(Disclosure: I work for Google, but not in anything to do with maps. These opinions are my own.)
I've been to this national park before. It's a beautiful place, but not one you want to get stuck in unprepared. The temperature estimates given by the police are accurate. It gets damn hot out there. The roads are gravel at best, and often just packed dirt or sand. You can very easily get bogged, if you don't know what you are doing. I got to a point where the road became unsuitable for my car, and I had to drive backwards for nearly 100 metres to get out as there was nowhere to turn. I would be concerned for inexperienced drivers with two-wheel-drive vehicles.
Map data is serious business, and this particular case is an egregious error.
The thing I really don't understand is this seems like such a simple thing to test! Search for X in our data set vs. competitor data set: flag for review if we are not within 1km radius. Don't release until the number and scope of flags hasn't been reduced to an acceptable margin of error (don't even have to test the full data set, just need a good enough statistician to help you figure out how bad your overall data is based on your sample tested data).
2 problems here, first, can you use competitors data for comparison and making your data better? Second, calculating difference is very difficult and size of difference could be overwhelming. But first issue is the main problem.
2. Difficult how? You don't have to perform it on items that can't be automatically searched for. Then you do subtraction, square, check if you're over a kilometer.
Not if the terms of use of the "someone else" explicitly prohibit such activity. This is particularly common with local information providers (eg business/event listings).
I've been to a lot of similar places in Australia, though I'm not sure about this one.
The thing I don't get is how/why people keep going until they get stuck. Is there not a point where you think 'this doesn't look like the road to Mildura anymore' ?
Places like that national park should only be entered in a 4x4 and you need to be carrying a water supply, spare fuel and various other bits of equipment.
I know how having experienced it myself. In my case I was almost stuck in the French Alps using Google Maps on the iPhone. It had taken me off the autoroute onto a national highway that turned into a country road that eventually turned to a dirt road. The rental car's built-in GPS (which I had switched off earlier because it had given me bad directions before) actually came through this time. On the way back I used the directions one of the locals gave me to use the newly opened autoroute instead.
I used to laugh when I heard stories like this in the news. But in my case it's dark, we're all tired, in an unfamiliar location, and I'm busy looking for sign/landmark/anything to get me pointed in the right direction. And, it managed to snow (this was in May). So when you're doubting yourself and not sure what decisions to make guess who doesn't have that problem? The little 4-inch box sitting on your dashboard who is speaking with absolute authority that you need to make a right in 400-meters.
And that is why people get stuck in the places they do sometimes.
Yeah, sorry, I'll trump your tale. IOS maps got me chased out of the Baikonaur cosmodrome by the Russian Army and "special police" at 4 in the morning. The roads in Kaz are dirt tracks for thousands of miles, frequently, so getting lost is easy - particularly when the road vectors have a one-point-per-10km res.
Fortunately, they thought it was hilarious that an Englishman in an 80's Merc should rock up at their launch facility looking rather tired and confused, otherwise I wouldn't be telling you this.
All of which is true, but it leaves me wondering if Vic Police have informed Apple - seems like a far more effective way to save lives than issuing a statement that will be read by pretty much no-one...
I mean as an absolute first step, they should as a minimum report the problem by using the -in-app error notification system...
> Police have contacted Apple in relation to the issue and hope the matter is rectified promptly to ensure the safety of motorists travelling to Mildura.
Not to mention that a LOT of people have just read about the issue. Also, not to mention it, but that site is really targetted towards the Australian news media.
My point being that your comment was the one that was getting uppity. What did you think that it added to the conversation? Yes, I did miss the line in the article saying that Vic Police had reported the problem to Apple. Fair enough, I made a mistake, and the first response called me out for it. You then decided to pile on with a zero content response. I mean seriously, your comment added exactly zero to the conversation. There's no point coming off all hurt by my sarcastic rejoinder - if you want to throw stones, you have to expect them to be thrown back...
Actually, I added to it. Sorry you took it the wrong way. I merely mentioned that HN had picked it up, and that the Australian media monitors the website. I think it might have been the "not to mention it" bits I put into the post that might have been misconstrued... I guess I didn't realize they'd be seen as aggressive. That was not my intent!
None of these points had been brought up before, so I'd hardly call that a "zero content response".
Peace, I wasn't throwing stones. And I don't see how it's helpful to any conversation on HN...
Every time I turn my Garmin GPS it warns me that maps might not be correct, so it's not just Apple.
That said, Apple should have written a big fat check to a company with much better data. (I still think Apple needed their own mapping and apparently maps improve as more users use them.)
It isn't a case of buying a better dataset, Apple needs to use the good data they already have correctly. See my comment below; in this case Apple is giving co-ordinates for the center of the Shire Of Mildura (a local government region), instead of the co-ordinates for the town of Mildura. Both co-ordinates are in the free GeoNames dataset that Apple already has access to.
When iOS 6 was first available, I hit a link to a restaurant on a web site that opened Maps to the restaurant's supposed location. The location it opened actually had the restaurant's exact, correct, latitude and longitude. But Maps decided it knew better and showed me where it thought the restaurant with that name was, which was about a half mile off. If I removed the name and left the lat/lon then it was correct.
Or just search for "emergency room" and notice how, even today, it still shows tons of medical stuff but no actual emergency rooms.
That and they are using Tom Tom data for navigation. There have been 100's of stories about sat navs taking people on wrong turns, but when it's related to an iPhone you'r going to get more hits!
I think I can explain this one - if I'm right, Apple already has the correct data, but is using it incorrectly.
