Apple, Google: Battle of the Cloud Maps

Google Maps Gripes by EvanED · 2012-06-01 14:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

I just wish that Google would learn some lessons about 2D cartography. Like how to mark toll roads and stuff.

It's kind of frustrating because Google maps is really good at local stuff (zoom in to see individual business names and stuff, and of course street view) but other services are a lot better once you're looking at a range beyond a few blocks.

Re:Google Maps Gripes by afidel · 2012-06-01 15:00 · Score: 3, Informative

Err, what? The turn by turn directions will tell you what section are tolls and even allows you to avoid toll roads. This even works with google maps mobile. The two features I wish GMM had are cache along route (caching the tileset around a specific point is a start but it needs to be able to do it along an entire route). and route override (ie drag and drop route placement, sometimes I know a certain part of a route won't work and the only way to do this with GMM is to pre-plan the route on the PC and save it).

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Re:Google Maps Gripes by EvanED · 2012-06-01 15:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm not talking about the turn-by-turn directions, I'm talking about the maps. Quick, where are the toll roads? How 'bout now? Or now?
I guess if you just enter in a start and end into Google maps and blindly follow whatever comes out it works fine, but if you want to scan around for alternate routes (hint: Google doesn't pick the best route for going through Chicago from east-to-west or vice versa) or just want to look around at maps, that's not good enough.
Re:Google Maps Gripes by Excelsior · 2012-06-01 15:20 · Score: 3, Informative

Caching the route does work. At least it does on every Android phone I've owned. When you drive through parts of the southwest United States, you often travel for hundreds of miles with no cell coverage at all. Google Maps keeps chugging along, as long as I don't end navigation on my current route.
Re:Google Maps Gripes by C_amiga_fan · 2012-06-01 16:01 · Score: 2

So you route around tolls?
Interesting. I don't worry about it. One solitary trip down a tollroad isn't going to bankrupt me, and if I do it repeatedly (like a daily commute) then I learn to avoid that road. Of course oftentimes the tollroad is the cheapest route..... I recall a friend of mine was trying to avoid the Baltimore Tunnel Toll drove *all the way around* the city on 695 beltway.
He probably spent more on gas then if he'd just paid the $1 toll. --- As I became more familiar with the city, I later learned you can avoid the toll by following the Baltimore-Washington Parkway straight through the city (but then you also add half an hour to your cross-city travel time, so again: Not worth it. I'd rather just pay the toll.)

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Re:Google Maps Gripes by EdIII · 2012-06-01 16:09 · Score: 2, Funny

That's still retarded. It's like when you turn off the stereo it burns all your CDs.
I think Sony has something like that in the works right now....
Re:Google Maps Gripes by EvanED · 2012-06-01 16:20 · Score: 2

I do look, though I'll admit that it usually doesn't pan out in terms of being worth it.
For instance, taking the Chicago case, if you're traveling west-to-east from Rockford (or, as is probably clear from the urls I linked, Madison) to points East, if I-88 wasn't a toll road it'd probably be worth it to use that route. It's a bit longer, but you'd save several dollars on tolls and it's a bit better driving than I-90 is.
Or once I asked for advice on how late it's reasonable to hit Chicago before afternoon rush hour, and someone suggested avoiding it completely if your destination is in the right place. From my experimentation the "right place" isn't a very big area, but there are places where mapping software will send you through Chicago and across on the IL, IN, OH, and PA turnpikes when you can take an entirely different route and avoid all of those. Richmond is an example: Rockford to Richmond is 13:02 by Bing's estimate (just what I happened to have left up from before) via the route I just mentioned, or 13:47 if you take 39 all the way south to Bloomington then 74 to Indianapolis etc., taking a far more southery route. For that extra 45 minutes (or really, probably less), you avoid something like $25 or $30 in tolls.
Re:Google Maps Gripes by fredprado · 2012-06-01 16:58 · Score: 2

