Yahoo Chief: 'We Have Never Been a Search Company' - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/yahoo-ceo-we-have-never-been-a-search-company/?ref=technology <comment><USER2> Finally, someone there said it.

They own many of the top content properties on the internet and they are very profitable (not as profitable as they could be, but pretty darn profitable). Sure they could have bought Google, Facebook, or any of the other companies that ended up being the top of search or social networking, but they didn't. So it makes sense to play in the games where they're successful.

It's like saying Michael Phelps isn't also a great athlete because he can't beat Usain Bolt in the 100 meter. Or vice versa. Google's content properties universally have failed to make a dent against Yahoo's strengths. So Google can't be the Yahoo of content and Yahoo can't be the Google of search. We should be okay with that.

At some point the market needs to stop judging them on what they might have been, and see what they actually are and might become.

<comment><USER3> Seems like Yahoo! is starting to regain some goodwill. Maybe developers will also start to realise how insanely awesome their APIs are.

<http://developer.yahoo.com/everything.html>

<comment><USER4> I've always wondered why jQuery (and prototype) are the default javascript libraries for many people. The YUI library is fast, featureful, and maintained by some of the best JS devs in the industry (sorry resig, but I think Crockford knows a little bit more about JS than you).

Is it because Yahoo! isn't a "cool" company? Is it because RoR is so tightly coupled to prototype? Is it because they had kind of an unwieldy namespace before they updated that?

I find their XHR, event, and dom manipulation interfaces much easier to work with than prototype or jQuery - these are good until you need to do some serious heavy lifting. I've had several instances where I had to create XHRs manually because prototype just didn't give me the access I needed.

<comment><USER5> Crockford doesn't work on YUI - but he does work at Yahoo. I will fully concede that he may know more about ECMAScript than me - but I will happily challenge him on JavaScript + DOM any day :-)

Quite seriously though, since jQuery and YUI came out at nearly the same time back in early 2006 - I feel that it has to do with the simplicity of the jQuery API and the active community that's grown around jQuery. YUI has always had better documentation (even though jQuery's has been good), so that can't be it.

A couple points:

\- You can always do more complicated work with simple APIs but it's fundamentally harder to do simple work with more complex APIs.

\- YUI didn't promote external plugins or development communities. For example the ExtJS library that grew up based upon YUI was left to stagnate and grow on its own rather than become part of YUI itself. If the YUI team worked to bring Jack Slocum on board YUI would be in a much more dominant position than what it is now.

\- YUI has been closed to outside contributions for most of its life. No bug tracker, no outside patches, etc. It's only recently that they've truly Open Sourced both the code and the process surrounding the library.

I do find it to be odd, as well - YUI really should be more popular than it is. It's well written, well documented, and is well maintained. Even after all of that its market share is shrinking.

[http://google.com/trends?q=jquery+javascript%2C+yui+javascri...](http://google.com/trends?q=jquery+javascript%2C+yui+javascript)

<comment><USER6> I've been building checkers to learn jquery. firebug enabled + red moves first:

<http://notsquidnote.com/checkers/checkers.html>

<comment><USER7> Have you considered posting it to a site like <http://refactormycode.com/> ? You're more likely to get feedback there. I posted once and I got good feedback right away.

<http://refactormycode.com/codes/826-monthly-calendar-library>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, at the very minimum, Carol Bartz has framed the conversation around how Yahoo's doing and being measured differently.

Earlier, it was Google's % share of searches vs Yahoo's: a rather stark and quantitative loss every quarter and every year. Now, I'm not quite sure what it is but at the very least it is not that.

<comment><USER2> I look at this statement as the moment when Steve Jobs brought Bill Gates on screen and announced that Microsoft was not the enemy anymore. It freed the company from the market share game where they were perpetually losers and allowed them to just create great products for their users.

Changing the story changed their destiny.

I knew of a profitable print publication that had a readership of about 90,000 people in the 1980's. But management saw other publications in similarly sized niches that had 100,000. They fought tooth and nail to get those extra 10,000 readers and spent incredible amounts of money to get them. But it actually pushed them into the red.

There's something very powerful about focusing on your real market and doing what you're good at.

Yahoo now has a clear goal of becoming and acting like the number 1 content company on the web. I think this clarity will bring positive results.

<comment><USER7> Apple's arrangement allowed them to eventually come back around and start competing with Microsoft. (If you don't think so, look at the popularity of Webkit on phones and within Google.) I don't think Yahoo!'s arrangement will help them do that. I've got to ask, who's Yahoo!'s enemy? SmugMug? I agree with 37signals and Jeff Atwood that it's a good idea to have one. If you're going to expand, who's market share are you going to take?

