would probably get into a traffic accident before that.

When I see people comment on GPS, I can only imagine that in 20 years, you will see headline like "Family had to be rescued after their autonomous car failed to exit Walmart Parking lot for 5 hours and ran out of gas. Google made no comment."

Firstly if the road sign says no entry don't go down it because the sat nav says to, there are plenty of mistakes in all sat navs and maps and even if there weren't there are changes they can't keep up with, roadworks etc.

I wondered what sort of international airport can you drive onto the runway of without being stopped so I looked it up:

http://dot.alaska.gov/faiiap/pdfs/GA_Control_Surf.pdf

It's the Alaskan sort secured by yellow lines and red signs. Now I'm not saying Apple isn't at fault here but I would put greater blame on the airport. I would expect if not manned or electronic gates with an intercom at least there should be a barrier the of some sort to act as a warning. I'm not sure signs and lines are enough for something like an airport.

I guess being Alaska manning gates/opening windows or getting out of cars are seriously unappealing activities in the Winter.

I don't understand why Apple hasn't purchased Foresquare.
Foursquare doesn't have its own maps.
Correct, they use mapbox, which uses Open Street Map under the hood.