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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.'"
what would apple do if samsung did this to them? what would the courts reactions be?
That's innovative ...
I don't really see how this is a news story. I mean it makes completely sense to try and lure away experienced professionals away from another company on a similar project.
It's not like they don't need help...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Unfair. Those litigious monsters at Apple are hiring guys away from Google. Google should sue them to protect their vital IP.
Also unfair: companies mutually agreeing not to poach each others' employees. And we don't believe in imaginary property.
Apple Reportedly Luring Ex-Google Mappers With Jobs
What did they do, prop him up and pull a string wrapped around his wrist to beckon them over?
Sorry. I need sleep. Or help.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The referenced article mentions:
The position sounds like a product development manager position, and will pay him $85k+ and all the moving expenses from the East Coast. He’s gone through 2 rounds of interview and seems like a frontrunner to land that position.
Is $85K a lot of money for a product development manager? I know some IT Helpdesk staff that make nearly that much in Silicon Valley.
Apple's problem is primarily with the data, not the actual mapping application. Considering how deep Apple's pockets are, I'm really surprised they weren't able to license a better / larger set of GIS data. There are number of competing mapping companies out there, so I have a hard time believing that, given enough money, one of them wouldn't have provided Apple with what they needed.
Now as for the actual application, I believe Apple's map application is superior to Google's in a number of ways. I've always preferred vector / real-time drawn maps over pre-rendered tiled raster maps (which is what Google's are).
So as for Google maps, why hasn't Google released a stand alone app yet? After all, that's all Google Maps are with Android is an app on the marketplace. Is Apple blocking Google, or is Google (perhaps wisely) letting Apple go it alone for a bit so people will miss the functionality Google provided, then they can step in and save the day (before Apple has a chance to improve their product enough)?
Better known as 318230.
I'm not an Apple fanboi but the rap Apple is getting about that maps app (and the data behind it) is just unreasonable. I'm totally happy with another big company trying to gear up here. Having only Google as a supplier of that would be just sad. What's wrong with competition? Let Apple try and top Google or at least get far enough to be as usable as Google maps is. And really, it's not as if Google had no screw-ups ever. Google for it (lol).
Sometimes I look at comments everywhere and it seems as if people would be totally happy to see nothing but Google and Android everywhere. Be careful what you wish for! Competition is good. Luring away employees is good. I love to be lured away from the job I'm doing. Give me a better job and a harder task to solve and I'm happy.
I'm sure that Apple going for a solution of its own will make even Google better. There's nothing good about the complacency of being a monopoly. Really. Grow some brain, guys.
Finally, Apple and Google are now poaching each other's employees/contractors. Remember this story.
Perhaps now, this will force Google to offer permanent positions and better salaries to some of its better contract programmers. Also now that Apple is going after Google's employees, Apple can't really complain if Google makes a targeted effort to hire away some of Apple's top designers.
suggests it's one of the worst companies to work for this side of Cannon (famous for installing sensors to track how fast employees go to the bathroom). From what I understand it was the weird cult of personality around Jobs that let them do that. With Steve gone, are they gonna be able to pull that off?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
At least with Google employees, Apple won't need to email them a pdf map of their office location.
Come on, think of the awesome sales pitch these guys are getting. "Don 't be Evil"? Screw that. Come to the dark side. You have no idea of the full financial advantage of the dark side. Watch those that believe in open standards tremble at your feet.
I don't use Apple products, so maybe this isn't as surprising to others as it is to me, but why the fuck can't an app that ran fine on iOS 5 also run fine on iOS 6? Why is "a little trickery" needed, and even then there are still issues?
Furthermore, wasn't iOS 5 only released to the public in October of 2011? I mean, that wasn't even a single year ago! Is smartphone and tablet crap shat out so rapidly that backward compatibility can't be retained even after only 11 months?
How is it that Microsoft, who aren't exactly known for creating the most robust software, can maintain backward compatibility with operating systems released decades ago, but Apple (also a very well-funded company, with access to basically any talent they need) can't even manage to retain compatibility with a system released not even a year ago?
I thought Apple never did wrong because every pundit was detailing its so called, "attention to detail...". So what happened?
One did not need elementary school education to realise that its maps iteration was not just crazy, but it was just bizzare, showed incompetence and was taken as a reckless joke by many of us.
So again, what hapened to, "It just works?"
Meanwhile Google is furiously patenting everything about Google Maps that they possibly can.
Go to maps.google.com in the Safari browser.
At this point it's not Apple's choice to be able to use the old map app - the license with Google is expiring so Apple cannot keep providing that app.
