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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 28 2012 @ 01:58 PM EDT |
| Will Mr. Cook admit that the management of Apple, having pushed itself into this
maps kerfuffle, displayed a degree of incompetence never seen at Apple before?
Will he take full reponsibility [for this], and take steps to immediately
reinstate Google Maps as most iOS users would like? I mean, how can you
blatantly state that the maps constitute "the most beautiful, powerful mapping
service ever", then barely a month into usage, come and apologize for their
alpha quality feel? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 28 2012 @ 04:17 PM EDT |
Bing? Waze?
I'd rather shelter in the madhouse than expose myself to those...
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 28 2012 @ 05:13 PM EDT |
This apology does nothing to resolve the issue for those that have use cases
where it is impossible to use an external mapping service.
For instance when developing an app that uses Apples built in Mapping API any
calls that use to go to Google are redirected to Apples own service
automatically.
This is simply not configurable by pointing at the Google service or URLs as
they are simply redirected by Apple and that means that any IOS 6 mapping based
apps are completely hosed until Apple fix their mapping service which might be
several years yet.
This means that if you wish to use, say Googles detailed satellite images for
presenting useful location info, an example might be presenting a Picnic
location directly onto a scenic venue, with the redirection to Apples service
you are lucky to be able see the county at all or sometimes even any image, grey
squares are just not acceptable.
Not all map use cases relate to the vectored drawn info and this breaks any apps
that rely on some of the other built in previous Google map functionality.
Apple should have run the two options in parallel at least until their service
was on a par with Googles and allowed developers to make the choice.
If all they required was turn by turn directions they could quite easily have
built that to run along side Google services for the next version or two of
IOS.
rgds
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 28 2012 @ 07:15 PM EDT |
Does anyone know whether or not Google was actually
unwilling to offer turn by turn directions in iOS? Honestly,
it doesn't really matter.
Apple's patent trolling is an evil act.
However, Apple developing a competing online mapping service
is neither evil nor a mistake. From a business
perspective, Apple's real value proposition is in pretty
devices with good interfaces.
Google's value proposition is in low cost, flexible devices
with closely integrated online services.
Long-term, Google, like M$ before them, will eventually
deliver good interfaces. (Win 3.1 sucked much more,
relatively, than Win 7.) At that point, Apple's value
proposition, relative to Google, falls dramatically -
particularly when Google charges for its mapping services.
(Albeit, Apple does seem likely to continue delivering much
prettier devices. Most companies seem strangely unable to
deliver pretty cellphones.)
So, Apple needs to build online services, of which the most
important is arguably mapping software - and every usage of
a mapping service benefits that mapping service - so Apple
did need to 'build its own' software as soon as possible.
It'll take a year to get to 'decent' (arguably better for
customers - considering turn-by-turn directions) and
probably 3 years to get to parity with Google Maps as it it
right now. At that point, there won't be much competitive
advantage left for Google to harvest and Apple will be
providing a better product than it could before. There
wasn't (AFAIK) an obvious better alternative. Of course,
long-term, this doesn't help that much, as Apple will still
be left competing against roughly equivalent interface
software and somewhat superior online services. I guess, at
that point, they're hoping to have enough people locked into
their ecosystem to stay in those markets. Eh. Personally, I
prefer relatively open ecosystems.
--Erwin
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