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Apple CEO Tim Cook Apologizes For Maps App, Recommends Alternatives
TheBoat writes "Tim Cook has apologized for the company's Maps app in iOS 6. 'We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.' Cook said the company is continuing to work on the app, but recommended several alternatives in the meantime: apps from Bing, MapQuest, and Waze, or the map websites of Google and Nokia."
This is unusual for Apple, but not unprecedented. Steve Jobs acknowledged reception issues with the iPhone 4 in 2010, but he wasn't quite so contrite about it.
Steve Jobs would have never apologized. He woudl've given it just the right spin that everyone would feel contrite over making jokes at Apple's expense. The next release would be perfect, as Steve would have demanded, and the kerfuffle would be consigned to largely forgotten history.
Tim Cook goofed.
He'd just say you were trying to navigate wrong.
In an effort to figure out how innacurate the data in my area is I did the following:
- Fired up Xcode
- Determined that Apple Maps uses the CLGeocoder Class by peeking at the iPhone's debug console in Xcode while doing live searches in Apple Maps
- Scraped an official list of towns and cities in the province of Ontario from the provincial governments website.
- Coded up something quick in Xcode to get the results of a couple thousand searches. Searches always included the province name to be more specific.
- Ran a quick analysis of the results - not perfect but enough to get a perspective on the matter.
This is what I found:
- 2028 cities and towns searched
- 688 are not even on the map! Error Code 8
- 551 are clearly incorrect (wrong country, street names that are similar to town names etc.)
- 389 were close but not good enough (for example turn-by-turn might send you off a bridge but you'll get rescued close to where you want to be)
- Only about 400 results were actually correct.
Actual results data here and methodology here for those interested: http://www.mtonic.com/applemaps/
(It's not perfect but gives you an idea of how bad it really is in Ontario Canada anyways)
He would have just told us all that we are using the maps wrong, and we'd all apologize to him.
Uh oh, Apple just admitted failure. How will the zealots take that?
I thought the whole No Google Maps on iOS was a plan, didn't they use their app for 5 minutes, and realize the HUGE outcry when they removed it? Further, due to the massive amounts of money (which apple has in spades) and time (which apple doesn't have at this point) what can they hope to do to fix it? And why didn't they pull the plug before it got to release state? Somebody really dropped the ball, or lied out of their ass during the status meetings. I'm wondering when the firings will start.
Steve Jobs must be turning in his grave. It sounds like Mr. Cook failed to learn from Mr. Job's demand for perfection before release. I guess this could be like iPhone v1 not having the copy and paste feature at product launch. Eventually, I wonder if people will get sick of dealing with this kind of attitude from Apple? I did - a long time ago.
Steve Jobs never would have apologized. While he was certainly one to recognize errors and correct them expeditiously, he'd never own up to it in public. His sometimes boisterous show of unwillingness to compromise is partly what has created Apple's entire image as a "no compromise" company.
Tim Cook is certainly a different guy, with a different approach. I feel he has somehow cheapened the iGadgets with this move - first by releasing a product that never should have made it through validation, and second by apologizing for it in public.
Ha I knew Apple would blame then end user for everything and spin it as just another fea... wait what?
This is actually quite a dramatic about face from the usual way Apple deals with problems. Where's the blame, then the spin, and instead of an apology I was expecting Tim Cook holding up a competitor's product going "see it has problems too!"
I'm impressed.
not ready the apprentice is
more than just fancy presentations he must learn
much too soon master has left
I want an apology for the fact that they've decided my 2.5 year old iPad isn't getting an iOS upgrade.
That's way too short of a life to decide to abandon it. Telling your early adopters "tough luck" isn't a great idea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
i've used them here. the parsing is screwy. you have to input the address exactly or it will screw it up. but it wasn't too much trouble to do it for a few contacts.
otherwise the routing works very nicely. previous maps app didn't have turn by turn and this is a pretty big improvement. especially the real time traffic from waze that's built in
1/ When Apple fired him (for being an egomaniac), the company went in the toilet.
2. When Apple rehired him, it became a trillion dollar juggernaut.
3. When he died, it began it's slide into mediocrity (as the map app debacle illustrates).
It really makes you wonder what one man's outsized ego can do to the performance of a company and/ or a product line.