One of the Apple Maps data sources is GeoNames (geonames.org), a free data source available under a Creative Commons Attribution license and also used with the search on OpenStreetMap. If you search for Mildura at OpenStreetMap (openstreetmap.org) you'll get the correct location of the town, but if you scroll down the GeoNames list you'll also be offered "Mildura Shire" as a search option. Click on that, and the pointer moves to a location similar to the Apple Maps screenshot, about 70km away from the actual town. It seems that's the location that Apple's search has chosen to prioritize, over the actual town.
Mildura Shire is listed in GeoNames as a "second-order administrative division", so it's probably similar to the middle of a county or council area.
This isn't a problem with datasets or incorrect data, it's a problem with how Apple is searching & prioritizing the correct data they already have. Choosing the "town" instead of the "second-order administrative division" would be appropriate here.
For what it's worth, GeoNames already prioritizes the town of Mildura correctly in their search engine.
Something similar happens with Santa Barbara, but the results differ if you ask for driving directions or a normal search. A search for "Santa Barbara" returns the city, but if you ask for directions to "Santa Barbara" you are instead directed to a mountain range, probably because "Santa Barbara" is also the name of the county, which is fairly large and includes a lot of empty regions. (If you use "Santa Barbara, CA" instead, you deterministically get directed to the city.)
It's also a general UI problem with online maps. If you get directions to a city you'll get directions to a specific point within that city, instead of to the area that the city encompasses. It looks like the Shire of Mildura is an area that is 10,000 square kilometers. Having your map directions show that your destination is a broad swath of the country would be an easy way to tip you off that something is wrong with your directions.
It's not limited to Apple maps either - I've seen this on other consumer-grade online mapping services too. Sometimes searching for a specific location/address may default to the city that is in your search term, but if you're not paying attention you can be led astray.
You can see similar inconsistencies around Moscow. For some districts (район) in Moscow region, the name of the district on a map always sticks to the location of the main town in the district as you zoom in. Google map places the name of the district in the middle of the area it covers, so when you zoom in, it drifts away from the main town (which not always in the center of the district area). Again, seems like Apple map confuses administrative division units with towns.
Many don't line up with GeoNames data, but they do appear to be cases where a town name clashes with the name of a local council area, and Apple Maps have chosen the council area instead. Wanneroo is another example here:
http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/32038150409/wanner...
The gist for me is that you need local offices for mapping quality control. Probably the best option for apple would be to set up a mapping office inside each of their Apple stores.
Recently drove a 4,500 km trip in Australia, including near Mildura. We relied on two iPhones, one with Google Maps and one with Apple's newer version. For the most part, we relied on Google's maps and they never failed. Occasionally, we switched to iOS 6 and had a few different problems including roads simply not existing. After a while, we'd watch the iOS 6 directions just for a laugh.
Some of the stretches further East of Mildura run 100-200km without petrol stations and supplies. A number of the national parks in those areas are unmanned and irregularly visited, and there can be long periods even on sealed roads where you might not sight another car in an hour of driving. For one stretch (in and out of Mungo National Park), we stocked up on a lot of extra water as a precaution and notified family of our plans. Having an infant with us, I was very conscious of how quickly the temperature can rise once the air-con is off.
Can easily see how people might blindly follow maps/GPS and end up caught out. Especially when you're relying on cached phone maps data if your connection drops, as it does frequently out there.
Was driving in the outback with some mates, and got a flat tire. We started to repair it, and a road train went by, and actually stopped about a 1/2 mile up the road. The guy came jogging back to make sure we were ok. That is when we realised we were in the middle of nowhere, and should be more careful.
I never rely on a phone whilst traveling (driving, cycling, hiking). When driving I mostly use built in car GPS or take a secondary dash mount GPS for longer journeys.
When on feet I use one primary eTrex with maps, and always have a cheap secondary hand held GPS without the maps. Plus a paper map. And a set of extra AA batteries.
Google search, maps and other good things you have on a smartphone are nice, but it's way too unreliable to my taste. Battery life is crap, and without a connection the phone is pretty useless, unless you use a mapping app that can download map data. In which case I'd rather use a dedicated mapping device.
EDIT: Obviously all the equipment can't replace common sense. If you see you can't go any further - don't. Even if all your electronic devices tell you otherwise.
I'd never go anywhere risky without a paper map and conventional compass - I actually rarely use a GPS when out on the hill because I want to keep my navigation skills reasonably sharp. I generally only use a GPS device to confirm decisions I've already made in rather "tricky" situations.
Rangers are frustrated by having defunct roads or paths in GPS navigation systems as roads and having no way to get them removed.
I was traveling in Death Valley recently, and the span of "unpaved road" ran from "better than my driveway" to "I could try, but there is a 50-50 chance this rented jeep[1] isn't coming back."
EOM
[1] If you pass through, spend a day, rent a jeep. Don't do that to your own tires. The rental guy will tell you where to go to see the things you want to see.
Also, dear god, put a couple cases of bottled water in your car. I do that even when driving around the Bay Area (if nothing else, $0.10/bottle water vs. $1.50/bottle water at the gas station is a win), but it was weird being in SW NV seeing people with absolutely no preparations in their car.
Bottled water, a blanket or two, food that stores well, and a first aid kit. None of that takes up a lot of space, and it could easily save your life. Plus just about all of it is handy to have around for non-emergency needs anyways.
A flashlight and a reflective vest or jacket also helps. (I also have flares, a tool kit including jumper cables and patches, but that might be overkill.)
