Google maps app is BACK on iPhones, fanbois spared death Google's maps app for iPhones, iPads and iPods is back less than three months after Apple booted it out of the iOS platform. In that period, the Cupertino giant publicly apologised for replacing its rival's mapping application with its own shoddy satnav-like software; the top exec behind Apple's crap map app, Scott Forstall, …
That's actually the first thing I'm going to check - start wireshark and etherape and see what exactly it gets up - blocked out 3G (in a radius of about 10m, grin) so it'll have to use a path I can check..
Yes, I like Google apps, but I don't like their price ("free" isn't "free" if it violates my privacy)
"Google can now resume data collection."
These comments are so narrow minded. Do you not think Nectar/Clubcard et al don't collect and analyse your habits? Why else do they give you free things for using them? How about Oyster analysing your travel patterns? Or even Amazon analysing your shopping patterns? In a more positive way, Credit Card companies monitor your spending habits to avoid fraud.
If you don't want to be monitored, get rid of all your technology, leave your bank and live in the Antarctic. Otherwise, shut up and sit down.
"Don't use a clubcard".
Wow.... So Tesco know I buy fish. Big deal. I do. And for the privilige of sharing that information with them they gave me enough vouchers for a new iPhone5 this year, and a 4gs last year.
I get free phones, they get to know what I eat. I consider myself the winner in that exchange.
Seriously, theres privacy and theres privacy. Life more pleasant if you live somewhere in the middle of the paranoia spectrum.
On an unrelated note, have Apple pulled a blinder here ? 18 months ago they were paying Google billions for the maps. Now they're paying them nothing for an improved version. Some might think thats a bit of business genius. Google obviously get our data, but they got that before. Google maps is so much better than the iOS abomination that I would have happily paid good money for it.
A real blinder, it only cost them their reputation, made them a laughing stock in the usually apple loving media, and drew criticism from their previously fanatical users. Brilliant move.
(Apple should know the benefit of having things work ootb, else they wouldn't have hyped things like voice recognition and panorama camera, things previously available as apps anyway.)
As noted above, there's paranoia and paranoia..
I use Nectar in sainsburys. Unfortunately, the only info they are likely to glean from that is what I like to eat (which is usually way too many bags of crisps). I use Oyster for my annual travelcard. So, unfortunately, it is tied to my name and address. Thankfully, i mainly use my travelcard to get to/from work and go out in the evenings. Seeing as I don't scan my oyster card everywhere I go though, they can only tie me down to the nearest station. I don't always scan in and out there either. As such, assuming TFL know I am doing anything, they only know that I scanned my card at a given station, or got on a specific bus (they don't even offer the option of scanning your card when you get off buses, so they have no way of knowing when I do).
I also use Amazon. With both credit and debit cards. Yes, they can track what I buy to my address. Seeing as what I buy from Amazon is mostly books and CDs/DVDs, I am actually not really bothered about that. So, they know I like Star Trek. So what? A lot of people know I like it.
And yes, I know my bank does it. Thankfully, if I am buying anything I don't want my bank to know about, I can buy it with cash (even going so far as to withdraw it from an ATM nowhere near where I am buying it). Similarly, if I buy something in a shop, I can pay for it in cash, without using a loyalty card assuming I object to the card operators tracking me,
Google is different. Not only do they profile searches, which is bad enough, but any page with a google ad reports it's contents to google when a user signed in to google uses it. This info goes on to be stored apparently to enable google to serve more relevant ads. They also go through your email looking for keywords, as well as logging any searches. Thanks to the Streetview slurp, Google can also often localise this info down to maybe one or two homes, and they probably have photos of them.
Searches which may well contain a lot of personal information (particularly if you like porn, or have some sort of medical condition you don't want people to know about). A lot more personal than the fact you buy Right Guard, occasionally buy a certain kind of film or book and have to travel to and from London Bridge every day.
So, Google Fanboi, I would suggest you try and research what Google actually do with your data (maybe try and work out why it's difficult to get a clear answer out of them as well), or take your own advice.
"Do you not think Nectar/Clubcard et al don't collect and analyse your habits?"