Perhaps Steve would have prevailed a month or two ago and said "our map app sucks, not ready for prime time." But now there is no such ego of equivalent standing in Apple.
And the mediocrity of consensus, rather than the exacting standards of the dictator with the right aesthetic, means Apple is doomed?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As well they should. It's Tim Cook's world, we just live in it.
google maps on iOS was only good for single people who don't have cars. for the car owners the lack of turn by turn directions and real time traffic means we've been using something else for years and don't care about the lack of google maps
Good job driving ad traffic to BGR, who didn't even bother to link to the original source:
http://www.apple.com/letter-from-tim-cook-on-maps/
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
So for a while, anyone who's late for work or an appointment can just use the, "Sorry, I was using Apple Maps to get here." excuse, and they'll be forgiven. Thanks Apple!
Suggesting the Google Maps website is really thick. If Apple really wanted to fix the situation ASAP, why don't they re-release the Google Maps app?
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Never thought I would see the day where Apple would introduce the iApologize...
I read more into the recommended alternatives than the apology. Bing, really? Nokia has maps? Politics makes strange bedfellows.
Apple screwed up (although they are haldly unique) is pushing the concept that an Operating system is a bunch of personal and productivity applications. Road Navigation software is not part of the operating system.
The OS is the core environment, utility, houskeeping software, and desktop. Marketing idiots have confused the common consumer into thinking an OS also has programs for adding glitter to ponies.
As seen here, when an app breaks the perception becomes the who OS is flawed.
That would require that Apple get a new license to use Google's maps in their old app. They only have a year left so it's going to have to go away eventually. As it stands, you can get the same function by doing as Tim Cook suggested (and that many people already did), by going to google maps via the browser and making a quick launch icon on the Springboard.
The old maps app does not run on iOS6, so it's not as simple as just releasing it on iOS6 when you already know it's a dead end.
Can we expect AAPL below 500 by Christmas?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
No, look at the Google Maps API license terms. They explicitly *disallow* turn-by-turn. Also, the public Google Maps API doesn't serve up vector-based maps. If the Google Maps API doesn't supply a wanted feature, and the license terms specifically disallow adding a feature, then Apple couldn't do those things without moving to a different back end.
The idea that Steve Jobs never apologized for anything seems to be starting to become a common Slashdot misconception.
I'm sure people can think of times when they wish he did apologize for something, but to say he never did would be inaccurate.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Apple actively chose to replace its existing maps data supplier (Google) with new suppliers (including TomTom). If there are problems with the new version of Maps resulting from that choice of data suppliers, the blame is 100% with Apple. The map data is the heart of the Maps app, so its a pretty key decision in the app. Not insisting on -- and verifying -- quality on that piece is not a minor issue.
Thanks Tim. I'm sure you had no idea how much fail was in the ios Map application before you shrink-wrapped the 5. It's not like you have endless developers to work on these things and go through each bundled feature to make sure it works correctly, or even works at all. We understand you needed to get the phone on the shelves in time for the holidays, and especially to keep people from jumping ship over your recent litigation.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
To paraphrase the AC.
I don't think Steve would have allowed such as shitty product to completely be release.
Well you nailed it. Like Paul Mason, jobs would release no wine before its time. Moreover, someone would get fired. Like it or not his process worked. It could be that this is just going to be the learning experience they need to get back their Wu.
But in a way we are lucky. In the case of these maps, the Jobs reality distortion filed probably would have convinced us that the maps were right and the earth was wrong. If it was strong he might have just distorted the reality to match.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
1 years after his death, Apple will start to loose it's way. Tim Cook didn't learn anything from Jobs.
Now all the fan boys can't stand behind contrived excuse and apologies; which is critical to Apple vocal customer base. Much of which is cult like thinking when dealing with Apple.
Seriously, I'm thinking about writing a paper on it. Please note, I said their vocal customer base. i.e. the apologists.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Oops, sorry folks, I made a spelling error.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The lack of turn by turn was APPLE'S problem, not Google's.
Google has had turn by turn working for a while now.
Apple's existing license was simply for mapping data without turn by turn.
So they went to Google to renegotiate.
Apple just threw a fit when Google asked for better branding in their app, got pigheaded and figured "We're Apple, we can do it BETTER! This shouldn't take long!"
