Besides, what difference does it make if neither developers nor end users can take advantage of it in any meaningful way?
Better battery life/thinner and no background spyware, and the elimination of any need for a task manager to kill badly behaved apps. These are are advantages for the user.
Remember, it Apple wanted to do LESS work on multitasking they could have just done what other mobile OSs do. They did MORE work to make it better.
The pitiful multitasking support in iOS is an awesome malware-prevention feature!
Let's be clear. There is no technical limitation on multitasking on iOS. It's UNIX and has the usual multitasking ability, and indeed the built in services are using multitasking at all times - whether for the use of the built in apps, or 3rd party ones. And 3rd party apps can request time to finish their arbitrary code operations in the background - up to 10 minutes.
The restriction that apps aren't normally allowed to use arbitrary code in the background, and even if they request it they can't do so for more than 10 minutes is a policy, not a technical limitation.
i.e. Apple has more finesse on their multitasking, not less.
The primary reason is for battery life preservation. But the fact that it also minimises the ability for spyware to operate is hardly "a new one."
What extra security do you imagine RIM has that iOS doesn't? iOS clearly has a couple that RIM doesn't. (Walled garden and restrictions on background app operations.)
The idea that the US and/or Israeli governments would write a virus specifically to have a subtle effect on computers running Iran's nuclear centrifuges is equally B-movie material. And yet with Stuxnet, it happened.
Now imagine how useful this malware would be if directed towards specific espionage targets.
As this malware proves the permissions system on Android is worthless. If you want to hide malware that needs to take illicit photos and upload them, you hide the malware in a photography app that has an upload feature.
Same for any other permissions the malware author wants. They just choose the trojan horse to match the permissions needed by the payload.
A single walled garden approach has the opportunity to spot the malware at the time of testing. And if it's missed then, as soon as someone does discover the malware and reports it, it can be entirely removed from distribution, and it's certificate revoked.
Beyond that there's another reason that it won't work on iOS. One of the reasons for iOSs unique multitasking model is to prevent this kind of background malware. This app won't run in the background on iOS because there is no such service for it to hook onto.
So yes it's very much a matter of 'Apple' vs 'Android'. There is lots of malware for Android, virtually none for iOS. And this particular malware would be impossible on iOS.
Ah, the old Android fragmentation problem. There's two ways you can look at it.
1) Good news, because of the fragmentation, the malware won't work on all Androids. Mine might be safe.
2) Bad news, because of the fragmentation, the malware will work on a lot of Androids. Malware can take a scattergun approach, they'll target whoever does have phones that it works on.
Channel 4 is not pop media. It's a respected British terrestrial broadcaster, who's 7 O'Clock News programme, of which this is a branch, is second to none. The very existence of Factcheck is to take claims of politicians and check the facts to see if they are saying the truth or not.
But I only quoted that because I already knew it from reading the British Crime Survey for many years. Yes, that's official government statistic service figures. If you check out the British Crime Survey, you'll find that the exact same figures are buried in it's PDF pages.
That trend is accurate. And 2010-11 is the latest published. It's a biannual publication.
Again, gun crime has been falling in the UK since 2003/4. That's the true fact.
we're not allowed to own guns the same way you Americans are, yes, these restrictions haven't done a damn thing to stop the increase in 'gun crime' in the UK (Fact: gun crime is on the rise, and it is now easier to get large calibre handguns on the 'black market' since the UK government banned the ownership of the things)
That's not a fact at all. Gun crime in the UK peaked in 2003/2004. It's been declining since.
The three objectives of punishment in the criminal justice system are punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence. It's not correct to say it's only for one of them.
I have to say, before slashdot I didn't have such strong views about how libertarianism was such a stupid, selfish and immoral philosophy. You have to wonder whether some of the people extolling it's virtues here are actually people who are deliberately trying to give it a bad name.
No, it gave road by road directions. Turn by turn directions tells you what to do at the next junction, and zooms in to the junction as you approach it so you can navigate it sucessfully. The old Google Maps on iOS5 zoomed to the entirety of the next road, leaving you mostly clueless about the junction.