Not really, depending on where you are. I live in the pacific northwest, there's some long lonely stretches of road required to go see some of the awesome sights out here. Plus for me flares, jumper cables, and patches all store in the spare tire area anyways.
A few years ago a grass fire broke out near where we live (Upwey). Folks were up in arms because The Gummint hadn't set up nice comfortable shelters for them to drive their SUVs to post-evacuation and be waited upon at the taxpayers expense.
So: it's not just that people don't keep a bottle of water in their car. Many locals who know they're living in a fire risk area don't have enough kit in their cars - or even the right type of cars - to safely evacuate them and their loved ones for a few days should the fire risk become extreme.
We're not talking about fleeing an incoming fire (almost never a good idea), but simply going someplace else for a day as the fire risk is so great. But, apparently, many people choose not to prepare for such a simple operation.
Doesn't work as well in a car, in my experience (I have a fair bit of experience with being in the desert, cars breaking down or being destroyed, etc.)
Opening and closing the container leads to contamination, and consequently it is generally "emergency only" use, vs. something you use routinely (and thus maintain automatically). If you end up having to walk some distance, you can't really take the container comfortably, vs. throwing some bottles into whatever bag or pockets you have.
I like bottles because they fit in cupholders, and it's easy to give out bottles of water to people (e.g. a broken down other car, or someone injured, or drunk people after a party, or whatever). A case of water is $3-5 from Costco.
Those are good points. Perhaps an alternative is to have many multi-use small containers, like I have for hiking. Something's got to be better than always using one-time usage plastic bottles. Of course recycling them helps, but so few people do that.
I have a stainless water bottle (hydroflask; insulated) that I use myself for water and tea, but reusable = expensive = can't just give to people and not get back.
The energy and environmental cost of ~6-12 cases of water per year isn't really that big a deal. The extra fuel burned by carrying 5kg might be more than the cost of the water bottles.
I know the rental guy, he will most likely direct you towards things that he feels are safe for you to reach. In the last two years, he has had people more familiar with the the back country and renting the jeeps for multiple days. It took a little getting used to for him -- there is a risk involved. We spent most of a week in areas where you do not see any people.
In Death Valley, with elevations below sea level, a little bit of rain can cause standing water on roads where people don't expect it. Heck, Inyo County throws up "road closed" signs just based on the amount of rain not based on road conditions. Park rangers, county road crews, etc. in remote areas need to cater to those that really don't think about what they are getting themselves into.
Talk to Farabee (check first, I think he closes during the hottest part of summer). There is an abandoned mining site along the way to the racetrack that is nice (bring a flashlight, but someone sometimes leaves one in the shack). He'll also tell you where to stop to get AT&T coverage. Strange little spot where for some reason there is cell signal. A nice spot to check in with your family. The moving rocks are mostly down on the far end of the racetrack, don't despair if you start looking on the wrong end. Distance is a bit deceptive, you can easily walk all around the racetrack.
I sort of had this problem around the Great Salt Lake; my TomTom app gave me directions using unpaved dirt roads that were actually closed. At least there were closed, with gates, only 10 minutes into the bad route.
I think that's a bit of hyperbole: people relying 100% on a GPS/map/whatever when they should have used their heads a bit more is what got the boy in the article killed. Doesn't look safe? You're not prepared? Turn around! Don't go into places like that without a full tank of gas, plenty of water, some food, and if it's cold out, some sleeping bags/blankets.
-- You should never blindly follow consumer-level GPS. Full stop.
Especially in remote areas/national parks/widerness areas. Hate to say this is "common sense", but really it should be. It really has nothing to do with Apple, the iPhone, or iOS. Its quite the opposite, there are errors on all sorts of digitized maps. Most people are not aware or the vintage of the underlying mapping data (pre-digitization) and the variances of map-set data even amonst variant databases of "real maps".
No "real map" would have this error because of the human element: you wouldn't plot a town where there isn't one, particularly if you were also responsible for plotting the roads of the town.
This is a data processing problem. Someone's algorithm screwed up and they didn't bother to have people sanity check the results.
It happens. About 12-13 years ago, a colleague and I were driving around Ohio to document landuse near a freight railroad line. The maps we had (USGS, AAA maps and local street maps) indicated a small town in one location, but when we drove there, there was nothing, no remnants, no anything. When we got back to the office, we looked into it- turns out the town had been wiped out by a flood a few years earlier and the decision was made to disincorporate the town instead of rebuild. That town appeared on maps that were printed after it was abandoned.
Perhaps this doesn't happen anymore with more recent mapping techniques/technology, but it's not unheard of.
I've used map in the military - of Afghanistan - that were relinquish of old soviet maps. The soviet would have never got in many places of the desert and had mapped villages and roads from aerial photography. Those features would remain on our (US) maps.
As they rushed into the war, the geomatic guys responsible for making maps somehow reused the soviet maps and there was no way to assume those roads and villages didn't actually exist. So they persisted on our maps, up until 2010. Data around main areas would end up getting corrected (patrols would complain about the inaccuracy and the geo guys would update their database). Data in the desert would remain erroneous in many case.
For instance, I could simply look at a village's location on satellite imagery, such as a casual Google Map, and clearly see there was nothing there but maybe some odd looking shapes and shadows due to rock formations. So even hand-crafted maps, in military operation, almost 10 years into the war, can remain inaccurate.
Worst, maps of many military bases in North America are completely wrong as soon as you get off the few main roads listed on it.
