If I remember correctly, this form of pseudo-privatisation was forced on the government by the EU
Actually, ISTR it was forced through by a dying Tory government who believe in privatisation as a matter of principle and were desperate to get the contracts signed to tie the hands of the incoming Labour government. At the time, the Tories were hugely split over the EU, the rail privatisation was controversial, and if there had been any whiff that it was being forced by the EU they would never have got it through Parliament. Of course, the EU is a universal boogieman - although the actual problems are often in the way the government decides to interpret EU law.
If they'd really privatised the British railways, the new owners would have ripped most of them up and sold the land to developers.
Well, yes - because they would know that there is no point competing with a heavily-government-subsidised road system. You can't have taxpayer-funded roads and fully private rail in the same country.
This is the state of rail "privatisation" in the UK today.
Just to expand on that, "Privatisation" is a UK concept that seeks to combine the efficiency and value for money of government with the social responsibility and long-term vision of big business.
It's what you get if you spend so much time flip-flopping between socialist and capitalist governments that even the parties forget which is which.
Last I heard British motor ways still had speeds posted in mph. Don't ask me why.
Because although anybody doing anything important in the UK uses metric units, and a whole generation of us educated in the 70s were never even taught Imperial units (fucked if I know or care how many feet there are in a mile), the Government lost it's bottle and gave in to a bunch of market-stall holders and right-wing tabloid campaigns before consigning Imperial units to the deep, dark hole in which they belong.
At one stage, the standard size for wooden boards was 6'x4'x25mm... Sad.
Clue: a beautifully annotated source may be part of the manual, anybody who later takes over maintenance of the code will be eternally thankful to you, and if your name is Knuth then future students of programming may study it avidly - but it is not the manual.
...and yes, once, many years ago, when charged with supporting TeX at a computer centre, I mistakenly printed out the 'documentation' for TeX so I do know about what I speak. I wanted to learn to use it so I could support users, not rewrite the code.
Fortunately, Knuth is smart enough to understand this and WTFM as well, for the benefit of people who wanted to use TeX to do typesetting rather than a software design masterclass.
Sure thing. However, before I start I'd better get completely familiar with your wonderful program in order to correctly explain it's operation, so I'll just have a good read of the manu... oh, wait...
These devices are displacing regular, unrestricted computers from homes. Eventually we will start having kids grow up where the only "computer" is a crippled tablet whose primary purpose is extracting money from its owner and passive consumption.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's pretty much how the vast majority of people see and use computers today. If you replace your PC with a tablet and are happy, that's a pretty good sign that you didn't really need a PC in the first place. Those of us who actually want 'proper' PCs buy tablets 'as well as' PCs rather than 'instead of'.
Only if you agree to call iOS devices the same, which is ridiculous given the restrictions.
The problem is that MS's best gambit for breaking into the tablet market is to trade on the fact that it has Windows like a 'real PC' and proper versions of MS Office. They've already moved to unify the tablet and desktop UI in Windows 8 to a far greater extent than Apple has done.
If he isn't just trolling about Windows, and instead does want to make a point about the "value of being able to install your own software", why is there an official Minecraft client for iOS?
That did occur to me - but bear in mind that TFA consists of two tweets from Notch followed by an awful lot of extrapolation by HotHardware.com. His tweets don't mention ARM at all, just not wanting Microsoft to 'ruin the PC as an open platform'.
I think the problem occures if you see devices like tablets, phones and consoles as 'media consumption' appliances rather than general purpose computers. It's no big deal if they are closed systems (consoles have been that way for years).
The forthcoming ARM-based Windows machines may well be marketed as general purpose laptops and SFF computers.
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
So, Apple Maps doesn't have errors, just really, really strong DRM?
I can certainly see people being deterred from copying it!
I live in the North of England, and I can't find a single error in my area. When viewing with satellite imagery, all the map roads perfectly match the roads on the photos
If you can see roads on the satellite photos then you don't live in Lancaster (horribly low res) or Nottingham (it was obviously cloudy that day), for example.