It was also manually advanced, and didn't recalculate when you made a detour. And didn't rotate to match the direction of travel.
Just because it doesn't have a building exactly there doesn't mean it isn't valid to search for it.
Yes it does mean exactly that. The address doesn't exist and no map should say it does.
will at least take you to a location interpolated between the two nearest real buildings on the odd side of the street.
Then they are wrong. They are using an algorithm that is in this case producing an incorrect result.
In this case, looking at the maps, it's a public park. It's perfectly valid to reference the park as "3xx E 15th street" where xx is odd. If you search for this, you should get some point along the street on the edge of the park.
No. That might be what you have come to expect from apps that get t wrong. But it's still incorrect.
Also, someone could be searching for a valid address and typo the number. Easy to do - Any SANE mapping app will degrade gracefully in this case and take you to a location that's within visual range of your actual desired destination.
It should give you choices of the nearest matches to what you typed in. Which is not necessarily near to the place you intended, if some other address match better.
Having done a head to head comparison, I can state it's not a patch on a dedicated Garmin sat-nav. Neither for finding the best route, nor for accuracy in placing your current position on the map. So I think you overused the word "very" there.
It is nice to have maps when you're a pedestrian. But the major use case is driving in a car. And for that dedicated sat-navs are certainly better than smartphone nav apps. So it was a fair question.
You should never, never, never, ever use a production release as a beta test. This is what Q/A teams are for. Apple can afford them.
It is impossible for a Q/A team, however big, to find all the errors in a worldwide map. Every mapping company uses user feedback to get that final few percent of quality. Google Maps had more than it's fair share of errors when it launched.
And you're ignoring the even larger number of people posting about the terrible experience and many problems that they're having.
In the main they're coming from Fandroids like yourself that have never used Apple Maps.
Even Apple's CEO recognized that their new mapping app is a massive failure.
You really are a deluded individual. Sent mad by your worship of your smartphone choice. The exact words of Tim Cook are here, and everyone can see you are wrong. http://www.apple.com/letter-from-tim-cook-on-maps/
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.
One of the major sources of Apple's data is TomTom. They've been selling sat-navs for years, and are an established name, alongside Garmin and Magellan. They started collecting map data in the mid nineties, and they bought Tele Atlas who started collecting map data in the mid 1980s.
They have lots of other quality sources of data too. My guess is that their problem is in consolidating all the data sources into a coherent whole. In what area and circumstance to trust one data source over another. That I think will be something they can make pretty fast progress on. They are not building this data from scratch, just as Google didn't.
So then why, when faced with a similar question, do so many Apple users deny that Apple Maps is similarly worse than Google Maps?
Google Maps on what? I haven't seen anyone say that Apple Maps is better than Google Maps on Android.
But compared with Google Maps on iOS5, it's certainly arguable that it is. The App itself is vastly superior, with vector graphics rather than tiles allowing for proper rotation and scaling. With Flyover and with full turn by turn navigation.
The data on the other hand is significantly worse than it was, right now. But that's only affecting some people, ad not others. For me for example, my area looks spot on - I can't find any errors.
If advising someone who's looking to make a purchase on the basis of maps support
If I was advising someone who's primary need was navigation, I'd tell them to buy a dedicated sat-nav. They are still far better than smartphone apps.
You can interpret it emotionally of you like and call it "spite". Of you can look at it as a rational company would and recognise that Google changed from being an Apple collaborator (different business fields, cooperating, Schmidt on the Apple board.) to being an apple competitor (competing smartphone). And that changed the rules on what they could reasonably cooperate on.
Slashdot Mirror
More than what?
More than other mobile OSs.
Besides, what difference does it make if neither developers nor end users can take advantage of it in any meaningful way?
Better battery life/thinner and no background spyware, and the elimination of any need for a task manager to kill badly behaved apps. These are are advantages for the user.
Remember, it Apple wanted to do LESS work on multitasking they could have just done what other mobile OSs do. They did MORE work to make it better.