There's no reason to think Apple would block a Google written map app considering there are scores of other map applications in the App Store - including the Bing app (which includes Bing maps).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The quality of the satellite images are atrocious
Only in some areas. In others they have higher resolution satellite images.
there's no street view equivalent
That's what 3D flyover mode is for. I prefer it to Steetview as you can see more of the area at once, the current problem is limited availability of cities that have 3D data (I have not seen an exact list anywhere yet) .
If this was any other company it would be considered an alpha release.
Having used it for a month or so I would say beta, not alpha.. it's way beyond alpha. It really doesn't crash, the map rendering works well, and searches for standard stuff mostly work OK day to day.
It's quite usable, really the main issue is sometimes searches do not find what you want when you know it should. That's the angle they need to attack first and strongly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From what I understand it was the weird cult of personality around Jobs that let them do that.
Not from talking to anyone I've ever known that worked at Apple.
Apple is paranoid and a bit of a slave driver. BUT currently they are the thought leader in the mobile industry. What other company could you work at where so many projects are used by hundreds of millions of users? Where potentially you might be working on new projects with the same range.
If you care about work being used, Apple is a pretty compelling draw... even moreso than at Google where yes some of the projects have that range of use, but not all of them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and has a cleaner view on maps.
Yes, displaying less information often has that effect.
Nobody said Google's maps were perfect. What people are saying is that Apple's replacement for Google Maps is very poor as compared to Google Maps. Just because Google Maps has flaws doesn't mean Apple shouldn't be criticized for putting out an inferior product as a replacement.
You're thinking of Dead Steve. Zombie Steve is still at Microsoft.
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Legitimate criticism = trolling
Come on, think of the awesome sales pitch these guys are getting. "Don 't be Evil"? Screw that. Come to the dark side. You have no idea of the full financial advantage of the dark side. Watch those that believe in open standards tremble at your feet.
Yes, because Google Maps is such an open standard. /s
As an OSM contributor myself, I agree that a few misplaced points of interest are not so incredibly bad as internet trolls say it is. Sure it's not great but as long as there is a committed team working on the data, the kinks will be sorted out rather quickly. Apple should've stayed with OSM data for countries with good OSM coverage instead of licensing (broken?) data from TomTom.
What you are wrong about, though, is the claim that Apple Maps is the first with 3D maps. Google Maps has a very similar feature since quite a while. Check out the first screenshot: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-earth/id293622097
My current job said it best: "What we need is not new *people*; we need new *ideas*.
Wouldn't you know it, they are willing to pay for both!
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
Samsung should do an advert now while the iron is hot. Showing hipsters stumbling around banging into buildings and going to the wrong place. "our phones wont leave you lost".
At least they work....
Glad I'm not the only one who imagined Steve Jobs' corpse tied to a string and being dragged along the sidewalk in front of Google's headquarters.
"Oh, hey, Look! A Steve Jobs free for the taking!"
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree, but Apple decided to partner with TOM TOM of all companies. These are the guys that drive people into lakes and down railroad tracks. Google put a ton of work into their maps product and API and sent their cute little Google mapping cars all over the world to get Streetview done. Apple should have just bought Garmin instead or just worked out a map revenue sharing deal with Google. It seems that our egos are what always get us in trouble.
IMHO Apple is on a very self destructive course with respect to Google. Google can do services on a scale that other companies can't even conceive and the backend is where the magic happens. Apple might have new shinier lights out data centers and Google products might have clunkier front ends but the backends (especially GMAIL, Google Docs, and Google Search) are untouchable. We see this everyweek as Apple mail and iTunes struggles to scale up. Hey everybody, don't forget, the next round of the Google Power Searching class starts tomorrow. Power Searching with Google Registration and the presenter at Google is confident enough in his company to use a MAC.
"Legitimate criticism = trolling"
Errors where it's not finding something it should are or course legitimate.
But many of the supposed map flaws I have seen are NOT legitimate. At least half of the supposed "errors" on the Apple map fail sites are people not understanding that Apple Maps renders differently, or not understanding a 2D projection onto 3D terrain because they have not seen it.
One big example is Apple maps supposedly not having some data at a location, when in fact the data is there - just at a slightly greater zoom level. When you say Apple Maps is missing a tube stop, and you zoom in a bit and find the tube stop there, well then you were wrong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, displaying less information often has that effect.
Of course it does. But it then does not mean the data is not there; you just need to zoom in more.
What Apple is trying to do is more advanced than Google maps, where they just dump everything on a screen that can possibly fit and call it good. Apple is trying to map maps more readable and therefore usable for someone like a person in a car. So they are currently tweaking algorithms to decide just what is important to present in a view in such a way you do not end up cluttering things.