<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Have_an_Enemy.php>

The nice thing about the Apple-Microsoft deal is that everyone still knew that Microsoft was Apple's enemy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We have always been at war with Eurasia.

<comment><USER2> I think it would be wrong to say that Yahoo has always been a search company. It's also a mistake to say they've never competed and tried to build their own search product. But they really never have been a "search company" in the way that Google is.

They are probably the number two internet property in terms of page views. If google has 70% of the search market and Yahoo has less than 20%, Yahoo couldn't possibly be competitive in terms of page views if they really were primarily in the search business.

<comment><USER9> Actually, the problem is that they thought they WERE a search company, in the way that Google is.

My point is, instead, the ongoing bizarre otherworldly logic of their management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To me, search specifically is something you don't want to give an impression you aren't good at. There are more types of "search" than just keyword search. There's ambient findability, which Flickr does and Bing is trying to do as well. Showing related items could gain from knowing about search. Is the Bing team going to dig deep into Flickr or is Flickr going to need to continue to be good at search? (And in the case of Flickr, there's plenty of room for improvement.)

I'm trying to think of a good analogy. Anyone want to chime in?

</comment><comment><USER10> Man I remember back when Yahoo Search was powered by Google.

</comment><comment><USER11> This article reads like a parody:

       +"I am a very viable number," she said.

       +The guard, um, encouraged Brad Stone and me to treat Ms. Bartz with respect. "She's my girl." (???)

Not to mention them not mentioning trashing Geocities.

</comment><comment><USER12> We have always been at war with Oceania?

</comment><comment><USER13> Did Yahoo not begin as a search portal?

<comment><USER14> No. it began as a subject catalog - Art, building, cooking, dining... In fact when it first launched it was literally just one page of links, then it became a page of links to pages of links, and so forth. <http://www.dmoz.org/> (open directory) is the closest thing to what Yahoo used to be like and probably helped to inspire Wikipedia too.

back then search was possible but excruciatingly slow - you could use other net services like WAIS or Archie but it was the sort of thing you'd leave running the background. Plus those services were terminal based so navigation was tedious if you were on dial-up. Having all that stuff classified and aggregated on one website was a godsend. The amazing part is that in its early incarnation it was so simple _anyone_ could have done it. Literally, just links and descriptors. I've often wondered if attitudes of and towards Jerry Yang have something to do with the extreme simplicity of how Yahoo started out, and the 'right place right time' versus any definable innovation.

I never, ever thought of Yahoo as a search engine - if I did a search there, I assumed I was searching their internal catalog rather than the whole internet. Lycos and Altavista were the search engines of choice, while Yahoo was the homepage where I went for aggregated content. Then one day I tried Google and never went back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really? ...</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone have experience with PayPal Claims for services? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a web designer (new account but old member) and I've got a sticky situation relating to PayPal that I'd like to get other's feedback on.
THE SHORT VERSION
A client commissions services, paid 1/2 deposit through PayPal and within 6 days changed his mind and requested a refund on the basis that I wasn't responsive (untrue) and wasn't meeting my deadlines (again, untrue.) By the time they requested a refund, I had already done most of the work and had spent about 2/3 of the deposit on purchasing software needed for the project. The sticky part is that the project was so small I didn't create a contract. They filed a dispute, we went back and forth and eventually they escalated to a PayPal claim. In my response to the claim, I included a link to a PDF that contains all emails exchanged, that clearly shows that I'm not missing my deadlines and the longest gap between any email he sent and my response was about 20 hours. In addition, my last email to him contains a link to a working prototype of the website.
Anyone else have any experience with PayPal claims when they apply to services instead of shippable products?
THE LONG VERSION
I was commissioned by someone to build a website that was a membership-only job board that used WordPress and a few plugins to add the membership and job board functionality.
This happened on Day 1 (a sunday). On that day, the client paid a 1/2 deposit of $750 for the project using PayPal. After he paid, I sent him an email saying I'd have a prototype running by mid-end of the coming week.
I started creating a wireframe on Tuesday but soon realized that it would be better to setup a real site, add the plugins and go from there.
On Wednesday I bought the WordPress plugins (costing me $500) and started setting up the website. I got most of the functionality working but not all.
On Thursday I got an email from the client asking how the project was going. However, I had a lot going on that day so I wasn't able to respond on Thursday. I intended on emailing him but it just didn't happen so I figured I'd just email him on Friday to let him know that instead of a prototype, I'd have a working, functional version running by Monday.
On Friday around mid-day, I got an email from PayPal saying the client had filed a dispute. I emailed him immediately saying that I decided not to create screenshots but instead decided to create a working version immediately and that I'd have a real site by Monday. I figured it would put him at ease and calm things down.
Instead, he insisted on a refund claiming that I hadn't kept to my own deadline. This isn't true as I had clearly stated the project would take "3-4 weeks" (I put that in quotes as those were my exact words.) I replied back using the PayPal dispute system in a very courteous and professional manner, trying kindly to work out the situation as I've already done most of the work and want to get paid the 2nd half of the project.
After a number of messages going back and forth, mostly restating the same things, he escalated it to a claim. I was going to clean up the site tomorrow and send it to him but instead I sent him an email today with a link to it (in case his claim that I promised something this week holds any water.)
As my response to the claim, I included all my reasons for not offering the refund and created a PDF of all our email exchanges, uploaded it online and included the url as part of the response.
What it seems like to me is that they might have found someone cheaper to do the project (there are always bottom feeders) and they are looking for a way to get of the project while keeping their deposit. I would have refunded the project if he had simply said he had changed his mind and wanted to work out a way to get out of the project. Instead, he elected to make it look like I haven't served him well and his tone as well as approach just doesn't sit right with me. When combined with the fact that I've spent my money to make the project come together as well as my time, I've decided not to willingly refund the money.
What I'm wondering is what other's experience are with PayPal claims, ideally when relating to services. Shippable projects are so clear cut. It was either shipped or wasn't. This seems like there is a lot of gray area. I'm just trying to get my head around what to expect. <comment><USER2> Expect Paypal to take your money. Paypal basically screws sellers when there is no physical deliverable. Bizarrely, you would have a much better chance of keeping your money if you FedEx overnighted the client an empty envelope and then could give Paypal that tracking number.</comment>