If Samsung's defence was based on the Apple patents baing invalid because of prior art, why are they not attacking these patents directly? It may be a tough way to go but their current strategy is in trouble.
Because they have their own portfolio of obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents that might become worthless if they create any legal precedents against obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents?
If you want to see patent law cleaned up, don't expect it to come from a trial between two big patent holders.
At this point Apple is actually copying Samsung, Samsung is a full generation ahead of where the iPhone in both hardware and software is, so anything that Apple does to the iPhone is just following Samsung, I think Samsung should come back and drive Apple into the ground.
The problem with the law is that it takes so long that it's like hitting a puppy with a newspaper 3 days after it made a mess on the carpet. There was a period a few years ago when Samsung's new phones were blatantly copying the look and shape of the iPhone and the look of it's icons (especially when you look at the front-on publicity photos used in adverts). More recent products such as the SIII and Galaxy Note 10 are good examples of how you can make phones and tablets that don't look like an iDevice's long lost twin, and actually increase consumer choice when it comes to form factors. The question is, is that change evolution, or is it a response to Apple's lawsuits?
The other thing is that there seem to be two issues here - Apple vs. Android and Apple vs. the "Android Skinners". While it's pretty obvious that Android did a major U-turn from Blackberry-like to touch-only UI post- the iPhone launch, any accusation of violation depends on some rather broad and possibly obvious software patents (tap/pinch-to-zoom etc.) The first couple of Android phones out of the gate (the G1 and HTC Hero - I'm still using the latter) looked nothing like iPhones, featuring a distinctive 'chin' and trackball design - the first had a swivel-out keyboard FFS - and the UI may have been "inspired" by iPhone but you wouldn't mistake the two.
I think Samsung deserve a slapping for "skinning" their phones to look so much like iPhones (and, even if the jury finding is invalid, there was plenty of evidence from the internal memos, and memos from Google to show that was what they were doing). For one thing, this could be responsible for making Steve Jobs really see red over Android. Also, if you're begging for the verdict to be overturned, remember that the jury also threw out some of Samsung's rather broad claims about mobiles that were possibly even more absurd than Apple's, and decided that they didn't deserve a second round of royalties over cellular patents that they'd already licensed to the chip manufacturer.
Unfortunately, Apple now seems determined to go after Android itself, which seems rather futile and likely to hand the game back to Microsoft. The first consequence of getting into a pissing contest with Google has already hit home with Apple's sorry excuse for a Maps application in iOS 6.
NB: I use both iOS and Android and until the Maps debacle I'd been 50/50 whether my next phone would be an iPhone or an Android. Since Maps on my iPad is now worse than Maps on my geriatric phone I think it will be Android... if I can find one with an SD slot, an up-to-date, unskinned version of the OS and enough CPU/GPU power to be good for a couple of years, and a medium-size screen (I have a tablet - I don't want a second mini-tablet that won't fit in a regular jacket/shirt pocket). That's harder than it seems...
Google, for their part, seem to be taking their sweet time getting their Map app into the App Store, claiming "Before Christmas".
I mean, what's the holdup? Teaching Apple a Lesson?
The Maps debacle only broke last week. So far it's hitting early adopters, but as more and more people upgrade their iDevices or receive their iPhone 5s and actually try and use the Maps, this is going to grow. If I were Google I'd wait until people knew they were in trouble before springing to the rescue. They'd appreciate it more.
At least leave it until after Thanksgiving when everybody in Metropolis USA (with acceptable coverage on Apple Maps) flies home to their folks in Smallville (100 miles to the west of where it should be, in black-and-white and covered in cloud).
Alternatively... the Google Nexus phone is about due for an update.
Google maps for iPhone doesn't have turn by turn directions. Apple couldn't afford not to have that feature. It's as simple as that.