Basically this attitude is going to stretch Apple thin trying to do everything and doing none of it excellently.
In short, they're going to become Microsoft.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I think what we (the consumers and people concerned with lock-in) should be pushing for is the ability to go back to older versions of iOS on devices that we own. If every story about this failure mentioned that people who try the new version are locked in without the ability to go back to a working version, maybe Apple would cave.
Clearly Steve Job's reality distortion field dissipated after he died. Otherwise the real world would have magically adapted to Apple's maps.
The first apology is for selling too much too quickly.
The second apology is for lowering the price of the their product.
This is like when in an interview, the interviewer asks "What are your weakness", you say "Sometimes I work too hard".
And I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.
...if it is time for Google to introduce some judiciously placed non-existing place names in their maps. Something which would beyond a shadow of a doubt prove that wherever they show up, they're sure to have been scraped off Google Maps. They did this when they suspected Microsoft of scraping search results, and lo! those nonsensical results ended up on Bing in no time.
What now is the non-existing place of 'Oosterbeekerswaard' suddenly shows up on an iDevice? Nobody would mind not finding anything there, the question is 'where did they get these data from'?...
Of course those maps might be full of such random data already, who knows...
--frank[at]unternet.org
you mean voice turn by turn. Turn by turn was in the software from day 1.
And of course, the iphone 4 apparently doesn't have the ability to do voice turn by turn. You need a better phone than that if you want it to talk to you....
We've seen some humorous issues (though some of the things being stated as issues are actually made up).
But for every day things, most searches work right now. And Apple is shipping 3D maps on mobile while Google is not.
Lastly, already Apple finds some things Google does not. It's like everyone is blind to the fact that Google has plenty of errors still. Apple with Yelp integration, is going to find most things today that people actually want found when doing a general search on a map. The high-level issues people are seeing should be cleared out in short order, probably more a matter of months than years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> What happened to "It Just Works"?
You stopped believing in it. It was never true.
A lot of things on Android or Windows "just work" - while the same never did on Apple products. But because Steve Jobs said so, the cult swallowed (!) it hook line and sinker. Media has never questioned Apple about this market-speak (until now, may be. or may be not.)
She can be reached at her mother's house, 555-8686.
Have gnu, will travel.
Just because it doesn't have a building exactly there doesn't mean it isn't valid to search for it.
In which case Apple still finds it.
The Motorola ad was complete fabrication. But outright lies are OK as long as it's funny!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
- My city is wrong on the map, the navigation is absolutely off.
- Don't navigate there.
What makes you think they don't do this? In the UK, the main A-Z map makers have always done this - left out one or two small streets here or there to track imaginary property theft. Trap streets are a known thing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street
Korma: Good
Granted, they're clearly missing a shit-tonne of places, but having grown up in Ontario and having traveled to quite a few places in the province, I was a bit surprised to realize that I've never been to ANY of the 688 "Error Code 8" locations. Yes, none of them. I suspect that most are simply intersections with a town name and unique postal code, which is pretty common in rural Ontario. Not that I'm some kind of Apple apologist -- as a comprehensive mapping app, they should have this stuff covered, but when a third of the places in your dataset would never be used by 99% of the population, I contend that you've skewed the reality of the situation a bit.
I feel like the decidedly suburban, car-centric approach to Maps in iOS 6 is something that can't be improved without a rethink. "Hard work" isn't enough if it's going in the wrong direction.
Google Maps offered an elegant and seamless approach to providing transit directions in iOS 1 to 5.
Apple Maps offers a clunky "solution" that kicks you out of the app, forces you to use whatever UI the 3rd party app maker uses for your local transit system and doesn't guarantee a minimum level of quality (a lot of the transit apps are pretty terrible). Traveling? Hope there's an app for that city and you feel like getting used to a new UI.
For better or worse, Tim Cook has taken the big chair at Apple, and made the place his own. This is one more departure from the policies of the past, and I think it's a good one. People, by and large, will be much happier if you own a mistake. Especially if you correct the mistake in short order, showing that you actually do own it.
