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Apple Will Use Drones To Improve the Quality of Apple Maps (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple plans to use drones and new indoor navigation features to improve its Maps service and catch longtime leader Google (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternate link), according to people familiar with the matter. The Cupertino, California-based company is assembling a team of robotics and data-collection experts that will use drones to capture and update map information faster than its existing fleet of camera-and-sensor ladened minivans, one of the people said. Apple wants to fly drones around to do things like examine street signs, track changes to roads and monitor if areas are under construction, the person said. The data collected would be sent to Apple teams that rapidly update the Maps app to provide fresh information to users, the person added. Apple is also developing new features for Maps, including views inside buildings and improvements to car navigation, another person familiar with the efforts said. Apple filed for an exemption on Sept. 21, 2015, from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly drones for commercial purposes, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News. At that time, exemptions were required to commercially operate drones. In a response dated March 22, 2016, the FAA granted Apple approval to "operate an unmanned aircraft system to conduct data collection, photography, and videography," according to one of the documents. Apple's application told the FAA that it would use a range of drones sold by companies such as SZ DJI Technology Co. and Aibotix GmbH to collect the data. Apple has hired at least one person from Amazon's Prime Air division to help run the drone team, one of the people said.
They don't have the engineering talent to catch up to Google's lead on maps or siri or anything else that doesn't involve making thinner phones.
... hundreds of millions of phones which act as sensors and they need some drones???
over-paid executives are idiots
Doesn't Apple need to develop it's own line of drones first?
NIH is deeply entrenched in Apple culture.
*Ahem*! They prefer to be called "cartographers".
They don't have the engineering talent to catch up to Google's lead on maps
Apple maps at the outset did not have as good base data as Google. But even then it gave better directions than Google did - it directed me to my house via the route I already drove already because I knew it was the bast (that's the best way to judge map apps, but asking for directions for places you already know well and seeing if you agree).
Nowadays Apple maps data is every bit as good as Google has, and I would say they repair errors found much faster than Google. The past five incidents I've reported (bad roads or wrong information about places) I received a notification that the errors had been corrected in a day or two.
Apple also has surpassed Google in transit directions, offering directions that include how to go through the station...
Google may have started a lot earlier but you are totally forgetting the funk and lethargy that large organizations fall into over time. Apple has a very different corporate structure that is letting the Apple Maps team advance much faster than Google has been improving...
Apple may not be ahead with Siri but I don't think they are that far behind either. What makes you think Google has engineering chops no-one else does? The massive successes of Google Plus or Hangouts?? They are both pretty much at the start of a very, very long race there and it is anyone's game...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not the quality of the maps that makes Google better than Apple. It's the simple matter of understanding that context-sensitive searches are essential to a good "map experience". If you search on Google Maps for a place, business, or business type; you get results for that immediate area. On Apple Maps, the search returned could be on the other side of the planet, as I found out, searching for "soup dumplings" in the middle of Chinatown, San Francisco. Apple Maps returned a location in Taiwan. Google Maps returned a place around the corner.
My UID is prime!