Nor could they afford to fuck up the rest of Maps' functionality just for the sake of turn-by-turn. There are turn-by-turn Apps available, free and paid, and Apple could have probably produced their own turn-by-turm App in parallel with the old Maps app (AFAIK the App itself was always written by Apple - it just used Google's mapping services/API). Quite honestly, it doesn't matter that much if turn-by-turn is separate: it needs a unique UI anyway, plus it's not much use for the millions of people with WiFi-only iPads.
We don't know what the contractual spat is between Google and Apple or whose fault it is - but since Google makes their money from web services/ad targeting (and mainly makes 'platforms' as a loss-leader to promote those services) while Apple makes its money by designing nice platforms and selling premium-priced hardware to run them, it's hard to see why they can't make a mutually beneficial deal. Someone is being a dick, and risking ruining their reputation in a misguided attempt to muscle in on the other's business.
Except it's not just innaccuracies: the first thing I did was switch to satellite view and, instead of the pretty decent satellite/ariel imgery of my local area on the previous data, I get a murky, low res, black-and-white mess, in which the local city centre is shrouded in cloud. Apart from a handful of major cities with the fancy 'flyover' feature, every where I've tried so far has cruddy satellite imagery. How are they gonna crowdsource that?
Then there's major missing functionality: no street view, which was really useful for getting an idea of what your dstination looked like from the street. No public transport - I get 'recommended' a list of Apps the only credible one (i.e. doesn't have a 1-star review and clearly covers my area) costs £50 - and probably more if I want to get coverage of Europe and N. America too (all free in the old app)..
Walking directions are there but (unlike the old map) you can't toggle between modes, but have to select transport mode from the start/end dialogue, and have to start again if you want to change mode. The fact that people have missed this and are saying that there are no walking directions suggests that someone skimped on their user testing.
By way of return, we get turn-by-turn (which I was quite happy to have as a separate App because it needs a different UI anyway, plus - unlike Maps - it's useless on a WiFi iPad) and a 'flyover' gimmick that Google Earth has offered for years. Oh, yes, and now I can rotate the map just in case I have a spatial reasoning dysfunction. Whoopie.
Yes - its hard to set up your own international mapping service, but then Apple aren't some struggling startup and they're not creating something brand new: they have more money than God, branches around the world and a clear 'minimum standard' to aim for in the old Apps. iOS is supposed to be a stable system - they've suddenly yanked major functionality and switched to significantly inferior data. Whatever the reason, that's a fail.
PS: Yes, Google may release their own App, which Apple may or may not approve, but Crapple Maps will still be the default for integration with contacts, canlendar, web etc. Apple have also undermined people's confidence in their quality control.
ike Magellians which are already in the iPhone store.
Magellan? All I see is a turn-by-turn app for iPhone (not iPad) costing £40 and covering North America. I don't live in North America, and while I visit there fairly regularly I don't generally drive there. In my experience even good turn-by-turn apps (I've used CoPilot and its quite good) are not a replacement for a Maps-type App for advance planning/exploring... and for good reason, since they should be designed to perform a single purpose (handsfree in-car directions) well. Generally, you have to buy the maps for wherever you are visiting.
The old Apple maps wasn't perfect, but offered a 'one-stop-shop' for half-decent maps, half-decent satellite imagery, streetview (useful to know what the place you're trying to find looks like) and public transport info for most of the world and was really, really useful when travelling. The new Apple maps offers really stunning imagery and gimmicky 3D for a handful of big cities (but even there, if you zoom in too far, it looks like a scene from Inception) and utterly useless crap (inaccurate maps, no 'regional' colour-coding of roads, fuzzy, black-and-white, cloud-obscured satellite images, no street view) for the rest of the world.
Sure, you can get the functionality back with a hodge-podge of third party Apps (there's already one that does Street View - but that's all it does) but it won't be integrated. Or, you can get an Android phone and have it all integrated.