Companies try to play the blame game all the time, and they usually take it right in the ass every time they do. When a company owns a fuckup like this, they usually get a bye from the public on it unless they continue to fuck up. With Apple's track record of successful execution over the last 15 years, they can afford a hit or two without massive exodus of users.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It must really suck for you right now. Apple's being dragged over the coals over what is (according to you) a non-issue
It would only "suck for me" if I took anything people said about a COMPUTER COMPANY personally, which obviously would be idiotic, it'd reduce me to the level of an Apple Hater like yourself that feel quivering pangs of hatred whenever Apple is mentioned.
Also I've never said it's a non-issue. What I have said is that the issue is being blown out of proportion, which is true. What does it say when companies are making up errors to make fun of Apple?
In the end the people it really hurts is not Apple or myself. It's people like you or websites that make fun of the issue to the degree that people wondering what kind of crack you are consuming when they actually start using Apple Maps in real life. You guys basically toss your credibility right out the window, especially the ones pointing out flaws that do not exist, because you didn't think possibly it was a good idea to verify an issue was real before touting to the world you found a problem.
So sorry, man. It'll get better.
For Apple? Yes it will. It already has as we see more and more people carefully looking over real map results and saying wait a moment, things are not as bad as you are making out. Or pointing out when people are fabricating flaws for monetary gain (*cough*Google*cough). I guess that's just fine by you though.
Lastly, it most certainly does not "suck for me" in one huge way - AAPL buying opportunity from suckers like yourself thinking this is a huge blow to Apple. Thanks for another cheap round of buy-in, is what I say!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
iCloud actually went pretty well and has been very useful, if for no other reason than device backup for all the people that never attach an iOS device to a computer (which is a lot of people now).
The thing to mention there was the precursor, MobileMe. THAT was the thing that sucked.
Ping is of course a worthy inclusion in that list, as witnessed by Apple just dropping it. Just horrible.
The iPhone 4 antenna was actually a lot like the current map issue, something people made a huge deal of but didn't affect most people in daily use and in the end didn't really affect sales.
In fact it humorously parallels the maps issue in another way. Just as Google Earth has the same kind of wacky 3D mapping flaws we've seen brought up against Apple, so to did most Android phones have the exact same "Death Grip" problem as the iPhone 4.
But let's not hearken to the good old days where no wrongs were made. They never existed.
That s 100% true, but in my experience only Apple Haters claim that by way of trying to claim that Apple is dying now because it is not perfect like it was in the past.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple just threw a fit when Google asked for better branding in their app, got pigheaded and figured "We're Apple, we can do it BETTER! This shouldn't take long!"
Since the very first iPhone Apple has denied the big players from getting their branding on the phone in any significant way. That's why you don't see AT&T, Verizon, or any other carrier's logo on either the physical phone or startup screens, like you did on most phones at the time.
Interesting how you paint Apple as a kid (threw a fit / pigheaded / melodramatic whining) while Google "asked" for better branding. It's not asking, it's negotiating 101, and if the the other side's demands are unacceptable for whatever reason, you walk away.
Apple's reasoning had a lot of business logic behind it. Their decision to release Maps in this state without slapping a beta label on it, did not. Add it to the recent "Genius" ads disaster, and you have to wonder if Apple's marketing and PR managers all took summer vacation at the same time.
Nobody is asserting that Steve Jobs literally never apologized for anything. HTH.
So what he effectively said was why not try Nokia, Nokia, Waze, Google and Nokia instead.
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Android has had 3D maps for ages.
That's not what I was talking about though, that's not 3D satellite images (admittedly I should have specified).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple iPhone users have no idea what they're talking about.
Fixing a buggy application can be done in a point release of software. The app is irrelevant, everybody, their dog and their dog's fleas have map reading software. What they don't have is good data. Why? It's expensive.
Fixing terabytes to petabytes of poor data is an entirely different matter from upgrading a map reading application. There are really only 2 companies with good data. Google and Nokia. Both have been buying, assembling, collecting POI data and updating and fixing base map data for years.
To fix this Apple are probably going to have to spend a fortune on large amounts of data, infrastructure to handle it, thousands of people to manage and check it. Both, expensive and slow. Then there's the weird melting 3D world that's going to have to change entirely. They'll have to decide if it's worth doing it properly or if they still think they can do it on the cheap.
Looking at what they have right now, it absolutely will not be "fixed next time".
