So you all heard the jokes about Apple Maps right?
- Thread starter Gilgamesh
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I think someone else said it, but Apple Maps seems to work well as a driving and mapping tool when you already know where you're going. It sucks greatly when it comes to locating something unknown. I've had bad luck here in Houston, in which the Yelp DB is fleshed out quite well.
I've used it in 3 states and had no issues either.
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You know, I've had basically zero problems with the new app. Today, in fact, I compared the new Google Maps app to the native app, and in terms of user experience, as usual, Apple wins hands down. I was trying to get directions from a location different from the one I was at (my wife's location) to the restaurant we were meeting at for lunch. It was nonintuitive to do this on the google app, and I could not find the means to share the directions. What's more, it was Google that failed when it came to predicting what I was looking for. It was also google maps that *gasp* put the restaurant in the wrong location. With Apple Maps, the workflow was simple: search, click arrow for directions, oh wow, a "from here" option, click, search (finds wife's location and restaurant with 3-5 keystrokes--google required whole words), click the immediately obvious "share this location", which pops up a selection of sharing mechanisms.
This is where Apple wins. It's the answer to "why" when apple-haters ask. There was a chance the directions were off (they weren't), but the experience was so intuitive. It worked exactly the way I expected it to work, hardware and software. Just like my 8 year old powerbook. Just like my MacBook Pro. All on this solid, nearly indestructible brick that's been through hell and back (for the phone and both laptops). My dell? It creaked and groaned since the day I bought it just picking it up. I have to pay panasonic an assload of money for the same durability. That's the stuff I pay for. I'm not paying for the apple logo. I'm paying for the FreeBSD and POSIX compatibility, and the gestalt experience. I don't fricking care when a Samsung commercial shows me something there are like 50 apps for on the app store, or brags about greater horsepower there's roughly a 99.5% chance I'll never ever tap into.
GasBandit
Staff member
I think the problem is you expected to do stuff with your finger. When I need to go somewhere, I just tap the mic button (or vlingo on my old droid phone) and say "Navigate to best buy" or whatever. Then the only finger touching I need to do after that is if I want an alternate route due to traffic or something, and that's an obvious button right there on the screen.
Really, with the voice recognition stuff available for android these days, I barely even type any more. It's all voice control and text to speech.
Really, with the voice recognition stuff available for android these days, I barely even type any more. It's all voice control and text to speech.
I can't believe this wasn't posted in this thread before: http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/
Apple Maps had a friend (apple fanboy, I seem to want to add for entirely schadenfreudesque reasons) get his car completely stuck in mud, where iOS was telling him a friend's house was. Of course, it wasn't even a road, but his iPhone told him to go that way, DAMMIT! Oh man, that was a fun week.
Apple Maps had a friend (apple fanboy, I seem to want to add for entirely schadenfreudesque reasons) get his car completely stuck in mud, where iOS was telling him a friend's house was. Of course, it wasn't even a road, but his iPhone told him to go that way, DAMMIT! Oh man, that was a fun week.
I have to say, now that I've used the Google Maps app, that strictly as a map, it does what I need it to do. As a GPS/Nav app, it's atrocious. Especially around Seattle, with all of the freeway junctions, overpasses, and underpasses. I used it this past weekend to find a friend's new house in a portion of the city where I always get lost. Getting to the house wasn't so bad, except that just at the end of the instructions when I needed to know what street to turn onto, another of my friends called me and apparently superseded the direction giving abilities of the app, so I had to drive around in circles for a while waiting for the app to realize it was still running. Getting home was a whole 'nother story. While I really didn't need the directions home, I still had the app on and wanted to test its abilities. Every time the freeway that I was on (I-5, where I was supposed to be) crossed over another road, the app promptly activated my ear piece and told me to turn right, onto the ramp. Literally every single time. Apparently it had trouble determining which road I was on and was constantly attempting to get me back up onto I-5 from the road below, which I had obviously teleported down to.
fade
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I do not like voice control. It doesn't work too well in a small office, either. Unless you want to be rude, I guess. On top of that, I have a rare last name that none of the voice recognition software seems to recognize.
GasBandit
Staff member
I thought you were in a car, though. Trying to navigate.
Necronic
Staff member
Why people would use a GPS/route planner over a simple map completely confounds me. Give me a map and I can figure out where to go and go there with confidence. Give me a route planner and I will put my hands into a machine that gives me confusing last second directions and be concerned the entire time that I am going the wrong way.
That's because a lot of people have no idea how to interpret an address and read a map. It's a dying skill.
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I've never used a maps app that didn't have a map on it that I double check before leaving. For both aforementioned apps, the map with all the streets is right there. Hell, Google maps even includes the bike trails, which my Houston map does not. I've found it really useful for extended bike treks.
I'm pretty sure Necronic is referring to a simple paper map *gasp... a printed map!* I know I was.