It's better than that. Stores track your purchases without reward cards - the card you pay with is an Id source for them. Store all your history against this Id and attempt to link different payment methods together in future. i.e. if you order online and get it delivered to your house - do this with different cards and those Ids can all be linked back to you and your address. Move house and pay with an existing card online and they can all be relinked etc. There is a whole industry around it. They profile you for future purchases. There's a piece on the internet somewhere about Target in the US and the lengths of analysis they go to.
. Do you not think Nectar/Clubcard et al don't collect and analyse your habits?
Well done. Now you know why I don't have store cards. Hell, I even pay my Oyster card in cash when I spend a week in London (even though it takes but a moment to associate the card ID with my face on the surveillance videos, which I haven't bothered with buying tickets - but they still don't have an *identity* to go with it). I know data is collected everywhere, but that doesn't mean I should help them as well.
Australia doesn't have a lock on bad mapping data -- took me years to convince Google, TeleAtlas and Navtech to stop sending people to our house via the mudpit that masquerades as the middle portion of our road. You can only travel it end-to-end if you have an off-road vehicle!
Now that I have the data correct in the three major data suppliers' databases, I just have to wait until it gets rolled out to the in-vehicle systems.
//tired of getting calls from delivery folks unable to find my house
"took me years to convince Google, TeleAtlas and Navtech to stop sending people to our house via the mudpit that masquerades as the middle portion of our road."
I still see people trying to head from here to a village due South, via an old track that is still legally a toll road. Unfortunately, the farmer who owns it can't be arsed maintaining it, so keeps the gate shut.
It proved amusing once, at some ungodly hour on a Winter morning, when I was woken by the sound of a screaming engine. Some chavs had nicked a car, presumably with some kind of satnav in it. Now, the junction off to the track I mentioned is further up the street. However, these fools were being chased by the cops and missed their turn. Not even realising this street is a dead end, they hit the very gentle curve near the bottom of the street, fast enough for me to hear the tyres begin to screech and complain about lack of traction. Wouldn't surprise me if they were doing near enough a ton at that point.
Then they saw the end of the road.
What I heard then was the longest ever skidding sound as this car proceeded to slide the last two or three hundred yards down the road sideways. There was an ominous silence for about a second as they careened off the tarmac, ploughed (literally, like digging trenches in the lawn) through someone's front garden, and then a short crunch as the car impacted the fence just before a 5 foot drop into woodland. I managed to gaze bleary-eyed out of the window to see what the fuss was about, just as the police came down at a much more leisurely, relaxed pace to arrest the joyriders.
Faulty mapping data: An awesome anti-theft device.
That's the whole point - Apple probably pay NOTHING for Google to provide an app whereas when it was embedded they did. iPhone users now have two options for mapping and it will help push Google to improve their product further - some more up to date satellite mapping would be nice as where I live it must be well over 4 years old (the Apple sat pics are 12-18 months).
And actually, so have iOS users - MapQuest has been available for free for some years now, and on the last trip I made with some Marketing droids, it performed better than the Android app you are so proud of. That is, it actually got us to the *intended* destination, rather than some random location a couple of miles away in a bad part of town... That reminds me, the Marketing droid that was in charge of that trip still owes me for saving his bacon, I'm off to collect.
> it performed better than the Android app you are so proud of. That is, it actually got us to the *intended* destination, rather than some random location a couple of miles away in a bad part of town.
Perhaps you could provide details of the destination it got so wrong so that we can let google know.
And somehow, miraculously, Google have managed to make voice guided TBT navigation available on the older kit too - something Apple insist can't be done (no voice recog/Siri or TBT on their Maps app on an iPhone 4, only 4S and 5).
There has been speculation that Google weren't able to update their map app as frequently as they'd like when it was embedded in iOS - I think this app goes some way to support that theory.
The only part of the old Maps app that belonged to Google was the data. The whole front end was written by Apple, but they were limited by their license from Google (no turn-by-turn, no caching etc). For this data Apple were paying what is thought to be a substantial sum of money.
Google weren't offering good terms to renew the contract so Apple went their own way. Google have now got their act together and produced a free app that contains stuff that they wouldn't let Apple do. There's now lots of competition between mapping apps. It looks to me like the winner is the consumer.
"There has been speculation that Google weren't able to update their map app as frequently as they'd like when it was embedded in iOS - I think this app goes some way to support that theory."