Apple and Google's awkward mobile marriage: Why Apple needs Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/apple_and_googles_awkward_mobile_marriage_aapl_goog

<comment><USER2> What struck me the most, when reading this article, is how thoroughly Microsoft has lost in the mobile space. Aside from mobile phones needing to interact with Exchange Server, Microsoft is increasingly irrelevant in the mobile space. At best they'll get to develop apps for the Android or iPhone platforms, but that must be a huge ego blow for a company that's used to being the platform-maker and not just another software vendor.

<comment><USER3> Market Share Q4 2007:

Windows Mobile: 12% iPhone OS: 7%

With years of past sales of Windows Mobile the overall market share gap between MS and Apple must be huge.

<comment><USER2> My point exaactly. How long has Microsoft been trying to corner the mobile OS market? Even with an entrenched desktop monopoly and control of pretty much every corporate mail server ever, the best they could do was 12%? Both the iPhone and Android are individually more exciting than anything Microsoft has done in mobile in the last 5 years. In combination, they are a perfect storm. Windows Mobile is dead.

(The iPhone release this month includes support for Exchange Server. Expect their numbers vis-à-vis Windows Mobile to skyrocket.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google gets the importance of mapping, and location will be the crux of mobile data aggregation going forward. That being said, I don't think Apple _doesn't_ get mapping. But I think only they can execute it smoothly and relevantly. Google, if given all the data in the world would still execute the UI like an engineer. That's great for the technorati, not so great for the mass. Apple gets UI and leans on Google for the back-end. Google still gets data, therfore: Google is still happy.

No need for a merger, and the fact that Android is still vaporwear shows that Apple has the advantage and doesn't need Google by any means. Google needs Apple to execute the front-end.

<comment><USER5> You don't think that all of Google's web properties have good UI's? At minimum they are certainly quite clean and non-intimidating, which is the opposite of what I think you would expect from a company which "executed [their] UI like an engineer"

In terms of mobile I would agree that the Android demos don't look quite as slick as the iPhone, but give it some time before it is released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everyone forgets about iTunes lock-in. If someone (in North America, Europe) is in the market to buy a smartphone, there's a good chance they're looking for a non-shuffle iPod replacement as well, and if enough of their library is in m4p format, the iPhone is their only option.

Secondly, while the Street View thing is neat, I can only imagine how horribly stupid it would look if you were standing on a street corner and rotating in place. People are just going to use the touch interface instead. The only real application for this sort of Street View interface is pervasive gaming.</comment>


Ask HN: Thoughts on Cryptocurrency Indices? - <AUTHOR> Cryptocurrency indices typically take the top 20-30 cryptocurrencies by market cap and apply one of these 3 different methods.