Google Maps Mobile. It lacks the route override option of the PC application and waypoints.
Re:Google Maps Gripes by Austerity+Empowers · 2012-06-01 17:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

In some cities the toll for tunnels is >$10, people do all sorts of weird things to avoid it.
Re:Google Maps Gripes by shellbeach · 2012-06-01 19:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

You can already precache a 10km square area around any point (saved permanently) plus cache 150 Mb of rolling data. That's been good enough for me to travel everywhere I've wanted so far (including a five month backpacking trip last year).
Yes, it would be great to have continent maps available for download, but the current options are a lot better than nothing.
Re:Google Maps Gripes by Cimexus · 2012-06-01 19:43 · Score: 2

While Google Maps can't do this, there are apps out there that DO allow you to do this (at least for iOS, I'm sure there would be on Android too). Two off the top of my head I can think of:
Expensive: The TomTom app (basically turns your phone into something almost identical to the actual stand-alone TomTom units, including the fact that the maps are stored locally)
Cheap: MotionXGPS: allows you to download and store locally mapping/sat data for any arbitrary area you want, sourced from either Bing, OpenStreetMap and various other sources (e.g. terrain maps for hiking, marine maps for sailing etc.)
Re:Google Maps Gripes by Cimexus · 2012-06-01 19:47 · Score: 2

Yyeah, GPS 'reception' is awful in any high-rise city. (I say 'reception', because the reception itself in terms of signal strength is usually fine - the issue is rather that the signal is getting bounced off buildings and thus longer to get to you, which obviously means your position calculated from those signals will be off).
Phone or stand-alone GPS doesn't seem to matter that much ... I get the same problems on my iPhone as I do with my regular car Garmin GPS when I drive into central Sydney. You basically have to ignore it because its telling you things like "in 100 metres, turn left on Blah Street" when you already passed Blah Street a block or two ago.
Re:Google Maps Gripes by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-01 21:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

I've been using OSMAnd since I got my current phone, and it's so much more useful than Google Maps that comparing them is a joke. The map data (from OSM) has been better in every city I've visited. For example, visiting a friend in Paris, OSM had his building numbered and marked the bank and bakery nearby so it was trivial to find even without GPS. Google Maps just about had the roads labelled. In Brussels, the roads have three names: the one in French, the one in Dutch, and the one on Google Maps. The OSM data had all three. Oh, and the hotel I was staying in was labelled on OSM, while Google Maps thought it was about 100m away from where it really was. Looking for a tango class in Swansea, the building was labelled in OSM, but Google Maps didn't even show the road that it was on. In Cambridge, all of the college and university buildings and cycle paths are labelled on OSM, Google Maps just about manages to label the big university sites and the roads.
OSMand lets you download vector data, so it works fine with no network connection. I've got about 1GB of map data on my phone currently, covering England, Wales, Belgium and the north of France. It can do route finding either online or on the phone. The latter uses quite a lot of memory for longer routes (it's still marked as an experimental feature), but aside from that works very well. Getting to know my way around Cambridge was made very easy by having a navigation aid that understood all of the cycle routes.

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Re:Google Maps Gripes by drinkypoo · 2012-06-01 23:32 · Score: 2

Not along a route, but you can cache any number of 10 mile-side squares (up to storage limits -- and most phones have a lot of storage).
and for a maximum of 30 days, at which point anything you've cached silently expires and deletes itself (well, maps deletes it.)

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Re:Google Maps Gripes by drinkypoo · 2012-06-01 23:33 · Score: 2

I think the difference here is national. Google is all up in your streetz mapping your wifiz and knows what is where to a high level of detail... in the USA. In various European countries which value public privacy more than we do, the data is going to be inferior.