Speculation from misguided souls - Google have nothing to do with the development of the Maps app and never have done, the current version, prior version and in fact ALL versions of the Maps app has been developed by Apple. Google merely provided the Maps tiles via the third party API that they make available to all developers.
Exactly the same with YouTube as well.
Who knows? The best result would be that Apple improve their offering considerably, which given the low starting point isn't hard, and this drives Google to improve Google Nav as well.
Unfortunately doubtless there'll be usual bull shit of US software patents and other nonsense so they can't do this and will instead fight over relatively meaningless UI features and functions that are available everywhere else and have existed as extensive prior art.
Apple did it because embedding Google maps was costing them a fortune AND they wanted to give their developers more options to use the mapping data - i.e. more than their Google maps license would allow. Apple can keep developing Apple maps and people who had an issue can use Google maps - but in reality they always could with a 10 second 'save to an icon'.
Storm in a teacup that probably only a few percent of people genuinely cared about.
"Storm in a teacup that probably only a few percent of people genuinely cared about"
Obviously an anecdote doesn't equal proof, but the number of non-techy (and, well, techy) mates I've heard mention Apple Maps being broken, and discussing alternatives either to the maps app or to the iPhone, would suggest otherwise.
In fact Google have probably saved a big chunk of Apple's iPhone-selling business by releasing this, and relatively promptly considering they supposedly only knew Google Maps was getting dumped from IOS when everyone else did.
"Obviously an anecdote doesn't equal proof, but the number of non-techy (and, well, techy) mates I've heard mention Apple Maps being broken, and discussing alternatives either to the maps app or to the iPhone, would suggest otherwise."
... because it's been all over the news. Did you also ask them how many thought Google Maps was perfect?
The 'antennagate' issue was also all over the news but in reality almost all phones suffer the same type of issue and the telling statistic was 'how many were returned' - the answer 'almost none'.
It's human nature to either follow the crowd - so when they hear there is a problem - they believe there is a problem (whether they experienced it or not) and also that people who have a problem moan loudly whereas people who are happy say nothing (bad service you tell 20 people - good service you tell 1).
Personally I had no issues with Apple Maps and in some ways found it superior - I am glad to have BOTH on my iPhone.
"So whats apples response? just stay quiet and slowly work on making maps better? or give up and pull the plug before wasting many more millions on a useless app?"
Give 'em 6 months and they'll reskin Google maps under the name iFind or something and then sue Google for nicking the map app idea.
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Yep, it's a totally stupid story. Before apple maps came out, the reg had a story practically every other week about satnavs doing the same exact thing. It's just flamebait.
The fact is, the underlying data is pretty terrible, since it only gets corrected by actually USING it. Roads that show in ordnance survey maps (or your local equivalent) but are misclassified as more drivable than they really are, or flat out don't exist anymore, are endemic to mapping data in remote areas. Until some yahoo tries to drive it, that information is never going to be corrected.
I look forward to impressive efforts being mounted to troll the inevitable Apple street view cars. Having perfected their art on Google cars, can we anticipate a new level of creativity? This new art form is deserving of awards, and I for one will be eagerly waiting for someone else to scan millions of Apple street view images to find new, outrageous images to provide me with a brief moment of entertainment.
Well, why buy an overpriced lumbering pretence at being a modern car when you can have the real thing? Astra OPC anyone? They had a pale grey one on steel wheels for winter with not too much stick-on wings at my local dealer, took a while to figure out what it was exactly, I knew it looked kinda nice, but... ;)
I actually really wanted an original XJS until I discovered that sadly, they were all crap. Apart from Tom Walkinshaw's racing ones. Which probably weren''t using the newer HE heads as those would have been a B***rd to tune.
and removed the tick from 'track the crap out of me, whilst feeding in me adverts' and i didnt log in to my google account.
As for the outback navigation problems, it should read...
'I nearly died because my family has bred a little too closely, so i am dumb ass country bumpkin, who cannot follow signs or common sense '
>You do realise the current Apple Maps already uses TomTom data
It's worse - Tom Tom has been updating it's PoI to aging TeleAtlas data - which prior to acquistion used it's datasharing agreement with Google Maps to acquire PoI data. Kind of hard to find a charging point or free wifi, but Little Chefs still roam freely across the nation.