You also need to consider that irradiated food has to be labeled as such and has generally been rejected by the consumer as unsafe.
I think in the post-nuclear world the choice would be between drinking fallout-laced groundwater or canned/bottled drinks. That sounds like a paper for the International Journal of Urso-Sylvanian Scatology to me.
Meanwhile, is it safe to eat the old dead guy with the floppy hat and the whip? Looks like he died of suffocation and internal injuries rather than radiation.
you can cache arbitrary map segments for offline use with google maps / nav. anyway, it smartly caches routes, so even if you lose data connection somewhere in your journey, it has the map for the route cached.
The article also acts as though every single iOS user took advantage of those features. For myself, I didn't even know that street view was on the thing until I heard some people complaining about its removal
...while, for others, Street View and public transport routing were more useful than turn-by-turn (esp. on a non-3G iPad or iTouch with no GPS rather than a phone). Also, Turn-by-turn is available via NavFree, TomTom or CoPilot whereas so far there's no clear replacement for Street View.
Whichever way you cut it, fewer features = fewer features. The iOS Maps App is now less functional than the Android Maps App. Not good.
a) iPhone's never had turn-by-turn direction built-in, this is a new feature which the Google Maps app never had.
True, although the Android version of Google Maps has had it for years, so this isn't bleeding edge. Also, turn-by-turn is not a lot of use with online maps that need a continuous internet connection so you'll end up buying TomTom or CoPilot anyway if you want that. It's also not much use on an iPad or iTouch without GPS. Public transport routing and Street View were far more useful.
b) iPhone's used to have Google Maps app built-in, this will simply be released by Google for free.
No, it had a Apple-written-App that used Google's Maps API. Google will have to write their own iOS App and get it approved for the Apple store. Hopefully, Apple will act like a grown up and not reject it in a hissy fit. Hopefully, Google won't hold back in the hope of switching people to Android. Hopefully, you'll be able to specify it as your default mapping App for integration with contacts, calendars, photos... That's a lot of hopefullys!
c) Apple is not preventing Google or anyone else to continue using the Google Maps features. It still works in the Safari browser
With no Street View and not such a nice UI as either the old iOS Maps or the Android Maps App. Try it.
The bottom line: the (Google) Maps App on my 2009 Android HTC Hero is now far more useful than the "upgraded" Maps on my iOS 6 iPad 3. OK, silly me for premature upgrading, but I'm also currently dithering between an iPhone 5 and an SIII.
I'd pretty much decided on the iPhone 5, but now that's entirely dependent on Google releasing a Maps App for it. Not a smart move by Apple.
I mean, how does Apple win here but Samsung loses on something as ambiguous as design.
Because some of the Apple design patents were not ambiguous and listed a sufficiently distinctive combination of features to make it clear that Samsung had copied the original iPhone design. Meanwhile, everybody seems to forget that the jury did chuck out the infringement claims in relation to the iPad and the iPhone 4.
My Galaxy Tab has that connector, too. Bu there is a nice little adapter Samsung sells that plugs into it to provide a USB host connector.
You mean, a bit like the nice little adaptor that Apple sells that plugs into the iPad to provide a USB host socket. To be fair, the OS doesnt support general external memory at all, so it's main purpose is loading photos from cameras, but it does work with some USB devices such as keyboards. Of course, Apple will now have to produce a new version of this...
iPad styli are just plastic fingers. Any improvement over fingers is marginal... The OS isn't 'stylus aware' so (for e.g.) resting your hand on the screen causes rogue inputs. Haven't tried a Galaxy Noteb ut it sounds interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
If I remember correctly, this form of pseudo-privatisation was forced on the government by the EU
Actually, ISTR it was forced through by a dying Tory government who believe in privatisation as a matter of principle and were desperate to get the contracts signed to tie the hands of the incoming Labour government. At the time, the Tories were hugely split over the EU, the rail privatisation was controversial, and if there had been any whiff that it was being forced by the EU they would never have got it through Parliament. Of course, the EU is a universal boogieman - although the actual problems are often in the way the government decides to interpret EU law.
