Apple to Google Maps: ‘Get lost’ Thanks heavens it’s only for photo-tagging: Apple has tossed yet another gauntlet onto the ground in its ongoing spat with Google, dropping Google Maps out of iPhoto for iOS and opting for OpenStreetMap instead. The move was the subject of speculation for a few days before being announced on the OpenStreetMap Foundation blog …
It's really odd you missed that Apple is contravening OSM's attribution requirements - basically the data is being used illegally as it stands. From the blog post:
> "It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there."
I spent all yesterday trying to get OSM tiles to be served in a web-page.
I can't get my head around the x,y,z naming thing, I have top-level tile folders 8,9,10,11 and 12. Where am I going wrong?
var newLayer = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM("New Layer", "/home/mm/Tmp/Tiles/${z}/${x}/${y}.png", {numZoomLevels: 12});
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ and should ZoomLevels be 12 or 5 or what?
It almost seems like an invitation to try to get incorrect data added to the database. I remember years back (25-ish years ago I think) when The Times added a "noticeboard" section where readers could send in details of events that would be displayed there (sort of like an early "open source listings service") ... Private Eye then issued the challenge to their readers to see what utterly obscure events could get printed their and they offered a £5 reward for an obscure event which was bumped up to £10 if the event didn't actually exist!
As this is crowd sourced, perhaps elreg could run a competition to see if anyone could get Apples HQ renamed something less then appropriate on the maps.
Think of the fun that would result when the first Apple exec finds his press released photos were tagged as taken in Hell/Hull, Google Towers or Sinclair Research...
This is called “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” if Apple carries on like this it could actually help Android as the balance of value tips towards Google.
Apple should leave it to users to decide what they want, oh no I forgot they are an IT Dictator.
The question is whether they will allow a third party to create an App that uses Google Maps, if not they will breach EU competition law.
After all, both Garmin and TomTom have their own internal resources and so don't have to rely on Google, then there's OpenStreetMap, which is crowdsourced. Google could fire back that since there is more than one mapping repository, competition does exist, and since you don't have to use Google Maps on Android (just download an alternate mapper), consumers still have choice.
"The question is whether they will allow a third party to create an App that uses Google Maps, if not they will breach EU competition law."
there already is a third party app. It's called "TomTom App for iPhone/iPad" and users don't care whether it uses google's data or someone else's. So if you really want proper navigation be smart and BUY a proper solution.
But probably meant this: "The question is whether they will allow a third party to create a FREEWARE App that uses Google Maps"... unfortunatly that's NOT upto Apple but to the developper of that app because he would have to pay google for the aforementioned API.
If the Jesus phone tells us that the the town is now called 'Valley of the waters' as blessed by his holiness Steve Jobs - (God rest his soul until his resurrection) then the town is now called 'Valley of waters'. It is done. Amen.
Jobs says it's in the wrong place? Someone start the iDiggers(tm).
The problem with anything crowdsourced is the level of accuracy, look at wikipedia as a great example of crowdsourced stuff with lots of errors.
Your paying £600 odd quid unlocked for a smart phone and the maps option is flaky at best so that Apple dont have to pay a licence fee for a better map, thats really not a positive user experience. Its not like they cant afford to do it.
And what happens when people crowdsource some humour into the maps?
Depends on the crowd doing the sourcing.
Here's a concrete example. In my city, two years ago, a road was extended to connect to another road, creating a significant shortcut. It took Google a good six months to put it on their maps. Then, just last month, a new motorway interchange was completed and opened: another significant shortcut. It's not on Google's maps yet, but thanks to an Android GPS tracer, i was able to add it to OSM the day after it opened (I was working the day it opened).
"Depends on the crowd doing the sourcing."
When its just "another opensource crowd sourcing project" then the "crowd" probably will be people who want to be part of making the project succeed. However when it becomes the source of maps for an iconic brand then maybe lots of people will get the idea of feeding it with incorrect info "just for the lulz"
"Thanks to an Android GPS tracer, i was able to add it to OSM" .... then for militant fandroids it may almost be a requirement to take action to damage "the opposition"!
I only used an Android tracer because I have an Android phone and because it was handier than resorting to the hardware GPS logger I used three years ago--no fiddling with bluetooth or USB serial connections hooked up to third-party Java programs. It spat out GPX, KML, whatever you wanted in realtime, which I could then pass on to my computer easily.
Thats great Charles but not everone is as committed as you are and there is certainly scope for some amusing troll action.
I seem to recall that when David Carradine died his wiki page suggested he was killed by Ninja's and that Chuck Norris was too drunk to protect him, thats the level of amusement you get on the interwebs when stuff is crowdsourced, whilst its a laugh on wiki its a little different on a map application where the data needs to be accurate.
It wont be long before Apple users get to enjoy the spitting image map of the world.
Every idiot knows that proper cartography is both extremely expensive and extremely valuable and there's no cheap shortcut to providing it. Trying to provide mapping on a global scale is well outside the resources of OSM - sooner or later Apple will have to start paying for mapping if it intends to keep on providing it. The irony is that Nokia had the best navigation of any phone manufacturer, world-class mapping on your phone that didn't even need a data connection to work.
1) Users don't get choices.
2) This is Apple. See 1.
3) The Apple Experience. See 1.
Now...Jokes aside.
To my understanding this only applies to their photo app. Which will hook into their back-end for locational data. I don't think are getting rid of Google Maps, and as far as I know Apple doesn't sell a navigation service yet.
Look, Google got nearly all their mapping data from elsewhere. So if the original data is crap, then Google will just show crap too.
As to whether they get round and fix it. They will do eventually. I doubt that Google will have the thousands of support workers needed to handle the tons of fixes and tweaks and updates that need to be handled all over the world. Are they ignoring you, the small little person asking for the street in your poxy little village to be fixed? Probably. Because they have loads of other work to do and prioritise.
They ORIGINALLY got their mapping data from elsewhere. Then came their Street View project, which saw fleets of Google cars literally travel the country with scanners and cameras on full. Now they have their own homegrown pool of street data to draw on. That's why they dropped the third party around 2 1/2 years ago and used their own data instead.
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Google maps and navigation is more accurate than my Garmin GPS when it comes to directions.
Never any issue with errors in SoCal. The Garmin sometimes runs me around inefficiently while Navigation on Android takes the most efficient route every time.
I could care less what Apple does or does not do.
"The OSM data – after a quick massage by Apple – is displayed when users use iPhoto’s “locate” feature to display where the photo was shot. According to the OSM Foundation, Apple has taken a data set from 2010, which it is serving from its own infrastructure."
Great service from Apple.
Oi, iPhone owner! Buy a decent phone!
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