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Re:Google Maps Gripes by EvanED · 2012-06-02 03:45 · Score: 2

Not dozens of road types, hundreds of various symbols etc that you see in some road maps
And this is my problem with it; you say "the philosophy is simplicity and clarity", I say "the philosophy is have far less information" and then dispute the "clarity" part.
Here's another example; I'll just compare to Bing maps because I like them the best (in no small part because they seem to be the closest to printed maps). Compare this to this. (Durrr, I can link the maps directly, I don't need to take a screenshot and upload them.)
On Bing's map, the distinction between the main routes through the area (US 65 and US 412) and others is very clear. It's there in Google's, but it's far far less pronounced. Furthermore, Bing makes a distinction between AR-7 (going south from Harrison) and US-62 (upper-left corner, where US-412 turns south), versus the other roads that are shown on the map, like AR-43 and AR-397. That distinction isn't visible on Google's at all.
Without a legend you don't know what kind of roads those are, but from the information there you can at least get a good sense of what are likely to be major routes.
And that also provides a good illustration of my counter argument to your "clarity" statement. To me, the distinctions made on the Bing map actually make it much easier to read... the Google version comparatively just looks like a big jumble of roads.
When you do actually want to see a route, you are told which roads are toll roads, and you can have option to adjust and avoid them.
But... it's not just that! If you want to say "are there decent toll-free routes" you have to try a bunch of things. With an actually good road map, you just look. Furthermore, it's not just a matter of "toll roads are A-OK!" and "avoid toll roads"; one part may have an easily-avoidable toll while another may not.
Sure, you can adjust each segment individually, but then you run into the first problem. Now you have to figure out what part of the map corresponds to the turn-by-turn direction that is a toll road (even just hovering over the turn-by-turn directions is an active action you have to take)*, try a different route, see if it's still marked as a toll, try a different route, see if it's still marked as a toll, etc.
* Actually counting this against Google's approach isn't quite fair; in both Bing and Mapquest, the route line they draw on the map covers over the toll indications. So if you want to try other routes to avoid tolls, you have to do the same thing.

I have a feeling by rat7307 · 2012-06-01 14:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

...it will be a battle in name only.

apple are highly unlikely to put out an API for other to use as they wish like Google did.

While GMaps might take a back-seat on iOS, it will still be by far the most dominant system out there unless Apple allow use outside of the iOSphere.

At the end of the day if it's only available on iOS and Mac then it's essentially on a minority of devices on what is now a minority platform.

Still, it no doubt will have Google scrambling to bring us more cool stuff, so it's win-win all round.

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Re:I have a feeling by catmistake · 2012-06-01 15:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

At the end of the day if it's only available on iOS and Mac then it's essentially on a minority of devices on what is now a minority platform.
Uh, you're kidding, right? Apple's inventory stock has been compared to restaurants, that must get rid of it because it's perishable. It's ridiculous how competitive Apple is right now against ALL of the Android phone manufacturers. I'm not sure their growth rate will last, but you're just silly to claim the iOS platform is merely a "minority platform." It's not like 2-5% marketshare, like the Mac used to be... they're neck and neck against EVERY OTHER phone manufacturer put together. Mac's marketshare is growing, too, but still under 20% I would guess. I doubt seriously anyone at Microsoft now, or even Google, would share your dismissive views of the "minority" that's ever increasingly eating their marketshare.

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Re:I have a feeling by catmistake · 2012-06-02 14:55 · Score: 2

Apple's doing it's own maps because they can't rely any longer on the map service being supplied by one of their biggest competitors. They have no motivation to have the most users for them, other than because those people have bought Apple devices.
Nicely said. This is precisely the reason. Google is intentionally dropping the ball, saving the best features for Android... and now they have competition on iOS, they're stepping up their game. Competition is a good thing.

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Nokia by Fnord666 · 2012-06-01 14:58 · Score: 4, Informative

I only wish my phone would hold by default the X-million data points that my outmoded (but cheap and functional) dedicated GPS device does, without quite so much cloud-centric bottlenecking, and leave all expensive data use for optional overlays and current conditions.