If they'd really privatised the British railways, the new owners would have ripped most of them up and sold the land to developers.
Well, yes - because they would know that there is no point competing with a heavily-government-subsidised road system. You can't have taxpayer-funded roads and fully private rail in the same country.
This is the state of rail "privatisation" in the UK today.
Just to expand on that, "Privatisation" is a UK concept that seeks to combine the efficiency and value for money of government with the social responsibility and long-term vision of big business.
It's what you get if you spend so much time flip-flopping between socialist and capitalist governments that even the parties forget which is which.
You do realise this is like a report from a Saudi Arabian university proclaiming that electric vehicles will never work, right?
Really? I thought it came from the International Journal of Urso-Sylvanian Scatology.
From the carbon emission point of view, cars are only as green as the energy source that the electricity comes from. How hard can it be?
They might reduce local pollution in cities though.
Last I heard British motor ways still had speeds posted in mph. Don't ask me why.
Because although anybody doing anything important in the UK uses metric units, and a whole generation of us educated in the 70s were never even taught Imperial units (fucked if I know or care how many feet there are in a mile), the Government lost it's bottle and gave in to a bunch of market-stall holders and right-wing tabloid campaigns before consigning Imperial units to the deep, dark hole in which they belong.
At one stage, the standard size for wooden boards was 6'x4'x25mm... Sad.
Clue: a beautifully annotated source may be part of the manual, anybody who later takes over maintenance of the code will be eternally thankful to you, and if your name is Knuth then future students of programming may study it avidly - but it is not the manual.
...and yes, once, many years ago, when charged with supporting TeX at a computer centre, I mistakenly printed out the 'documentation' for TeX so I do know about what I speak. I wanted to learn to use it so I could support users, not rewrite the code.
Fortunately, Knuth is smart enough to understand this and WTFM as well, for the benefit of people who wanted to use TeX to do typesetting rather than a software design masterclass.
Sure thing. However, before I start I'd better get completely familiar with your wonderful program in order to correctly explain it's operation, so I'll just have a good read of the manu... oh, wait...
These devices are displacing regular, unrestricted computers from homes. Eventually we will start having kids grow up where the only "computer" is a crippled tablet whose primary purpose is extracting money from its owner and passive consumption.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's pretty much how the vast majority of people see and use computers today. If you replace your PC with a tablet and are happy, that's a pretty good sign that you didn't really need a PC in the first place. Those of us who actually want 'proper' PCs buy tablets 'as well as' PCs rather than 'instead of'.
Only if you agree to call iOS devices the same, which is ridiculous given the restrictions.
The problem is that MS's best gambit for breaking into the tablet market is to trade on the fact that it has Windows like a 'real PC' and proper versions of MS Office. They've already moved to unify the tablet and desktop UI in Windows 8 to a far greater extent than Apple has done.
If he isn't just trolling about Windows, and instead does want to make a point about the "value of being able to install your own software", why is there an official Minecraft client for iOS?
That did occur to me - but bear in mind that TFA consists of two tweets from Notch followed by an awful lot of extrapolation by HotHardware.com. His tweets don't mention ARM at all, just not wanting Microsoft to 'ruin the PC as an open platform'.
I think the problem occures if you see devices like tablets, phones and consoles as 'media consumption' appliances rather than general purpose computers. It's no big deal if they are closed systems (consoles have been that way for years).
The forthcoming ARM-based Windows machines may well be marketed as general purpose laptops and SFF computers.
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
So, Apple Maps doesn't have errors, just really, really strong DRM?
I can certainly see people being deterred from copying it!
it's _not_ buggy.
it's the feature set which isn't ready.
Does that mean that they haven't finished documenting the bugs to turn them into features?