So much of the Apple Map angst seems to boil down to "OMG It's Different Kill The Witch!". Well that and the trolls stoking that fire.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well if that link is going to be every Apple story so is this one:
You're going to see to that are you?
Google maps were a far better experience in most ways, they shouldn't have replaced it with their own inferior service, they should have made sure it was at least on par. They appear to be copying Google's (and others') tactic of releasing 'beta' products into mainstream, something they never did before, it always used to be about only releasing something when they got it right and polished, that seems to be changing.
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/
Google also sometimes cannot find things that I am pretty sure should be easy to find.
You're right. I've been looking for this place called Schadenfreude and I can't seem to find it anywhere. Is it on your Apple map?
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/
Misleading, at best.
Google charges you if you go over a certain number of users:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2122151/Google-Maps-API-to-Charge-for-High-Volume-Usage
If you want access to map tiles, you simply can't get them, and Google will send their lawyers after you if you reverse engineer.
At least with Apple maps commercial use is free. And Bing will let you license the raw map tiles and provide you with an API to get them.)
(Citation: I've worked on software that implemented Maps from scratch and tried to license from Google. Google also made the news recently when they raised their rates: )
Really? Cite searchenginewatch, a site that basically hates google because google is their competition?
Please cite something that's actually valid. I'd believe Florian Mueller and Steve Jobs when he was alive before I'd believe searchenginewatch.
So after tiring of doing "tedious updates" they jump at the chance for "Hey, you know what you did at Google? Do that again from the beginning for us". Talk about tedious.
this is my sig
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
I'm well aware of the new features of Apple Maps, you don't have to detail them, that's clearly not something i'm objecting to. What they should have done is what they did when they introduced Siri, allow the user to switch back to the other service if they want to.
Detailing some nice fails on Google's part in mapping.
Well yes, but the fact that they managed to come up with 10 failures for Google maps over the many years its been available, while that tumblr blog has hundreds of comparable failures (misplaced cities, useless directions, completely incorrect coastlines, invalid borders, all as bad as what was listed in the page you linked) in a few days says something. Mapping is hard, there are enourmous amounts of data, and mistakes will be made. Apple seems to have made an order of magnitude more and are being ridiculed for it.
Also another thing that seems really stupid to complain about is flat satellite data warped in 3D mode. You are getting something you could not see before on mobile devices
Except Nokia already has this, and their 3D version reportedly doesn't have anywhere near this range of issues. Again, 3D projection and stitching together photos is very hard. Bit Apple has made an order of magnitude more errors than their competitors. Consequently they are being ridiculed for this.
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then the masses of apple users wont feel like retards for paying extra to obtain a substandard experiance
which one of the 15 words are you refering to, your not as clever as you think.
You're right. I've been looking for this place called Schadenfreude and I can't seem to find it anywhere. Is it on your Apple map?
Got a heap of Schadenfreude right here.
Delightful. For you see, in the end if Apple can find food and Google cannot, which userbase will survive the coming winter?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who cares? The thing is almost junk. I say this because no body would expect a company of Apple's stature to spit out alpha quality software like this. Heck, iOS users are [almost] in revolt over this. Maybe you'll say whatever we're seeing is a feature of some sort.
Really? Then why do we have discussions like these, on Apple's own site? How much of Aplpe's "koolaid" have you had so far?
I think the chief issues with Maps service is a lack of human oversight. I think a crowdsourced solution like Waze is probably a way to shore up that deficiency rapidly.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
They also have a pretty long history of favoring open standards (Postscript, HTML5, etc.).
The previous Google maps app relied on a licensing agreement with Google that recently expired. Obviously the app itself could continue to run fine just like the 700,000 other iOS apps (dating back to the dawn of time) which continue to run fine on every subsequent iOS version. The 'trickery' probably involves bypassing whatever system is in place to prevent that app from being installed on iOS6 or using Google's mapping data from an iOS6 device. Really, you'd have to be pretty stupid to assume that the app stopped working because of some fundamental technology problem.
nt
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.
Wow, maybe Apple should have just done that. /s
Apple to Customer: "You know that mapping app everybody uses? The one that's practically the most popular iOS app? The one that works so well? You can't use that any more."
Customer: "Why not?"
Apple to Customer: "Fuck you, that's why not. Now get back in line. And by the way, did you know that you prefer the walled garden because it provides a more seamless end-user experience? Now repeat that after me: "I prefer the walled garden because...""
You are welcome on my lawn.
Thats because they know the users will buy it anyway.