The TomTom app is a drain on the battery. It is the only app I have which heats up my iPhone. On hot summer days this can lead to a heat warning message and the phone shuts down.
The Apple app lacks some basic functionality like display of speed and also lacks more advanced functionality like re-routing based on traffic, road-blocks,etc. The dismal maps are not part of the Apple maps app.
So many people are and have been complaining about the iOS maps app. There is little wrong (apart from maybe the missing street view) with the app itself, it's the map data that is screwy, and i have already noticed an improvement with that since it was released, probably due to the large amount of people using it, and reporting errors.
It's nice to have Google maps back, however, having had a bit of a look around, i can see that (much like any other mapping service) it is far from perfect. The most notable is that the area in which one of my friends lives is a new build. On the iOS map, the map still shows the old information, but the satellite photos are up to date. in google maps, the map, and the photos are out of date, but the street view data is much more current.
There are also features missing from the Google app, that may never appear, such as being able to search for a location based on stored contact information. From my point of view, it's going to be a lot easier for Apple to improve their offering, by improving the quality of their maps, than it is for Google to improve theirs by improving the core function of their app.
I tried it this morning - was not 5 minutes away from home when I get to a roundabout - the main map display tells me to turn right and take the 3rd exit - but the quick view display at the top tells me to go straight across. Thankfully it was local to me so I knew which one was correct. But I think I'll stick to Apple Maps when I'm somewhere unfamiliar as so far I've had no issues with that.
Isn't the "quick view" at the top the preview that tells you what you're supposed to do at the turn after the next? I seem to remember there was a feature like that and it had confused me quite a bit initially. I haven't used any Nav software for a while though so perhaps I'm talking out of my arse.
That's what I thought, but it's telling me I'm 50 feet from the roundabout in question.
The "next turn" thing is a tiny little box under the quick. Not really viewable with a quick glance, you need to take your eyes off the road and concentrate on the screen. I guess that's not a problem on American interstates, but tricky on twisty, windy English country lanes
Being the big kid that I am.... I dare you all (El Reg reader are usually up for a giggle...) to submit a review into the App Store and make a reference to the Mountain View chocolate factory and Oompa Loompa's - I wonder how many will be published and I wonder how many other. I simply said "Great work by the Oompa Loompa's in the Mountain View chocolate factory, glad to see it is back"
Stupid... Yes. Board... Yes - Lets play with Google and Apple!
To be fair it's probably not THAT hard to lure people into a deadly desert from many parts of Australia.
Plus, was it deadly because they didn't bring any water or Cheetos or something? Or more because their car was a pile of ....
OK I should go read the original luring article :)
Plus, as a final bizarre warning from history, if you have a Chevrolet/Daewoo Lacetti or a similar "elderly" GM 16V and it sounds ore than a little odd at the front end, FFS change the timing belt and water pump! Before you go into deserts!
Actually same applies to almost ANYTHING from any maker that runs a belt not a timing chain. Some belt-driven ones are "anti-interference" like Mazda Miata/MX-5 but most aren't......
As an example, read item 47.
The principal issue is that the moment you have created an account at Google, you have effectively given them permission to not only gather data on you, but use such data in a manner that is so badly documented that Google is in trouble with the EU Justice Art 29 Working Group on privacy, and has received a letter signed by 27 (yes, twenty seven) different countries asking them to ensure their privacy policy becomes compliant with EU law (which is isn't, not by a long shot).
More specifically, the mapping app records what places you look up, and it can track where you are - all of which gets recorded for whatever use Google finds for it. Basically, you carry a stalker in your pocket if you log in to a Google account..
You will hear a lot of blabla from people claiming that Apple does the same, but there is one, rather crucial difference: Apple doesn't generate revenue from user data, it's a hardware company with services, whereas Google exclusively makes its income from data derived from a somewhat overly creative approach to user privacy..
How soon before Apple removes it and all other map apps because they violate the Apple ToS? The ToS that Apple makes all developers agree to is that they will not replicate any built-in function/feature of the phone. Apple has removed previous apps that were previously allowed but when Apple added that functionality in, all completing apps were removed.
The fact is, Apple only allowed it because their app is crap, but when they sort it out I expect to see Google, Nokia, TomTom, Garmin, etc. all to see their apps removed from the store.
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