I live in the North of England, and I can't find a single error in my area. When viewing with satellite imagery, all the map roads perfectly match the roads on the photos
If you can see roads on the satellite photos then you don't live in Lancaster (horribly low res) or Nottingham (it was obviously cloudy that day), for example.
If Samsung's defence was based on the Apple patents baing invalid because of prior art, why are they not attacking these patents directly? It may be a tough way to go but their current strategy is in trouble.
Because they have their own portfolio of obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents that might become worthless if they create any legal precedents against obvious, over-broad, prior-art-infested patents?
If you want to see patent law cleaned up, don't expect it to come from a trial between two big patent holders.
At this point Apple is actually copying Samsung, Samsung is a full generation ahead of where the iPhone in both hardware and software is, so anything that Apple does to the iPhone is just following Samsung, I think Samsung should come back and drive Apple into the ground.
The problem with the law is that it takes so long that it's like hitting a puppy with a newspaper 3 days after it made a mess on the carpet. There was a period a few years ago when Samsung's new phones were blatantly copying the look and shape of the iPhone and the look of it's icons (especially when you look at the front-on publicity photos used in adverts). More recent products such as the SIII and Galaxy Note 10 are good examples of how you can make phones and tablets that don't look like an iDevice's long lost twin, and actually increase consumer choice when it comes to form factors. The question is, is that change evolution, or is it a response to Apple's lawsuits?
The other thing is that there seem to be two issues here - Apple vs. Android and Apple vs. the "Android Skinners". While it's pretty obvious that Android did a major U-turn from Blackberry-like to touch-only UI post- the iPhone launch, any accusation of violation depends on some rather broad and possibly obvious software patents (tap/pinch-to-zoom etc.) The first couple of Android phones out of the gate (the G1 and HTC Hero - I'm still using the latter) looked nothing like iPhones, featuring a distinctive 'chin' and trackball design - the first had a swivel-out keyboard FFS - and the UI may have been "inspired" by iPhone but you wouldn't mistake the two.
I think Samsung deserve a slapping for "skinning" their phones to look so much like iPhones (and, even if the jury finding is invalid, there was plenty of evidence from the internal memos, and memos from Google to show that was what they were doing). For one thing, this could be responsible for making Steve Jobs really see red over Android. Also, if you're begging for the verdict to be overturned, remember that the jury also threw out some of Samsung's rather broad claims about mobiles that were possibly even more absurd than Apple's, and decided that they didn't deserve a second round of royalties over cellular patents that they'd already licensed to the chip manufacturer.
Unfortunately, Apple now seems determined to go after Android itself, which seems rather futile and likely to hand the game back to Microsoft. The first consequence of getting into a pissing contest with Google has already hit home with Apple's sorry excuse for a Maps application in iOS 6.
NB: I use both iOS and Android and until the Maps debacle I'd been 50/50 whether my next phone would be an iPhone or an Android. Since Maps on my iPad is now worse than Maps on my geriatric phone I think it will be Android... if I can find one with an SD slot, an up-to-date, unskinned version of the OS and enough CPU/GPU power to be good for a couple of years, and a medium-size screen (I have a tablet - I don't want a second mini-tablet that won't fit in a regular jacket/shirt pocket). That's harder than it seems...
Google, for their part, seem to be taking their sweet time getting their Map app into the App Store, claiming "Before Christmas".
I mean, what's the holdup? Teaching Apple a Lesson?
The Maps debacle only broke last week. So far it's hitting early adopters, but as more and more people upgrade their iDevices or receive their iPhone 5s and actually try and use the Maps, this is going to grow. If I were Google I'd wait until people knew they were in trouble before springing to the rescue. They'd appreciate it more.
At least leave it until after Thanksgiving when everybody in Metropolis USA (with acceptable coverage on Apple Maps) flies home to their folks in Smallville (100 miles to the west of where it should be, in black-and-white and covered in cloud).
Alternatively... the Google Nexus phone is about due for an update.