The pitiful multitasking support in iOS is an awesome malware-prevention feature!
Let's be clear. There is no technical limitation on multitasking on iOS. It's UNIX and has the usual multitasking ability, and indeed the built in services are using multitasking at all times - whether for the use of the built in apps, or 3rd party ones. And 3rd party apps can request time to finish their arbitrary code operations in the background - up to 10 minutes.
The restriction that apps aren't normally allowed to use arbitrary code in the background, and even if they request it they can't do so for more than 10 minutes is a policy, not a technical limitation.
i.e. Apple has more finesse on their multitasking, not less.
The primary reason is for battery life preservation. But the fact that it also minimises the ability for spyware to operate is hardly "a new one."
What extra security do you imagine RIM has that iOS doesn't? iOS clearly has a couple that RIM doesn't. (Walled garden and restrictions on background app operations.)
Well, yes, there's the walled garden reason. But more importantly because iOS's unique multitasking scheme won't allow it.
This malware cannot work on iOS.
The idea that the US and/or Israeli governments would write a virus specifically to have a subtle effect on computers running Iran's nuclear centrifuges is equally B-movie material. And yet with Stuxnet, it happened.
Now imagine how useful this malware would be if directed towards specific espionage targets.
As this malware proves the permissions system on Android is worthless. If you want to hide malware that needs to take illicit photos and upload them, you hide the malware in a photography app that has an upload feature.
Same for any other permissions the malware author wants. They just choose the trojan horse to match the permissions needed by the payload.
A single walled garden approach has the opportunity to spot the malware at the time of testing. And if it's missed then, as soon as someone does discover the malware and reports it, it can be entirely removed from distribution, and it's certificate revoked.
Beyond that there's another reason that it won't work on iOS. One of the reasons for iOSs unique multitasking model is to prevent this kind of background malware. This app won't run in the background on iOS because there is no such service for it to hook onto.
So yes it's very much a matter of 'Apple' vs 'Android'. There is lots of malware for Android, virtually none for iOS. And this particular malware would be impossible on iOS.
Ah, the old Android fragmentation problem. There's two ways you can look at it.
1) Good news, because of the fragmentation, the malware won't work on all Androids. Mine might be safe.
2) Bad news, because of the fragmentation, the malware will work on a lot of Androids. Malware can take a scattergun approach, they'll target whoever does have phones that it works on.
Is there a better solution?
Use iOS.
Channel 4 is not pop media. It's a respected British terrestrial broadcaster, who's 7 O'Clock News programme, of which this is a branch, is second to none. The very existence of Factcheck is to take claims of politicians and check the facts to see if they are saying the truth or not.
But I only quoted that because I already knew it from reading the British Crime Survey for many years. Yes, that's official government statistic service figures. If you check out the British Crime Survey, you'll find that the exact same figures are buried in it's PDF pages.
That trend is accurate. And 2010-11 is the latest published. It's a biannual publication.
Again, gun crime has been falling in the UK since 2003/4. That's the true fact.
we're not allowed to own guns the same way you Americans are, yes, these restrictions haven't done a damn thing to stop the increase in 'gun crime' in the UK (Fact: gun crime is on the rise, and it is now easier to get large calibre handguns on the 'black market' since the UK government banned the ownership of the things)
That's not a fact at all. Gun crime in the UK peaked in 2003/2004. It's been declining since.
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/files/2012/09/19_fc_guncrime.jpg
The three objectives of punishment in the criminal justice system are punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence. It's not correct to say it's only for one of them.
But who's being trolled? It might be the guy pretending hunter2 is his password.
It might be if he isn't really a libertarian.
I have to say, before slashdot I didn't have such strong views about how libertarianism was such a stupid, selfish and immoral philosophy. You have to wonder whether some of the people extolling it's virtues here are actually people who are deliberately trying to give it a bad name.
Some people don't seem to understand what a real sat-nav does.