I came to rely on satellite imagery whenever you want to go on a somehow non-urban track. It's much more reliable than using a map.
But you might put an island where there isn't one .. Google has. The difference is that Google appear to have quickly acted to remove the island when it became public knowledge that it didn't exist.
Te Manukau harbour was removed from New Zealand by Google. And that's a huge thing to get wrong. Neither Apple
nor Google have New Zealand sorted at all.
Consumer GPS is somewhat notorious for giving nonsensical directions. See the Daily Mail's endless stream of "but I was just following the satnav!" stories, for example.
I've heard of this happening before. I remember reading something by Bill Bryson, probably from the 90s, where he returned to the US to retrace some of his childhood journeys. After being used to British maps and their fantastic detail he laments the state of US maps as they miss whole towns and so forth.
But this isn't the fault of their GPS putting towns in the incorrect location, this is blindly following your GPS into a snowbank.
But yeah, your original point still stands: you should always use common sense when following GPS. In this case, it would be common sense to assume that the road to a major regional town wouldn't take you into back streets of a national park...
There is a human element in using GPS/smartphone maps too though. You can scroll to the end of the route and see if it looks sensible, rather than just blindly following it.
That part's always seemed a bit curious to me, though IANAL, so maybe they can get away with it. Can you really simultaneously: 1) advertise a product as being fit for a particular purpose; and then 2) disclaim any responsibility for making it fit for that purpose?
If it were labeled something like, "novelty product, not to be used for actual navigation", I could see that, but GPS manufacturers position their systems as ones you should actually use for navigation.
If it were labeled something like, "novelty product, not to be used for actual navigation"
-- This is a great point.
I'd almost prefer this to having to click the damn button/s evertime. =D It would also reduce the dissapointment when finding out how crap many (even expensive) maps are in the field. I know know to cross reference (especially topo's), pick the best ones, and cary a spare to diversify just in case.
Perhaps a lawyer will chime in, but on the technical point: its pretty common for people selling product X to limit their exposure to $=price of X (max). So this technique (a limitation of liability resulting from <use> of the product beyond replacement) is fairly common. I don't think magellan wants to get sued when your galleon of gold bullion gets lost at sea...etc. That kind of thing.
That is exactly what makers of new not-yet-illegal drugs ("bath salts") do, put a "not for human consumption" label on it, that way they don't have to be worried about FDA at all.
GPS navigation devices and software could be marketed "geography teaching tools" or something like that "not for navigation"
In many countries there are strict quality requirements for teaching tools too, so it will be safer to mark maps as art and write that any resemblance to real places/organisations is purely coincidental.
Legally speaking (student, IANAL), product safety and advertising are separate areas of legislation. Advertising doesn't do much to the deal you enter into when you buy something, whereas the papers you sign are usually taken at close to face value.
Not in Australia. If you buy a product, then open it and the terms of service are in the pack, then that's called a shrink wrap agreement. You can get a refund. Same principle with apps I would think. Of course, getting a refund from the App Store...
You might be right about that, but plenty of people are still going to follow the directions from these devices no matter what. That appears to be the intended purpose of the devices, too. Therefore Apple, Google, Nokia need to be responsive in addressing any issues like this.
Interestingly enough, today I was having a conversation about whether or not Maps had made any real improvements. You know, the kind that might compel one to finally upgrade to iOS6 or even consider upgrading to an iPhone 5. I asked a few people and nearly all of them expressed concern about being able to trust Maps. News like this doesn't make one feel better at all.
Frankly, I don't understand Apple's decision in the context of the idea of being customer-focused. In other words, if you, as an organization, make decisions for the benefit of your customers --or, at the very least not to their detriment-- how can you justify pushing out Maps and not keeping Google Maps on there?
OK, I get it. It would have cost more. A lot more. Fine. That's your problem. Pay Google for another five years exactly because you care about your customers. At the same time, put out your own Maps app and --funny enough-- compete on the merits of the app, not the hype.
If in five years you can't turn Maps into an app that people will choose over Google Maps, then, well, why are you in the mapping business in the first place?
Agreed. It's especially egregious because this functionality can potentially endanger the lives of customers while opening up liability suits (not a lawyer, just guessing).
Anyone know how much it would've cost to keep google maps?
The only way for Maps to get better is for people to report errors. If they release it alongside Google's version and no one uses it, no one will report errors, so it would never get better, and so on.
Just two years ago I had Google Maps send me a few miles in the wrong direction and plant me in the middle of an unfinished housing development when I wanted to go to a shopping mall. It was a mistake, I reported it, and it was eventually fixed. It's not as bad as getting stranded in the middle of a national park, but
a) It should be obvious that the middle of a national park isn't where a town is supposed to be, and
b) If it's not obvious because you are a tourist, maybe you shouldn't be blindly trusting your Maps app and only having enough gas to make it to town?
This is the worlds most valuable company with billions of dollars in the bank. You spend some of that money to make sure that things work. They aren't a start-up, and they have a very real brand to protect. That's the thing, this debacle was the very first time that devout Apple users en-masse looked at Android and went "Android does maps flat out better".
That's going to have real long-term consequences I'm not sure Apple even understands yet. For instance look at how quickly the tech crowd embraced Google now on the iPhone? The hole in Apple's armor makes it easier for people to accept that other things are also better. These things really can snowball, and when you're protecting a luxury brand that's a really serious issue.