Google maps figures everything out for you. You do not need to know anything about maps to use google maps.
figmentPez
Staff member
- I can carry a phone with me at all times. Carrying a sectional map isn't nearly as handy.
- My phone lets me look up businesses much quicker than a phone book.
- Digital maps can be more up-to-date than an old sectional map.
- "The map is not the territory" -Alfred Korzybski. A map can't tell me where I am if there aren't any street signs, which is the case in some areas of Houston. A GPS can tell me roughly where I am, even if I don't recognize any landmarks.
- A GPS can give voice directions. Unless you've got a passenger reading the map for you, this can be very useful in unfamiliar territory.
- A good GPS doesn't give last second directions and can be used to view the entire trip in advance.
- Google Street View can show me what parking is like at a given location, and where to look for the correct entrance for a specific business. Try knowing that in advance from a sectional map. Want to talk last second directions? Try turning into a parking lot off of a 50+ mph feeder road where two entrances in 15 feet don't connect to the same lots.
So so many reasons. figmentPez hit just a few of them out of the park. Can't understand why a person uses a cell phone instead of a landline rotary phone either?
When I'm driving by myself, or when I have time to print a map from Google before leaving the house/office/etc., I much prefer to just do a quick few minutes study of a paper map and be done with it. If I'm driving with my wife (who honestly doesn't know her right from her left), and I haven't had time to study my route, I use a route planner or GPS. However, seeing how the Google Maps App handled I-5 with onramp spaghetti, I'll just stick to studying the route before hand from now on.
GasBandit
Staff member
I like not having to take my eyes off the road. "In a quarter mile, turn left onto Main Street" etc is nice. I've never had a problem with google navigation telling me to turn too late. If anything, it gets me paranoid with its "In one mile/half mile/quarter mile/200 feet" notifications so that I get in the lane way early.
Note, I was not saying that a paper map was "better". I was saying that reading them is a dying skill that many people nowadays don't even understand the basics of.
fade
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yeah, I know he was. I was just saying that i never saw a gps app that didn't allow you to do both. In fact, I think it'd be odd not to check the map screen before you took off.
Necronic
Staff member
I should have been clear. I was referring to a digital map. Every time I get my gf to look up directions to something she gives me the "step-by-step" GPS answer. All I want is the damned map. If you can't get somewhere in 4-5 turns there is something seriously wrong with the place you are going.
Some of us have broken senses of direction, bro. I seriously would not be able to go ANYWHERE, even in my own hometown, besides maybe one or 2 places, without Google Maps. I'm not even exaggerating. I'm one of those "turn three lefts and gets lost" kinda guys. I have NO sense of direction WHATSOEVER. I've relied on a pretty good visual memory my entire life, but that means that things like painting a house that I used for reference makes me feel completely and utterly lost.
I also have no spatial perception to speak of, and I'm sure those things are related. Like the part of the brain that handles direction also handles spatial perception and mine is atrophied or something.
Guess I'm too old school for these parts lol. My kids are going to learn how to read a map damn it!
Teach them how to write letters while you're at it. Oh and make sure their online experience starts with Dial-Up.
I will teach them to write letters, tie proper knots, use a compass and read maps and plenty of other things that people nowadays consider obsolete/beneath them. I don't want my kids to be the useless morons I see around nowadays when their battery is dead in their phone.
How about you just teach them to charge their battery?
Did you hear that plane btw?
I'm going to assume you're not the outdoorsy type. I enjoy dirtbiking, hiking, fishing, hunting and cross country skiing and you don't really get reception in the places that we go. I'll be teaching the kids those things too as they get older and phones aren't very useful out there.
Teach them to just charge their battery. You're so clever. How witty.
Not sure what you're getting at with the plane comment.
By then, there will be reception out there, coverage will be everywhere. Obviously.
I think that would be the case
Sometimes it still freaks me out that I have a detailed map of the ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD right here in my hand.
For example, entirely randomly, I just scrolled to a city called Beira in southern Mozambique, and zoomed in until it told me there's a golf course next to a telegraph office and meteorological observatory next to a river called Rio Chiveve and a road called Capitaes De Sofala.
And then, with just a few flicks of my finger, I'm now staring at an island called Niulakita, part of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.
This thing is scary man.
For example, entirely randomly, I just scrolled to a city called Beira in southern Mozambique, and zoomed in until it told me there's a golf course next to a telegraph office and meteorological observatory next to a river called Rio Chiveve and a road called Capitaes De Sofala.
And then, with just a few flicks of my finger, I'm now staring at an island called Niulakita, part of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.
This thing is scary man.
I can never tell if you're being sarcastic or not. There most certainly will NOT be cell coverage in remote areas of the rocky mountains any time soon. Especially since cell signals are line of sight propagation based.
I'm also bemused by the fact that you're implying I'm an idiot for wanting to know and teach my kids the fundamentals behind the technology we have today.
I MISS U
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