No, it gave road by road directions. Turn by turn directions tells you what to do at the next junction, and zooms in to the junction as you approach it so you can navigate it sucessfully. The old Google Maps on iOS5 zoomed to the entirety of the next road, leaving you mostly clueless about the junction.
It was also manually advanced, and didn't recalculate when you made a detour. And didn't rotate to match the direction of travel.
For in car navigation, it was a non-starter.
Just because it doesn't have a building exactly there doesn't mean it isn't valid to search for it.
Yes it does mean exactly that. The address doesn't exist and no map should say it does.
will at least take you to a location interpolated between the two nearest real buildings on the odd side of the street.
Then they are wrong. They are using an algorithm that is in this case producing an incorrect result.
In this case, looking at the maps, it's a public park. It's perfectly valid to reference the park as "3xx E 15th street" where xx is odd. If you search for this, you should get some point along the street on the edge of the park.
No. That might be what you have come to expect from apps that get t wrong. But it's still incorrect.
Also, someone could be searching for a valid address and typo the number. Easy to do - Any SANE mapping app will degrade gracefully in this case and take you to a location that's within visual range of your actual desired destination.
It should give you choices of the nearest matches to what you typed in. Which is not necessarily near to the place you intended, if some other address match better.
The app isn't buggy. It's the online dataset that has errors in it.
Google and Android is very very good.
Having done a head to head comparison, I can state it's not a patch on a dedicated Garmin sat-nav. Neither for finding the best route, nor for accuracy in placing your current position on the map. So I think you overused the word "very" there.
It is nice to have maps when you're a pedestrian. But the major use case is driving in a car. And for that dedicated sat-navs are certainly better than smartphone nav apps. So it was a fair question.
You should never, never, never, ever use a production release as a beta test. This is what Q/A teams are for. Apple can afford them.
It is impossible for a Q/A team, however big, to find all the errors in a worldwide map. Every mapping company uses user feedback to get that final few percent of quality. Google Maps had more than it's fair share of errors when it launched.
And you're ignoring the even larger number of people posting about the terrible experience and many problems that they're having.
In the main they're coming from Fandroids like yourself that have never used Apple Maps.
Even Apple's CEO recognized that their new mapping app is a massive failure.
You really are a deluded individual. Sent mad by your worship of your smartphone choice. The exact words of Tim Cook are here, and everyone can see you are wrong. http://www.apple.com/letter-from-tim-cook-on-maps/
I remember much the same sorts of things being said about the lack of Flash on iPhones.
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.
One of the major sources of Apple's data is TomTom. They've been selling sat-navs for years, and are an established name, alongside Garmin and Magellan. They started collecting map data in the mid nineties, and they bought Tele Atlas who started collecting map data in the mid 1980s.
They have lots of other quality sources of data too. My guess is that their problem is in consolidating all the data sources into a coherent whole. In what area and circumstance to trust one data source over another. That I think will be something they can make pretty fast progress on. They are not building this data from scratch, just as Google didn't.
So then why, when faced with a similar question, do so many Apple users deny that Apple Maps is similarly worse than Google Maps?
Google Maps on what? I haven't seen anyone say that Apple Maps is better than Google Maps on Android.
But compared with Google Maps on iOS5, it's certainly arguable that it is. The App itself is vastly superior, with vector graphics rather than tiles allowing for proper rotation and scaling. With Flyover and with full turn by turn navigation.
The data on the other hand is significantly worse than it was, right now. But that's only affecting some people, ad not others. For me for example, my area looks spot on - I can't find any errors.
If advising someone who's looking to make a purchase on the basis of maps support
If I was advising someone who's primary need was navigation, I'd tell them to buy a dedicated sat-nav. They are still far better than smartphone apps.
You can interpret it emotionally of you like and call it "spite". Of you can look at it as a rational company would and recognise that Google changed from being an Apple collaborator (different business fields, cooperating, Schmidt on the Apple board.) to being an apple competitor (competing smartphone). And that changed the rules on what they could reasonably cooperate on.
Apple's data *IS* bought (licenced) from other big guns.