You simply can't screw up what might be the most universally used feature (maps) on the entire phone. It's the one thing, next to maybe the dialer and messaging, that people interact with more than anything else. Screwing that up makes all of your polish, usability, and "coolness" irrelevant. Instead of arrogantly shoving crap out the door and expecting everyone to love it just because, maybe that's the time to invest that money and do the quality control you have to do to make it work. Hire 10,000 people to drive all over the world making sure you got it right. Google does something close to that (those Google maps cars improve the accuracy of their data ten-fold), and if you want to compete you should too.
Now you have to put the genie back in the bottle and hope the damage isn't long-lasting. It's probably going to be even more expensive and I'm not sure you can.
I'm not really sure what damage you're talking about, aside from posts from random people online badmouthing Maps. iPhone and iPad sales are still strong. Maps have gotten significantly better in just a few months (although I never saw a problem with it myself.) Everyone seems happy aside from people driving into an Australian desert they've never been to with no supplies— oh, and folks who need transit directions.
You can't expect any company to hire 10,000 people to work N amount of hours/day/years just so you can polish your app 5% more when that same polish can come from users submitting error reports. That's just nonsense.
Everyone seems happy aside from people driving into an Australian desert they've never been to with no supplies— oh, and folks who need transit directions.
Just to clarify, these people weren't driving into the desert, just into a town. The GPS took them 70 kilometres away and left them in a position unable to find a way out.
Anecdotal I know, but I have a chum - a big, big Apple fan - who has so far refused to upgrade to iOS 6 because of the maps issues. He also expected to buy the iPhone 5, but when it arrived it just didn't seem worth it. He's even given my SGS III appreciative looks. All this stuff is cumulative. Apple sales won't collapse overnight, but it is eating away at goodwill.
I'm in exactly that boat. I was planning on buying the iPhone 5 but when I heard about the maps problem it stopped me cold. I depend on Google Maps now for a lot of things like finding metro stops not to mention that I also use it when traveling abroad.
I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering going the Android route, especially since I think Google's OS and services are improving much more rapidly than Apple's.
Everyone I've spoken with an iPhone to has had problems with Apple's maps and wishes they would put Google's maps back in. Most of Britain is affected in one way or another, even just to the point of missing a lot of detail that we previously took for granted.
I'm shocked apple hasn't made the "pin is at incorrect location" more prominent.
A very popular dining and shopping center in Atlanta shows up erroneously on my quiet side street. I flag down people in cars when I see they're confused and tell them about how to report the errors. Nobody knows it's there. 1.5 months of doing this and it's still not fixed.
In contrast when I reported my address at the wrong end of the street ( over a year ago ) Google fixed it in a week AND sent me a confirmation email. I want my Google maps back on iOS6!
Has there been a credible source that the decision to get rid of Google Maps has in fact been made by Apple?
I always thought it had been Google's decision, but I never found a source confirming either.
Eric Schmidt has publicly said it wasn't Google's decision but that leaves open the question of whether they tried to force onerous conditions on Apple or not.
The map failure is just another example of where apple's design principle cannot be blindly applied to every product. Apple's top-down approach on software design is expected to fail on Maps. Maps put hard requirement on data, bottom data, nothing to do with your leader's vision. Apple's way out of this is not to engage user input to add missing data or correct data errors --OSM tried that for years, the most accurate data still comes from semi-professional survey-er.
Look at other companies that does map, google map started out using Tele Atlas, NavTeq serves yahoo, bing and mapquest. Let's face it, spatial data cost money to collect and even more costly to update/maintain. Nevteq and Tele Atlas are gigantic companies for serving basic spatial data for a reason.
I guess apple didn't do sufficient data QA before saying, "hell yeah we are going with OSM where every big player is going with commercial data."
Without a solid baseline data, any fancy pants software development would just evaporate in air.
I have to say though, the GUI for apple map and functionality has very high usability. Apple just need to adapt a different mindset when dealing with data-dependent applications.
(disclaimer: I am a PhD student in Geography with CS background, did my share of processing spatial data for the last 8 years)
sorry, just saying that I actually work in the field, not just a bystander saying apple is evil. I would be very happy if OSM in the end works(which I believe it will, just need at least a couple of more years); I would also be happy if apple map were able to fix the problem--which, as I pointed out, is the under-emphasized data issue.
> I guess apple didn't do sufficient data QA before saying
Do you have this on good authority? (seeing your disclaimer and all) Because the way I understood it, they have all the data from TomTom and that seems to work fine - so it seems the problem is definitely not the data but what they are doing with it...? In this case some people in here stated it is an issue with search priorities, the phone suggests a different destination with a very similar name.
As a former Victorian now living in the US, I think it's apt to point out that 46 degrees Celsius is 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 kilometers is 43.495 miles.
Unless you really think the police were being precise to within a meter (Google says .001 mile =~ 1.6 meters), it's "about 115F" and "about 40 miles", respectively. (Got a bit unlucky on the miles, I'd also consider "about 45".)
I heard similar stories about Google Maps a few years ago, people getting stuck in US desert/parks because the GPS is incorrect (and also reception wasn't good back then, but that might have improved by now maybe).
At least this story is hitting the HN front page. Because the park rangers were hitting Google's traditionally deaf customer service ears (which must have been super-frustrating because people had already died and/or gotten into life-threatening situations).
I lost the link to that article, sorry. If I happen upon it, I'll post it here.
On the one hand I suppose it's people's own fault for venturing into dangerous terrain unprepared. But on the other hand, what's the use of having GPS Maps when you don't know when it's trustworthy or not? Great effort by OpenStreetMap (read below) of cross-checking their own maps for consistency with competitor maps, is at least a step in the right direction.
I had to go to the main emergency room in Oslo last week. iOS6 couldn't find it, or even the correct street. Looking at the map in detail later, it didn't even have a building at the correct location. I was furious.
Yep; on the first try. Unfortunately, I was trying to drive my son (who had broken his arm) and the Google driving directions would only display the list mode, rather than on the map. I ended up finding the building on Google Maps, then dropping a pin on iOS Maps, and using the turn-by-turn.
Why didn't you call an ambulance? When I worked for the redcross during civil service I always wondered why we have patients with nose bleed or some other bubu to drive in and then we take back some guy with a broken leg or life threatning pneumonia that got in himself.
Actually, my big mistake was not keeping the taxi I'd taken from work (normally, I take the tram & train) to pick him up at school.
He was in pain, but not anything I'd consider taking the ambulance for (and the driving distance from his school to the emergency room is ~2-3 km). I shouldn't have gotten my car, and instead just have dumped him into the taxi. Norway covers a share of the taxi fare when it's for medical reasons.
Maybe this is a stupid question but being from Europe and having worked as a paramedic I just have to ask... aren't there any emergency services or ambulances available to rush your son to the ER? I know over here, in cities they are sporting response-times of 5 to 10 minutes to your doorstep, 24/7.
Yes, of course, but see reply down-thread. I was called by the school, so the school nurse had made an assessment that the situation was non-critical. Since ambulances are a limited resource, why take it away from someone who could be in critical condition?
About a year, after living in Bergen for 10. But only my second trip to Storgata 40, and if you've actually driven there, you'd know that the signage is pretty terrible, and -- along with the construction -- it's pretty non-intuitive to get to the entrance.
I'm intrigued that the police let this happen five times, and then put out a press release. After the second time in two weeks, I would have put up a sign: "This is not the road to Mildura. Go back and turn left at the highway."
So, no, it's not good that apple's map data is inaccurate. But the title might be misleading.
The bottom line is if you're driving into a wilderness area like a national park, you should not be depending on your cell phone for your own safety. One of the first things they tell you if you read the pamphlet outside of a hiking area is: do not depend on you cell phone.
So sure, the map data is inaccurate. The more dangerous thing about this is that your battery has a finite lifespan. Also your signal is not guaranteed.
You need to bring water, you need to bring supplies. You need to bring warm clothing.
Maybe it wasn't obvious to you from the article, but the issue here is that the maps direct you into a national park instead of Mildura, a nice little Victorian town.
These people getting lost are not intending to drive "into a wilderness area like a national park", but were led into one by mistaken data.
Yes, you could presume that the signs you were going the wrong way might be self evident after a little while, but if someone had literally no idea where Mildura was then they could easily end up in the middle of this national park assuming their iPhone was simply taking them the long way 'round. As they have no other choice they keep following the maps until they get to where they have been directed, only to find themselves in the middle of nowhere with no help and no reception.
This is a serious problem, and the map data needs to be fixed.
I grew up in regional NSW in Australia, and Google would repeatedly offer a route to Sydney through weird choices of mountain roads. If I did not know better, I might have taken those roads simply because I knew no other way to get to Sydney. I never took those roads, but I know people who did, and fortunately they were only out a couple of extra hours on a long trip.
Sydney is very well known and signposted city, but for Mildura, a town of just over 30000 people in regional Victoria, the fact that it is not as well known and is more remote lends credibility to the idea that unknowing people who have come to rely on technology (and understandably so, technology is great!) might be misled by rogue data.
- sidenote - We constantly rely on technology, and come to depend on it. This is a good thing. Only when technology is unreliable do we need to carry 'backups'. It would be weird to carry a pencil around just in case your pen broke (edit: in most situations, that is; going into space is not a normal situation, so it would not be weird to carry a pencil in addition to a pen there). Digital maps are not yet at their pinnacle of development, nor are they completely reliable, however that is no reason not to use them exclusively if they prove reliable enough for the job at hand.
The town was itself was placed in the wrong place. These people could easily have thought they were going in the right direction, and if they had concerns about the roads they were taking what choices would they have?
They could have studied the map. Maybe this is a 'scenic route' and there were better roads to take that the app just missed? If they looked at the map they might have been able to figure out a better way to go. In any case, the data was wrong, so they still wouldn't get to the correct location! If they were very clever, they might note the confluence of highways where the town actually lies, and navigate themselves there.
They might have asked someone for directions, but this was next to impossible where they were, especially as there was no mobile reception.
Perhaps they took a wrong turn, so they might decide to turn around and go back. Go back where? Surely if they just keep going the way the map says they will get to the right place? The only evidence against going the way that they were was that it was through a national park, and even that is not unheard of. In fact, there are a number of highways that go through national parks.
The very fact that (at least) 5 separate groups have been waylaid speaks to the importance of this issue.
The bottom line is if you're driving into a wilderness area like a national park, you should not be depending on your cell phone for your own safety
Mildura isn't a wilderness area, it's just a town in regional Victoria.
The point is that this thing is taking people saying they want to go to Mildura (which is a town, not a wilderness area or a national park) and sending them into a national park with no infrastructure.
These aren't people who have decided to "go hiking", they are just visiting a regional town centre.
It is quite common for tourists to get into trouble here in Australia due to the differences in climate etc too.
FYI, when you travel make sure to bring extra clothes, water and food. Australia is a massive land mass and it is hard to fathom for people form a lot of countries that it can be a very harsh place for the unprepared.
It looks like this issue was caused by Apple mistakenly marking the centre of Local Government Areas as 'cities', in Australia at least. See example at http://imgur.com/qlciM for an example from Perth; Cambridge and Vincent aren't suburbs, and the others are in the wrong spot (Joondalup CBD is on the wrong side of the freeway)
A more glaring issue with Apple's map of Perth to my mind is that Fremantle Harbour has been completely filled in. See the bottom left of this Google map for comparison: http://i.imgur.com/GsmxQ.jpg
I live in Australia, and while I am not a fan of Apple or their products,I have to say that I'm surprised anyone in their right mind would go bush with just one map. Electronic or paper, maps have errors. Don't bet your life otherwise.
Mildura isn't really going bush, depending on where you're coming from. I'd (before this article) be pretty comfortable following phone directions from say Bendigo to Mildura, which should just be a straight run down Calder Hwy. It seems pretty reasonable to use it to find a route between two cities/towns, which I've done in WA a few times with Google Maps.
Though I'll admit I've never used turn by turn for that, rather just got the broad strokes. Is this a problem with turn by turn directions, or is Mildura actually in the wrong place on ios6 maps?
EDIT: Took a look, seems like Mildura is actually marked at the wrong location, which is significantly worse imo.
Google Maps on my iPhone has tried to send me down roads buried in several feet of snow (no winter maintenance road) before. Switching back to Google Maps doesn't make this sort of problem magically go away.
Sorry if I wasn't entirely clear before. The road wasn't buried in snow because we just had a blizzard, the road was buried because it has no winter maintenance. The road should not have come up as a passable route. For all intents and purposes, it does not exist.
That's an interesting issue I've never considered, living in an area where most roads are maintained, and if they are not they can still be driven on. Are there any digital map services that do take that into account when providing possible routes?
There are a few road in France (some very famous Tour de France "col") that I know become part of a ski resort in winter time. Sure the road is indeed still there but for several months a year you need a pair of ski, a pass and the skill to manage a red track.
The important point to note though, is that independent of the quality of the map in your GPS, there is plenty of indication along the road. Turn by turn indication is great, but indication on the road itself should take precedence.
I don't know what makes somebody follow blindly a magical widget in a way they would never follow local people giving them indication. ( I had quite often the situation of friends following the GPS instead of my indication, despite having lived in the area for 30+ years. )
Seasonal road is a legend item on paper maps. The user would be expected, given the climate, to understand the closed season to be winter. In other climates it might be that the road is not passable due to spring flooding.
If a paper map has that feature Google maps should have it as well. It of course can have more features and _can_ be integrated with some kind of a weather + traffic warning system. But it doesn't have to. The way I interpreted the original comment was that the road had snow on it and user was baffled how come Google Maps didn't know about it.
I updated my post to note that it was a no winter maintenance road. I originally took some liberties assuming that most people would recognize it as such, but I guess those who don't live in extreme climates may not be familiar with them.
Is it Apple that not letting it into the App Store? I thought that this was just speculation? The reason maps changed was, as I understood it, not just due to Apple, as google wouldn't give access to 'the good data' - vector based maps.
Exactly. This is really Apple's loss at this point. As more stories like these accumulate, there will be a good number of users who will think twice before jumping in and buying an Apple device.
Getting stuck in a bad part of a city, getting lost on some unpaved road at night in a national park, is many people's nightmare. At this point many don't even carry paper maps or if they did they probably couldn't use it effectively.
Can't help noticing how those who've never had problems with Apple Maps are usually people from the US. The iPhone is sold in other parts of the world too, you know.
Actually I've noticed quite the opposite. At least in the more populated parts of Europe, in my experience Apple Maps does fine and in some cases does better than Google Maps (in my home city of Berlin I find Apple Maps to have been an improvement, primarily in the department of Apple Maps "knowing what it doesn't know" where as Google seems to guess and be wrong. Also, transit. Google is terrible for transit in Europe).
I recently used Apple Maps to roadtrip through Germany and Austria, and it worked without a single hiccup. This summer I had the beta running in Switzerland and it was fine.
In the darker corners of Europe, well, I'll just say in Belgrade iOS maps literally had nothing but a pin. No streets at all. So it seems wildly dependent on where you are.
Out of couriosity, I navigated the Kalahari with both a map and a TomTom. I was quite surprised to find that the paths were quite accurate - but shifted by roughly 5 kms. So I could use the maps, but not the navigation capabilities of the system at all.
Even before the iOS 6 maps debacle, relying on GPS for guidance in places like National Parks was pretty dumb. There are multiple stories of people getting stranded (and even dying) when relying on maps for places like Death Valley. Often times, even if one is in a suitable vehicle, knowledge of the environment, what to do in case of a problem, etc. are essential necessities in the case of anything going wrong.
A buddy and I travel the back country of Death Valley regularly and the stories we have heard, the vehicles we have seen trying to go places they shouldn't, etc. are just amazing. At a certain point, however, common sense and personal responsibility need to be considered.
I love my iPhone, MBP, iPad, and how generally apple has raised the bar on software quality. But the maps app is truly intolerable - it's the most unusable thing apple released since ping, maybe even more so.
Was driving from SF to Big Sur some time back. Google totally tried to take me off road from HW 1 [turn right. turn right now], and then calmly stated "There is no route to your destination".
Google Maps is frequently broken around the thinly-populated Seattle metro area. I've filed bug after bug, to no avail; in the end, I stopped using it altogether. It cannot handle the I90 express lanes in either direction; getting directions to somewhere on Mercer Island from Seattle when you're on the express lanes eastbound gets a route to Bellevue, turn around, and come back. No, that's OK, I'll take one of the Mercer Island exits, thank you.
Furthermore, the transit integration is so broken as to be useless. Asking for a route from Kirkland to the Seattle federal building gives you a bus route to downtown Kirkland (the post office, actually). The POIs in that area are AFU.
Oddly enough Google Maps got me lost before, a couple of times. Lets stop assuming Google Maps was all that and a bag of chips, it did have issues at times.
I think it's because I've done long journeys powered by digital maps but I always made sure that there was an agreement level between two, or that it looked sane on a tried and tested road map. As good as they've gotten for the most part they're still prone to bugs, or to lose signal. Paper maps are a car essential still.
Map Maker is not really wiki-style. At least for me wiki means that you get your data out in a more of less raw form. With Map Maker you add vector data and get pictures in return. A drastic reduction in usability to me. You cannot export your data from Map Maker. You only feed Google with it.
You should always have a road atlas in your car. Batteries run out and network connections may not be reliable, you will always have access to a paper map if you have one. If you have an atlas you can always navigate yourself out of any problem (diversions, heavy traffic, accidents closing roads etc.) and they are a good sanity check of whatever your GPS or map app is telling you. Better yet, check your route in the atlas before you set out and you will know your route better, and be able to react quicker to any unforeseen problems.
The new maps drop a major landmark on my street in Atlanta. We went from dead quiet to non-stop traffic. Not good when people are driving 30+ MPH staring at their phones in confusion.
It's been 1.5 months since we've had everyone we can think of submit the problem. Still not fixed.
What does it take for Apple to actually "fix" an incorrect pin location and label?
occasionally during whiteout snowstorms I glance at my GPS more as moral support that I am indeed on a road
In which case you need to be aware that GPS is generally only accurate to within tens of meters (sometimes worse), and your satnav will pin you to to the road it thinks you should be on, even if your computed position disagrees (as you will have noticed if you've ever taken a different route to that which your satnav is recommending).
"Anyone travelling to Mildura or other locations within Victoria should rely on other forms of mapping until this matter is rectified. Like Google Maps."
Yes, changing the title would help clarify the content of the article. At first I thought the police had an issue with the concept of the iOS 6 mapping feature (e.g. privacy issues). Despite the terseness of the article, the issue engenders mixed feelings of sympathy and bemusement.
Well, towns don't change location. So if it was merely outdated, at worst it wouldn't be on the map. If the map was wrong then there's no difference, but you should be asking why your map of choice shows a town 70km away from where it actually is.
Not even a little accurate. I live in the great white north. Most Canadians live within 300km of the 49th parallel. Once we take out this southern belt, it means you have a country the size of the United States with about 10 million people, so the distance between towns is much more than it used to be. Now with -40 winters, between temporary roads used for oil rigs, frozen lakes in which we use as roads, derelict towns that are now ghost towns due to everyone migrating to the city, defunct reserves, etc... A paper map made 10 years ago can get you killed just as easy as an iOS, Google, or Tom Tom one can. We frequently lose people to the cold all the time. My Dad lost one of his best friends and his wife last year, and they weren't using a GPS.
Without this degenerating into an argument over semantics, by that line of reasoning any police officer would simply be a 'police officer in a small neighbourhood police station' no matter how large the police body is. The warning was issued by Victoria Police members and is on the Victoria Police website, I don't see there being any issue with its credibility.
There is no problem with the credibility of the article - the problem is with the sensationalist/linkbaiting headline. Most people are going to assume upon reading the title that 'Police' refers to something a bit more substantial than the police force of Mildura, Australia.
Why? Lest people mistakenly think that the headline is referring to the organization of all police on the globe ever?
When you see a news article about "Police say [whatever]" it is assumed that a particular organization is saying it. There isn't a global organization of police for it to be confused with.
When we refer to "police" in Australia it's 99% of the time state police. Federal police make up the rest as that typically won't come up in conversation as they deal with international issues.
Australian Police is infinitely less misleading and more accurate than simply saying 'police'. I have to assume all of these downvotes I've received are from Australians or other foreigners making some kind of anti-American point. The fact remains - this is a US owned website and a topic about a US company. Saying 'Police' gives the impression it is American police - when it isn't.
HN has an international audience. Assuming that $THING defaults to $US_VERSION_OF_THING is suboptimal. It's silly to do it here, it's silly to do it with dates; it's silly to do it with anything.
If you'd said that explicit declaration of nationality is better because it makes things clearer and easier to grok then you'd have got upvotes. But because you assumed US police and attacked the title as link baity you got downvotes.
On the contrary, "Police" NOS no more means "American Police" than ".com" means "US commercial website". Similarly, from an international perspective, Apple is an Irish company. If you don't believe me, ask your local tax authority.
I've been to this national park before. It's a beautiful place, but not one you want to get stuck in unprepared. The temperature estimates given by the police are accurate. It gets damn hot out there. The roads are gravel at best, and often just packed dirt or sand. You can very easily get bogged, if you don't know what you are doing. I got to a point where the road became unsuitable for my car, and I had to drive backwards for nearly 100 metres to get out as there was nowhere to turn. I would be concerned for inexperienced drivers with two-wheel-drive vehicles.
Map data is serious business, and this particular case is an egregious error.