Deleted
I just took this picture on my Android device: http://i.imgur.com/42oQd.png
That's nice, but while I was not fully clear I was talking about this:
http://i.imgur.com/iqTlW.jpg
iOS does the outlines also in normal map mode, but I like being able to see the buildings from overhead at various angles.
It is true I should not say Google has no 3D support though, just no 3D imagery in mobile maps (they have some kind of beta desktop version).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple is where RIM was in 2008. Pushing out minor improvements to their product line year after year while ignoring the changes in the market
Actually that's not at all true. Or at least less true of Apple than Google.
How can you say Apple has been standing still when developers still have to target Android 2.3?
Apple has been consistently delivering really nice new frameworks in each iOS release, to make building application for the iOS platform easier and to enable some applications that would have been impractical to write otherwise.
Apple has understood the mobile application revolution far better than anyone - to the point where instead of going with the stodgy solution of offering a transit experience that is mediocre across all cities, they are allowing application developers to craft amazing custom transit apps tailored to each city, and then guiding users to them.
Google you see simply doesn't want to lose that control, because they are all about collecting your data so they can't possibly imagine letting a third party app get in the way of that. Even though it's the thing that will lead to their eventual decline. Google still doesn't understand that it is the quality of applications on a platform that really matter to people, which is why they cannot make headway in the tablet market.
Apple also has had the foresight to put a high-speed IO in newer mobile devices. Android? Still using USB 2.0. I was using that 15 years ago man.
Apple standing still? As far as I can tell they are the only ones moving forward. If you would open your eyes to reality the truth of this would be obvious even to you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Their 90% off, going out of business special?
Deleted
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the Apple Maps icon itself seems to show a route involving driving off an overpass!
Look... Why do you think the iPhone 5 is identical to the iPhone 4?
Why do you think Apple even had to talk about how the iPhone 5 was produced at all? Nobody cares how a phone is manufactured. They had to talk about how difficult and anal it was to produce because nothing else changed. The device is functionally and in design, identical to the iPhone 4.
Why do you think iOS 6 is identical to previous version?
Why do you think nothing changed? Nothing changed so that Apple can make 50% margin on their phones. You take more money in but don't spend money. It's how you get 100 billion in the bank. It's great business as long as nobody notices. The point being you are sacrificing the future at the expense of today and people do start to notice.
They start to notice that Samsung have more power and a bigger brighter screen, Google have better maps, they notice that Nokia have wireless charging, next generation cameras, nfc, better screens, higher quality offline maps, better design and ironically, a better easier to use interface.
Eventually people start asking if the 50% margin going to the hedge funds is worth what's being paid.
Deleted
To be fair, you don't see much of Apple's own branding on the device either! Yes, everything is Apple's visual identity, but they don't have Apple this and Apple that all over the place.
Yes, Apple is standing still. Their OS is long outdated. Their UI design wasn't forward-thinking, leaving the current suite of gestures an abominable mess. Notifications have improved, but still haven't caught up to Android, let alone BBOS. Multitasking is so far behind everyone else it's pitiful -- it's still not up to the level of BBOS 5!
iOS is way behind the curve and it doesn't look like Apple can catch up without a major change. They haven't been keeping up -- they've been standing still.
Take a look at new mobile operating systems from Microsoft and RIM and you'll see what I mean. It's pitiful how poorly iOS has evolved over the past few years. If anyone else released a product like iOS6 we'd all be laughing at it -- it's a bad joke.
How can you say Apple has been standing still when developers still have to target Android 2.3?
This doesn't make any sense. The version of Android that Android developers are targeting has absolutely nothing to do with Apple and iOS.
Required reading for internet skeptics
The iOS app had the manual turn-by-turn you have in the web version of Google Maps. Apple chose to open the market to Navigon, TomTom and others to make commercial navigation apps for the platform, with great success: Both of them floated to the top in the "most grossing" category in iTunes.
If you do not like platforms that cater to third parties, stick to friend-less platforms like Linux.
...Adobe has released a letter entitled "Thoughts on Apple Maps."
Hello? They tried. And Google wanted more than Apple wanted to give so the negotiations stranded. "Most certainly" is easy to shout from the sideline.
Well, there were a lot of other errors there as well... hard to notice the spelling error when you call immensely successful products "mediocre jokes".