The guy that drove innovation at apple died. Now Apple is back on a slow descent to Sculley land.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I'm well aware of the new features of Apple Maps, you don't have to detail them, that's clearly not something i'm objecting to. What they should have done is what they did when they introduced Siri, allow the user to switch back to the other service if they want to.
You can, but going to maps.google.com in Safari. Or using he Bing app which includes maps. Or by using one of many other mapping applications.
In fact the one thing Apple could NOT do is provide the old mapping app because the license is ending, and it's not clear Google WOULD allow them to continue as they are developing their own mapping applications. You cat as though Apple is the only party making choices here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, what people are saying is that comparing Apple's replacement for Google Maps to Google Maps is like comparing the scrawlings of a drunk toddler with a box of crayons to the Mona Lisa.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Steve Jobs would not have let this happen this way.
Steve Jobs would have let Maps go forward exactly this way, because it's the only path Apple has forward in mapping.
We know this because given the time to assemble an entire mapping system Jobs knew about it for a long time during development, certainly knowing choices made like not doing transit and letting App makers provide that functionality.
The maps work well enough right now for most people. Blatant errors will quickly be fixed and life will move on, in six months no-one will care about this tempest in a teapot you are your fellow AC's are trying to drum up. In one year people will be wondering just how Google fell so far behind in mapping...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple Reportedly Luring Ex-Google Mappers With Jobs
Have they no respect? The man's been dead for quite a while; makes you wonder what kind of people they actually manage to lure with mr Jobs.
What else would they lure them with? Apple TVs?
That's a strawman. Nobody says that the 3D deformations are what makes Apple Maps suck, and even if they did, you still haven't proven that Apple Maps are better in this area than Google Maps, you've only established that Google Earth has some examples of similar problems but for all we know they're at a much lower frequency.
There is a whole laundry list of problems that people have been talking about since the iOS 6 beta - things like cities being in the totally wrong place, a lack of detail (such as the Bowling Green University example; Google Maps shows pretty much every building and drive on campus whereas the Apple Maps shows very little by comparison), and frequently inaccurate data all around.
It will take far longer than 6 months to catch up to Google. If that's all long it takes, Apple would have got it right it during the beta.
Why didn't Apple negotiate a new deal with Google then?
Did Google refuse to negotiate with Apple or did Apple refuse to negotiate with Google?
Yep, it'll probably take them a couple years, and a whole lot of their cash (they DO have quite a bit of it). Until then, I expect that Google Maps will also be available on the iPhone, and I suspect that at some point within about 2 years, you'll see them reach rough parity in quality with GMaps, and at that point, they can really focus on competing on the merits of their product.
Remember how stagnant browsers were before IE suddenly got slapped in the nuts by Firefox? Competition is good for consumers. Sucks that Apple's initial offering isn't very competitive, but I expect that gap to close significantly in the next year, and more or less close within 2. This spate of hiring (and no doubt, the hiring they've been doing for a year or more now, as a result of this - this feature has surely been in dev for a while) will help that, so will dumping a huge amount of their cash reserves into improving the data sets.
I agree, in principle. But the hard part with things like Siri and Maps are that you actually need the products in use "in the wild" to be able to analyze the data, correct problems, and refine the product. Google didn't release Maps as a "fully complete" service either - they released it as a beta, and refined it over... what - 7, 8 years now?
It would've been nice to see them work with Google to migrate the Google Maps app to a standalone app before making this so users would have an alternative, but there's only so much spit and polish you can put into a mapping app via traditional QA - at some point, it's got to actually get used by people on the ground.
And it's entirely possible that Apple approached Google about doing just this in parallel with their migration to a new mapping solution, and Google refused, sensing possible competitive advantage. Let's be honest - "Every Android phone comes preinstalled with the most accurate, up-to-date, blah blah mapping solution: Google Maps!" isn't a bad marketing bullet point.
More like rotating Steve.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thing is, Android is for hackers. So you expect that people running Android will a) expect to need to do that kind of shit from time to time and b) have at least the basic notions of how to do it.
I thought Apple's slogan was "It just works"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Apple Reportedly Luring Ex-Google Mappers With Jobs
Poor Steve. They apparently didn't bury him properly but preserved his body as bait to lure in people in crises.
Don't particularly like the falla but this is too macabre even to my miserably low standards.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I agree that it is inaccurate to say that Apple Maps is poor, I'd say its a compile pile of sh*t!
Perhaps you can live with the fact that Apple thinks that the Washington monument has been moved, or that the Berlin wall has been resurrected in the middle of Montreal, but when they "forget" the second biggest city in Sweden entirely (Gothenburg), I ask you, is not "very poor" an understatement?