Google maps for iPhone doesn't have turn by turn directions. Apple couldn't afford not to have that feature. It's as simple as that.
Nor could they afford to fuck up the rest of Maps' functionality just for the sake of turn-by-turn. There are turn-by-turn Apps available, free and paid, and Apple could have probably produced their own turn-by-turm App in parallel with the old Maps app (AFAIK the App itself was always written by Apple - it just used Google's mapping services/API). Quite honestly, it doesn't matter that much if turn-by-turn is separate: it needs a unique UI anyway, plus it's not much use for the millions of people with WiFi-only iPads.
We don't know what the contractual spat is between Google and Apple or whose fault it is - but since Google makes their money from web services/ad targeting (and mainly makes 'platforms' as a loss-leader to promote those services) while Apple makes its money by designing nice platforms and selling premium-priced hardware to run them, it's hard to see why they can't make a mutually beneficial deal. Someone is being a dick, and risking ruining their reputation in a misguided attempt to muscle in on the other's business.
Except it's not just innaccuracies: the first thing I did was switch to satellite view and, instead of the pretty decent satellite/ariel imgery of my local area on the previous data, I get a murky, low res, black-and-white mess, in which the local city centre is shrouded in cloud. Apart from a handful of major cities with the fancy 'flyover' feature, every where I've tried so far has cruddy satellite imagery. How are they gonna crowdsource that?
Then there's major missing functionality: no street view, which was really useful for getting an idea of what your dstination looked like from the street. No public transport - I get 'recommended' a list of Apps the only credible one (i.e. doesn't have a 1-star review and clearly covers my area) costs £50 - and probably more if I want to get coverage of Europe and N. America too (all free in the old app)..
Walking directions are there but (unlike the old map) you can't toggle between modes, but have to select transport mode from the start/end dialogue, and have to start again if you want to change mode. The fact that people have missed this and are saying that there are no walking directions suggests that someone skimped on their user testing.
By way of return, we get turn-by-turn (which I was quite happy to have as a separate App because it needs a different UI anyway, plus - unlike Maps - it's useless on a WiFi iPad) and a 'flyover' gimmick that Google Earth has offered for years. Oh, yes, and now I can rotate the map just in case I have a spatial reasoning dysfunction. Whoopie.
Yes - its hard to set up your own international mapping service, but then Apple aren't some struggling startup and they're not creating something brand new: they have more money than God, branches around the world and a clear 'minimum standard' to aim for in the old Apps. iOS is supposed to be a stable system - they've suddenly yanked major functionality and switched to significantly inferior data. Whatever the reason, that's a fail.
PS: Yes, Google may release their own App, which Apple may or may not approve, but Crapple Maps will still be the default for integration with contacts, canlendar, web etc. Apple have also undermined people's confidence in their quality control.
ike Magellians which are already in the iPhone store.
Magellan? All I see is a turn-by-turn app for iPhone (not iPad) costing £40 and covering North America. I don't live in North America, and while I visit there fairly regularly I don't generally drive there. In my experience even good turn-by-turn apps (I've used CoPilot and its quite good) are not a replacement for a Maps-type App for advance planning/exploring... and for good reason, since they should be designed to perform a single purpose (handsfree in-car directions) well. Generally, you have to buy the maps for wherever you are visiting.
The old Apple maps wasn't perfect, but offered a 'one-stop-shop' for half-decent maps, half-decent satellite imagery, streetview (useful to know what the place you're trying to find looks like) and public transport info for most of the world and was really, really useful when travelling. The new Apple maps offers really stunning imagery and gimmicky 3D for a handful of big cities (but even there, if you zoom in too far, it looks like a scene from Inception) and utterly useless crap (inaccurate maps, no 'regional' colour-coding of roads, fuzzy, black-and-white, cloud-obscured satellite images, no street view) for the rest of the world.
