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Apple Reportedly Luring Ex-Google Mappers With Jobs
TechCrunch reports that Apple, facing a substantial backlash (and some snarky competitive advertising) over goofs in the mapping software included in iOS 6, is going after the problem with a hiring spree. Here's TechCrunch's lead:
"Apple is going after people with experience working on Google Maps to develop its own product, according to a source with connections on both teams. Using recruiters, Apple is pursuing a strategy of luring away Google Maps employees who helped develop the search giant’s product on contract, and many of those individuals seem eager to accept due in part to the opportunity Apple represents to build new product, instead of just doing 'tedious updates' on a largely complete platform."
Meanwhile, writes reader EGSonikku "Well known iOS hacker Ryan Perrich has gotten the iOS5 Google Maps application to run on iOS6 using 'a little trickery.' (YouTube demonstration.) He has not released it yet due to crashing issues but states 'it mostly works.'"
Typically, contractors are exempt from such agreements as it would violate their ability to seek gainful employment upon completion of their agreement with the original company.
Non-Compete Agreements are intended to protect trade secrets from being shared with a third party while the content of them would be reasonably considered still valid.
If Apple were attempting to attract current, full-time employees than the Non-Compete argument still applies as long as it's content reasonably enables them to continue to seek gainful employment to which they are qualified.
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Particularly when said employees worked on a successful mapping project and the pathetic half wits on your project deserved to be dropped out of a tenth storey window.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Of course it does, which is why most companies make you sign non-compete agreements when they hire you. I'm not sure of California's rules on non-competes
At least as of 2008, they had no legal standing, with some narrow exceptions (Edwards v. Arthur Anderson LLP).
Maps is a core OS app, like Safari or Mail, and as such it gets used by other applications. It only gets updated when the OS gets updated.
Google reportedly has plans to release their own Maps application. This seems to be more about licensing then about compatibility. It's entirely possible this wasn't solely Apple's doing, but very well could've been due to Google's.
and has a cleaner view on maps.
Yes, displaying less information often has that effect.
Google has a maps app ready, and it's already submitted to Apple. The only thing holding it back is Apple approving it. So that may be next week, in a year (like they did with Google Voice) or never (under the "duplicates a native service" rule).
Sources:
http://9to5mac.com/2012/09/20/google-has-an-ios-6-maps-app-awaiting-approval-it-is-solely-up-to-apple-to-approve/
http://mashable.com/2012/09/20/google-maps-ios-6-apple-approval-report/
Making it not possible to use Google Maps, when in fact the Apple app sucks balls and the Google App is pretty awesome is what the problem is.
Google Earth is on the App Store since ages: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-earth/id293622097
You can go online and install it right now.
Why is "a little trickery" needed
Because the old app has to be extracted from the iOS 5 disk image first and then copied onto iOS 6. That's not supported officially and therefore requires some trickery.
Android is no different if you try to get Google apps on a phone without "Google Experience" certification.
Perhaps now, this will force Google to offer permanent positions and better salaries to some of its better contract programmers.
Huh? Google has no contract programmers to speak of. I hesitate to say the number is zero, because there's probably some obscure corner of the company that has one or two tucked away, but as far as I can see, zero is what it is (excluding interns -- many of whom become regular employees after graduation).
Google uses a lot of contractors for facilities, food services, recruiters and other supporting positions, but SWEs (Software Engineers) and SETs (Software Engineers in Test), are basically all regular employees, as are the vast majority of SREs (Site Reliability Engineers... basically Google's sysadmins).
Honestly, given the complexity and uniqueness of Google's infrastructure, it wouldn't make any sense for Google to hire contract programmers. It's pretty widely accepted internally that it takes a full year for a new Google engineer to become productive because of all of the technologies he or she needs to learn (this is also the reason Google interviews don't ask you about what tools/frameworks you've used in the past -- whatever it is, Google has built its own anyway so your knowledge is irrelevant). Since the company has to basically invest a full year up front, there's little value in hiring people for periods of time less than 2-3 years, but you can't hire a contractor for that long without the IRS viewing them as an employee anyway.
(I'm a SWE at Google.)
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Search is completely broken. Completely.
I use map search a couple times a day. I've been using Apple maps for a month, including a drive from New Jersey to Los Angeles. It has only failed to find what I was looking for a few times over that period, for me on par with Google (which sometimes cannot find things that should be easy). Google has decided what I want is really in China on more than one occasion... so I would not say Apple search is totally broken. It seems some areas are worse than others.
I wonder how many of the items not being found in Apple maps are people not typing in very specific search terms. That's where Apple really needs to improve, is on search term parsing. Although even there some general terms like "food" seem to work just fine.
You are reporting the map errors you see right? That's the only way things get better, and if Apple gets a lot of reports from a region perhaps they can figure out why their dataset is so out of whack for that location.
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Yes, because Google Maps is such an open standard. /s
They provide access to their API, anyone can freely integrate it into their software, websites, or Android apps and even insert their own maps.
https://developers.google.com/maps/
Dalrymple, pretty much the definitive rumor confirmation/denier on all things Apple has given this one a "Nope".
http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/09/20/on-the-rumor-that-google-has-submitted-an-ios-6-maps-app-and-apple-is-sitting-on-it/
I'd believe Florian Mueller and Steve Jobs when he was alive before I'd believe searchenginewatch.
Google work for you?
https://developers.google.com/maps/faq#usagelimits
Garmin do not own any maps. The only realistic alternative to Google and Tom Tom is Nokia, but they're competition too, so its easy to see why Apple went with Tom Tom.
They can. Apple do actually put a lot of effort into forwards compatibility, this is the reason behind some of the much maligned App Store rules.
The factor you are missing is that Maps is not a normal third-party app. It's an app that is distributed as part of iOS. Apple had a five year license from Google to do so. That five years is up, and Apple no longer have a license to distribute this app. There's no technical incompatibility, it's a legal issue.
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