You mean like any number of Nokia phones that support the free OVI Maps application?

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Re:Nokia by JaredOfEuropa · 2012-06-01 15:01 · Score: 4, Informative

Or any of the non-free but still relatively cheap navigation apps for Android or iPhone, like TomTom or Navigon, to name a few?

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Re:Nokia by black3d · 2012-06-01 17:09 · Score: 2

Navfree is a decent free offline GPS for the iphone. It's another which uses OpenStreetMap so it's not flawless, but personally I've had it find every address I've tried, every time. Avoids toll roads, etc.

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Not all functionality has to be built-in by perpenso · 2012-06-01 15:03 · Score: 3, Informative

I only wish my phone would hold by default the X-million data points that my outmoded (but cheap and functional) dedicated GPS device does, without quite so much cloud-centric bottlenecking, and leave all expensive data use for optional overlays and current conditions.

There is an app for that, seriously there are multiple apps for that. Decent maps built-in. More detailed ones, including topo, available via free download.

Not all functionality has to come from Apple, or whoever is doing the OS and built-in apps, some things can be left to third parties.

Re:Not all functionality has to be built-in by Artifex · 2012-06-01 15:17 · Score: 2

There is an app for that, seriously there are multiple apps for that.
Heck, even Google Maps on Android will cache map data (no pictures or traffic). Enable the option in Labs, go back to the area you want to cache and long-press in the middle, then click the option to cache it, and you'll get a 10 mile square around that spot. Yes, you can do multiple squares, too: I did 6 somewhat overlapping squares tonight, and it says they take up 21MB.

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Re:Not all functionality has to be built-in by swillden · 2012-06-01 16:54 · Score: 2

I live in an island which is 5km wide and 40km long. Cities and everything else is organized across the 40*1 km range. So the whole cache thing is useless for me.
Why is that? You cache two 10-mile (24 km) squares and you have your whole island cached. Plus a great deal of water, but ignore that.

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Re:Not all functionality has to be built-in by xded · 2012-06-01 18:01 · Score: 2

Except that your smartphone with an always-on GPS-tracking app, recording a data point every 5 feet, will last at most 2 hours on a full battery.
My Garmin handheld doing just that, with a better precision, will last 15 hours on a couple of AA batteries. And when they're over, I can just swap another pair in. And I can use it under the rain. With the gloves on.

Re:faggot nigger dick in your mom's loose cunt by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-01 15:07 · Score: 3, Funny

What the holy hell? Did 4chan just spring a leak?

Caching by LoudMusic · 2012-06-01 15:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

I only wish my phone would hold by default the X-million data points that my outmoded (but cheap and functional) dedicated GPS device does, without quite so much cloud-centric bottlenecking, and leave all expensive data use for optional overlays and current conditions.

No shit dude. I have a fucking 32GB phone of which I'm using about 3GB. The thing I use more than anything is Google Maps. If it's downloaded something, why does it ever delete it? I can cache apparently unlimited 10 mile squares (100 square miles?), but I can't say "Just fucking download the entire state of Iowa" (because, really, who would want to?).

But I suppose they're getting there. Slowly.

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Re:Caching by thaig · 2012-06-01 17:36 · Score: 2

You could get one of those appalling non-smartphones with that terrible OS Symbian on it and use their downloadable maps which offer both caching and the ability to pre-download maps for any country and have offered this for years.

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Want offline maps? by arose · 2012-06-01 15:23 · Score: 2

Get an Android phone. Get OSMand. News for posers who won't lift a finger? Stuff that has been solved for you if you just look?

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Don't you get it? by flatulus · 2012-06-01 15:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

The reason they don't make it easy to download an entire map has nothing to do with storage or bandwidth. It has to do with *tracking*.

Location Based Services -- Since we know where you are, we can suggest you turn right and have a pizza at the restaurant that pays us to steer customers their way. etc... etc... etc...

Google has a talent for fooling people into thinking that they are offering all these great FREE services out of the goodness of their corporate heart. On the contrary, those services are very profitable, and the way they accomplish all that money making is by knowing a WHOLE HELL OF A LOT about YOU.

Anyway, it's up to you folks. But don't bitch about not getting the whole free map thing - now that you understand why it is not in Google's or Apple's or Microsoft's (or fill-in-the-blank-megacorp-giving-away-services) to provide them.

That's my $37.00 worth (I'm old and that's about what 2 cents used to be worth when I was a wee one)

Re:Don't you get it? by MrHanky · 2012-06-01 22:32 · Score: 2

Does Google Maps actually push adverts through the turn-by-turn navigation in the U.S. now, or did you just confuse Google with some movie you saw? So far, it seems Google's success as an advertising business comes from being less obnoxious than the others. Pushing somewhat relevant ads might contribute to that.

The underlying map data is key by darrylo · 2012-06-01 16:08 · Score: 2

Regardless of any really cool/geeky features, the underlying map data can make or break the app. Google doesn't have a problem because, well, they're using the google maps data, which is pretty decent.

On the other hand, Apple has a challenge: what maps data source do they use? Since Apple seems to be trying to avoid Google, I'm assuming that the google maps data is out. I really hope that Apple goes with a major commercial maps data source, and not openstreetmap. If Apple uses openstreetmap, I think Apple's map app is doomed, as I don't think any amount of lipstick is going to make openstreetmap look good.

(OK, don't get me wrong -- I like openstreetmap, and I like the idea of it. However, it's missing 10+-year-old roads in my area. For the people who just started frothing at the mouth and want to scream at me to say that I can edit the maps, you're missing the point. The point is not that I can go in and fix the map data. The point is that, statistically speaking, if some of the map data is inaccurate in my area, it's likely inaccurate in many other places, and this raises severe reliability/trustability issues with me. Like it or not, the google maps data is a lot more accurate than openstreetmap, and thus is a lot more trustable.)

Re:The underlying map data is key by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-01 16:33 · Score: 2, Informative

Um, Nokia makes and owns all their maps. They bought Navteq years ago. Microsoft and Yahoo use Nokia maps as their backend.
Re:The underlying map data is key by Pecisk · 2012-06-01 23:30 · Score: 2

"Like it or not, the google maps data is a lot more accurate than openstreetmap, and thus is a lot more trustable."
You have any data to backup your claim? And no, it's not "if there's lack of data in our neibourhood, then it must be rest of the world". Because when I see lack of data, I just map them and they are in database in 3 minutes after I have done survey, put data into system and have verified their statuses, routing, etc. Currently it is much better than Google Maps ever was in my region.
OpenStreetMap is not solution for everyone, but it's "good enough" for general crowd definitely - and that's why will check OSM data first anytime.
Google Maps are worst in my region (and essentially that was main reason why I started to work on OpenStreetMap in general), Nokia is clearly much better, and they have done their homework (t.i. their regional office have done checks on the data they have bought), and second one is regional map company who has very detailed maps, but they are outdated in quite a few areas, and they haven't properly digitalised it yet.

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Re:The underlying map data is key by swillden · 2012-06-02 01:34 · Score: 2

Actually, Google does generate a lot of its own map data. Google buys whatever data they can, but in many areas have paid to create it themselves where the available data wasn't of sufficiently high quality. For city areas, where Google wants to provide complete coverage of 3D building models, Google bought Sketchup and then incented people to create models in various ways, including just paying them. Now Google is shifting to automated means of generating 3D models from other data (I'm not sure how much I can say here, so I'm being vague) and so has sold Sketchup to Trimble. I wouldn't be surprised if the same automated techniques are increasingly used to generate more 2D data as well.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, in fact in the same office as the Sketchup guys were. I've sat in on tech talks given by some of the people working on map data, and the above constitutes the information I'm sure I can share without violating confidentiality. I suspect that much of what I'm holding back is public knowledge, but I have to err on the side of caution.)

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Re:The underlying map data is key by swillden · 2012-06-02 01:37 · Score: 2

I'm guessing from your spelling choices that you're in the UK?
Based on your comment and various others, it appears to me that Google Maps data in the US is very good, which has led to relatively little interest in OSM, which has led to OSM data not being so great. In some other industrialized countries the reverse has been true. Since Google isn't very good, there's greater interest in OSM, which leads to OSM data being very good.
Does that agree with your experience?

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fix the accuracy first by slashmydots · 2012-06-01 16:16 · Score: 3, Interesting

Google is usually psycho-perfectionist about how their products perform. They still don't quite know where my business is and it's been there for 62 years. The "correction" we submitted now resulted in us being listed 3 times, once at the correct spot, all under slightly different names. I've had it claim it found something and my GPS disagrees and brings me to the correct spot several times as well. That's pretty major as far as problems go and they just can't seem to fix it. I'd focus on that more than anything if I were them.

Re:What are you talking about by MaskedSlacker · 2012-06-01 18:48 · Score: 2

And why we suddenly accidentally some verbs from our sentences?

What expensive data use? by thegarbz · 2012-06-01 18:54 · Score: 2

As someone who almost daily uses Google Navigation on my phone and who has a 200MB data plan ... what expensive data use are we talking about?

Also is it really necessary for someone to publish their opinion in the Slashdot summary after quoting and linking to a Slashdot opinion piece?

Re:What expensive data use? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-02 00:40 · Score: 2, Informative

As someone who almost daily uses Google Navigation on my phone and who has a 200MB data plan ... what expensive data use are we talking about?
In Europe, data plans are ridiculously expensive when crossing borders. You can be forced to pay in the range of $20 per MB data.
Roaming across borders is a common scenario when on holiday and it's also when you're away from home you have the greatest need for a GPS.
IN short, off-line caching of maps is critical for Europe.
ps. I love waze but can't use it when Roaming.

Offline POI by peterburkimsher · 2012-06-01 19:21 · Score: 5, Interesting

As a contract job for Galileo (the main offline map for iOS, http://galileo-app.com/ I wrote a parser for the OpenStreetMap data. Those "X-million data points" fill 800 MB in txt.bz2 format, or 8 GB in plain text. That's why they're not provided by default. Anybody interested in parsing the 25 GB OSM planet database can contact me; I'd be happy to help. There are a few awk scripts I wrote that made it quite straightforward, and fast. You can then use BashServer (Cydia) and lighttpd on the phone, with bookmarks added to your home screen, to make an "app". The icon loads a local webpage (127.0.0.1/Scripts/poi.html), which runs Javascript to give a dialog "Enter search terms". Clicking OK triggers BashServer to run the associated shell script to generate a KML with the search results. The script then opens tells iFile to open the KML, which gives a popup asking which application to open it with. Choosing Galileo launches the "Import KML" feature, and your search results are in your offline map! Simple as that ;-).

Re:I do't see Google and Apple being the only play by Kergan · 2012-06-01 20:35 · Score: 3, Funny

[http://www.digitimes.com] [paywall, sorry]

Wait... People actually pay to read the BS Apple rumors that digitimes is constantly reporting?

"Cloud" apps again? by aaaaaaargh! · 2012-06-01 21:35 · Score: 2

"The escalating battle over maps demonstrates the importance of cloud apps to tech companies' larger strategies."

Stupid me, for a moment I thought the battle demonstrates the importance of location-sensitive map applications and not of "cloud" apps in general. There is a technical reason for map applications to be client/server-based, since world-wide high-resolution map data is many terrabytes in size. There is no sound technical reason for server-side data storage in the vast majority of other "cloud" apps, except for the purpose of collecting user-date, of course.

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Apple, Google: Battle of the Cloud Maps

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