Take a look here:http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/
The one that works so well?
Did you ever try the old maps app? It didn't work well in a car (need to hit that tiny "next turn" button while driving), if it couldn't find a destination it just picked something that looked similar and didn't give any warning, and it had many of the same fails that iOS6 maps has (map/photo misalignment).
I hated it so much that I paid ~$50 for the Navigon app. Seems like the new app has many of the same problems, so I won't go back yet
Everybody uses broad generalizations.
You can only get so close without massive crowdsourcing of corrections.
"Crowdsourcing of corrections" = using your customers as beta testers.
That's why this whole situation is news, and why Apple has received so much pushback. Apple's long-time slogan has been that "it just works". It's supposed to be the other companies who treat consumers as beta testers like this. Apple's customers are now being exposed to Apple's internal politics and development cycle for no good reason that they can see.
I'll give you that a 3D map that can let you discern street level details is sufficient for many, but not all, end user scenarios. Don't, however, underestimate the value of the data. Streetview cars are the boots on the ground that ensure that the map data matches reality is some very rough fashion. New roads in particular will be added when they survey an area at the very least. They are also using it to improve address accuracy via reCaptcha. Probably useful for all sorts of editing and corrections, and whatever else they can come up with.
Wi-fi location services depend on those cars as well. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if sticking up the cameras was an afterthought to collecting wi-fi location data that paid off embarrassingly well for maps.
Streetview appears to be an embarrassingly parallel problem once you have the infrastructure in place. The difference between extrapolating 3D maps and Streetview is that the former will require a lot of bodies fixing the extrapolation issues and updating those fixes as the scenery changes and the later requires a lot of bodies collecting more data. So long as Google puts in the effort they will stay ahead, map making is, in the end, a labor intensive task.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Apple Macht Frei. Cupertino Uber Alles.
Never mind that stupid bus icon. I got royally SCREWED because of it a couple of weeks ago.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
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However, I don't believe this would preclude a contract-clause which prevents former employers from divulging proprietary information on the Google mapping application. If they start sharing code which belongs to Google or other such things then it's going to get messy.
Actually Apple used to be more about reducing the number of features down enough so that it could be implemented by a small team and judiciously press the developers until it comes out to Steve Jobs satisfaction. They could have made the feature initially only available in North America. Instead they let users access worldwide data which is plainly horrible.
This is more alpha than beta.
Google Maps has 3D view using WebGL. I suspect the iOS "Google" apps are actually made by Apple. There is no way they would be so crappy if Google was actually doing them.
They already bought two companies to make this wonderful POS app. I guess they can buy more.
Google Maps has 3D view using WebGL.
Yes, I know, I've used that also. Again, doesn't ship with mobile devices.
Nokias seems to though, I think they were really first to ship 3D maps on mobile devices.
I suspect the iOS "Google" apps are actually made by Apple.
Yes, that was correct. There's no suspecting needed. We already knew that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How about letting Google test and release a standalone map application before they obsoleted the old one?
Since we know Google is not yet thinking of writing such an app, Apple obviously could not have waited for that to happen. Why would Google be inclined to help Apple out in that way?
Apple got maps as ready as it could be for launch and then launched. Now it's on Apple to take in user feedback and fix map errors with haste.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Really. Have you been to that tumblr site? Some of the map 'renderings' I've seen look more like a bad psychedelic trip.
Have you ever run Google Earth? It has the same renderings. That's what happens when you have 2D images overlaid on terrain deformed 3D surfaces.
Nokia's 3D maps have the same, in some cases worse, errors.
So Apple is equal in 3D mapping, and in cities with 3D data, ahead of Google. Apple is really ahead of Google in terms of getting 3D mapping into daily use, Google Earth is cool and all but not nearly as many people use it as use Google Maps.
The Shinjuku subway station -- one of the main arteries of Tokyo's transit system -- doesn't even show up on Apple Maps
That is incorrect. It does show up on the map. There is a transit icon, that reads "Shinjuku Station" right at the location of Shinjuku station.
searching for it returns no results.
That is correct, and an error to be sure. Far more a problem for the tourist than a Tokyo resident though, all of whom I suspect actually know where Shinjuku station is.
On the other hand Apple maps seem better for users in China. I wonder which is harder to do, correct a search result for "Shinjuku Station" or get more accurate maps across the whole of China?
Apple is not fooling around, they are in this for the long game. Blips like Shinjuku Station are funny, but in the end do not make that much difference after the major search errors are fixed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley