Apple’s new Maps won’t be as good, according to Waze CEO

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mercurial

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Apple has just released its iOS 6 to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and probably the most talked about feature is the new Maps app.

It sheds Google’s mapping technology and moves to a TomTom partnership with a pinch of Siri navigation – but some think that this was the unfavorable move. Read on to get the scoop.

Business Insider got to talk with Waze CEO Noam Bardin, who had some thoughts to share about Apple’s shift in mapping.

“Their bet is that they can, within two years, build a product that will compete with Google’s ten years of experience in both search and maps, and navigation, and all of these different things together.”

“Apple went out and partnered with the weakest player [TomTom]… They’re now coming out with the lowest, weakest data set and they’re competing against Google, which has the highest data set.”

True that Apple’s gander is a big one. Google has truly vested a lot of time and effort into perfecting its Maps app, which is widely considered the most thorough and venue-rich of the lot.

If you’re wondering how Bardin fits into the picture, Waze is credited as contributing to Apple’s new mapping engine, although not to the same degree as TomTom.

What Mr. Bardin doesn’t take into consideration is the fact that by using Google Maps on iOS, Apple was making their rival’s service a whole lot better without getting an equal benefit in return. Google will surely lose millions of users that were up until yesterday using and improving Google Maps day in and day out. That’s why I’m sure that Google will soon release a Maps app on iOS, much like it did with the YouTube app, which got sacked by Apple.

And we shouldn’t forget Apple’s capacity as a huge player in the mobile space to quickly improve its Maps, which are just in their first couple of hours of prime time.
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Source
 
Lets talk this time next year and see how Apple Maps is fairing. I am sure as they start pulling in more user data the maps will improve.
 
Yea I said already I'm not sure that this was the best move. Might have been the only move though. I've no doubt they'll improve it in time. But I don't see why there must be all these competing mapping services - data collection would benefit from aggregating and time.
 
cerebus said:
Yea I said already I'm not sure that this was the best move. Might have been the only move though. I've no doubt they'll improve it in time. But I don't see why there must be all these competing mapping services - data collection would benefit from aggregating and time.
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They have sub $100 billion in their bank. It would take some decent percentage of that to reindex all the '3D flyovers' that they failed with (some places are covered by clouds). Regardless of the feature-set that Apple has, they are effectively killing consumers and developers while they're busy playing catch-up.
Think of it this way: as a developer in SA I can't leverage map data as I well as previously with Google Maps. What's the use of pointing an user to a place that's blank, or worse has an imaginary river/park?

I do agree that it might have been their only move. They could have stuck with OSM or struck some deal with Nokia while they *secretively* built the next 'killer' map service. Taking things to public opinion is not good PR sometimes
 
“Apple went out and partnered with the weakest player [TomTom]… They’re now coming out with the lowest, weakest data set and they’re competing against Google, which has the highest data set.”
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But Apple also partnered with Waze according to the article. :confused:
 
Johannesburg and Cape Town seem to be well mapped from what I can tell. I think another issue is that TomTom only has a presence in certain countries.
 
bwana said:
But Apple also partnered with Waze according to the article. :confused:
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That explains the mess ups....

Openstreetmaps + TomTom + Waze (You bound to get a crap load of data that will overlap with incorrect info)

Problem is cleaning it up, and that can only come from crowd-sourcing ie: people using it on their devices, unless Apple hire actual people to drive all the roads and checking all the data manually.
 
Guantanamo said:
Lets talk this time next year and see how Apple Maps is fairing. I am sure as they start pulling in more user data the maps will improve.
Click to expand...

I imagine an Apple PR disaster if people take the wrong turns with these maps, made an accident, get lost, etc.....
 
Hahahaha, from a company that downloaded openstreetmaps and then gave nothing back :-)
 
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