Sure, you can get the functionality back with a hodge-podge of third party Apps (there's already one that does Street View - but that's all it does) but it won't be integrated. Or, you can get an Android phone and have it all integrated.
You also need to consider that irradiated food has to be labeled as such and has generally been rejected by the consumer as unsafe.
I think in the post-nuclear world the choice would be between drinking fallout-laced groundwater or canned/bottled drinks. That sounds like a paper for the International Journal of Urso-Sylvanian Scatology to me.
Meanwhile, is it safe to eat the old dead guy with the floppy hat and the whip? Looks like he died of suffocation and internal injuries rather than radiation.
you can cache arbitrary map segments for offline use with google maps / nav. anyway, it smartly caches routes, so even if you lose data connection somewhere in your journey, it has the map for the route cached.
I think I'm losing my religion. Nexus time!
The article also acts as though every single iOS user took advantage of those features. For myself, I didn't even know that street view was on the thing until I heard some people complaining about its removal
...while, for others, Street View and public transport routing were more useful than turn-by-turn (esp. on a non-3G iPad or iTouch with no GPS rather than a phone). Also, Turn-by-turn is available via NavFree, TomTom or CoPilot whereas so far there's no clear replacement for Street View.
Whichever way you cut it, fewer features = fewer features. The iOS Maps App is now less functional than the Android Maps App. Not good.
a) iPhone's never had turn-by-turn direction built-in, this is a new feature which the Google Maps app never had.
True, although the Android version of Google Maps has had it for years, so this isn't bleeding edge. Also, turn-by-turn is not a lot of use with online maps that need a continuous internet connection so you'll end up buying TomTom or CoPilot anyway if you want that. It's also not much use on an iPad or iTouch without GPS. Public transport routing and Street View were far more useful.
b) iPhone's used to have Google Maps app built-in, this will simply be released by Google for free.
No, it had a Apple-written-App that used Google's Maps API. Google will have to write their own iOS App and get it approved for the Apple store. Hopefully, Apple will act like a grown up and not reject it in a hissy fit. Hopefully, Google won't hold back in the hope of switching people to Android. Hopefully, you'll be able to specify it as your default mapping App for integration with contacts, calendars, photos... That's a lot of hopefullys!
c) Apple is not preventing Google or anyone else to continue using the Google Maps features. It still works in the Safari browser
With no Street View and not such a nice UI as either the old iOS Maps or the Android Maps App. Try it.
The bottom line: the (Google) Maps App on my 2009 Android HTC Hero is now far more useful than the "upgraded" Maps on my iOS 6 iPad 3. OK, silly me for premature upgrading, but I'm also currently dithering between an iPhone 5 and an SIII.
I'd pretty much decided on the iPhone 5, but now that's entirely dependent on Google releasing a Maps App for it. Not a smart move by Apple.
From...the...App...Store?
Dear Mr Shatner:
There... is... no..... Google... Maps..... App... in... the... App... Store!
I mean, how does Apple win here but Samsung loses on something as ambiguous as design.
Because some of the Apple design patents were not ambiguous and listed a sufficiently distinctive combination of features to make it clear that Samsung had copied the original iPhone design. Meanwhile, everybody seems to forget that the jury did chuck out the infringement claims in relation to the iPad and the iPhone 4.
My Galaxy Tab has that connector, too. Bu there is a nice little adapter Samsung sells that plugs into it to provide a USB host connector.
You mean, a bit like the nice little adaptor that Apple sells that plugs into the iPad to provide a USB host socket. To be fair, the OS doesnt support general external memory at all, so it's main purpose is loading photos from cameras, but it does work with some USB devices such as keyboards. Of course, Apple will now have to produce a new version of this...
1. Buy a stylus. Problem solved.
iPad styli are just plastic fingers. Any improvement over fingers is marginal... The OS isn't 'stylus aware' so (for e.g.) resting your hand on the screen causes rogue inputs. Haven't tried a Galaxy Noteb ut it sounds interesting.