  1. Weighted proportionally by market capitalization
  2. Weighted proportionally by market capitalization but capped at a certain %
  3. Weighted by square root of market capitalization
 Proportionally weighting makes the index vulnerable to a s single large constituent.
Capped and other weighting methodologies theoretically should diversify risk and reduce volatility. But if there is strong positive covariance between coins, then volatility is not necessarily being reduced in the index as a whole.
What do you guys think? I gave it my best shot and blogged about it here:
https://medium.com/hodlblog/hodlbot-cryptocurrency-investing-on-autopilot-dce2e4c9a7f7 <comment><USER2> Frankly, the same thing happens to a slightly lesser degree with stock and bond markets. Cryptocurrency is more extreme in this regard because most cryptocurrency "investment" is still essentially speculation on the concept of cryptocurrency in general.

Another poster mentioned diversifying your portfolio. There are at least two dimensions to diversification.

One is diversifying among types of assets. That is, stocks vs bonds vs money market vs real estate vs crypto, etc.

Another is diversification with an asset type, which is what an index helps with. You could have a portfolio with a healthy mix of stocks vs bonds vs other assets. But if all the stock holdings were in IBM, that's not actually a diverse portfolio.

So: if you're investing in crypto as part of an otherwise healthily balanced portfolio, a crypto index fund is a good idea. But that doesn't replace having other investments spread across stocks and bonds et al.

Now, take a look at how stock or bond index funds work. Each one has different strategies for balancing how much of which individual securities (individual stocks/bonds) it includes.

Those strategies are mostly intended to protect you from volatility in one stock or bond that doesn't match the market. That is, to make sure that your portfolio goes up in a bull market regardless of whether Enron just crashed, because on _average_ stocks are rising.

However, _every_ index fund moves with the market. When there's a bull stock market, stock index funds will go up and bonds will go down. In a bear market, stock funds will go down and bond funds will go up. The performance of assets in the same class is always correlated.

An index fund will never protect you against the volatility of the market as a whole. It only protects you against the volatility of an individual asset.

I'm sure books have already been written about the tradeoffs between various portfolio weighting strategies within a single asset class. Maybe that would be a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think that "diversify" is used with the correct economic meaning, because to diversify you need independent assets, and cryptocurrencies are not. Let me try to explain my thoughts.

To diversify you typically want to invest in assets that are _independent_ and with a similar expected return. Only if they are independent you're really reducing your risk or, said in another way, the more independent they are, the more you're reducing your risk.

Cryptocurrencies are far from being independent, you can easily tell by charting them together, e.g. [https://priceeth.github.io](https://priceeth.github.io), so I don't think you're really reducing any risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah exactly. Although there are some pairs that have low and negative covariances.

Check out this: [https://blog.enigma.co/markowitz-portfolio-optimization- for-...](https://blog.enigma.co/markowitz-portfolio-optimization-for- cryptocurrencies-in-catalyst-b23c38652556)

<comment><USER3> Mmm... I'm not sure I'm reading this correctly, but it seems that these portfolios only win against BTC. So if you just invested in ETH, you'd have done much better.

I guess what I'm saying is that you're not reducing risk by keeping the same expected return (well, unless you arbitrarily claim that all cryptocurrencies have the same expected return, for which there's no data evidence). You're just averaging your returns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Ask HN:" prefix please

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks !</comment></comment>


White iPhone 4 Theories - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/tech-blog/white-iphone-4-sighting.html

<comment><USER2> I'm confused and obviously missing something here - Orange UK have White iPhone 4s available for sale on their website:

<http://shop.orange.co.uk/iphone/choose-your-4g-plan>

Is there some other variant that I'm too uncool to know about? :)

<comment><USER3> Once you select the white one and a plan, it says out-of-stock on the right hand side. And it has never been in stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> White is the new black: [http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/blackberrybold/#!where-...](http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/blackberrybold/#!where- to-buy)

</comment><comment><USER5> How is it even remotely of interest that Apple is capable of producing a phone in a different color, and may in fact be doing so?

<comment><USER6> I think the interesting bit is that Apple apparently _isn't_ capable of producing a white iPhone. They've missed their deadline by 4 months already and they've just announced another 4-5 month delay.

<comment><USER7> Technically no one knows exactly why the white iphone hasn't been released. I've seen plenty of solid 'leaks' claiming button colors and camera problems, but no one really knows the real reason. It could be strategic for all anyone knows at this point.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding Pac-Man Ghost Behavior (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior <comment><USER2> One nice approach to programming the ghosts is "collaborative diffusion": [http://sgd.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Collaborative_Diffusion](http://sgd.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Collaborative_Diffusion)

\- Associate each tile with a "pacman-ness" value, which will be calculated iteratively

\- The tile containing pacman is held at the maximum value

\- Tiles containing walls or ghosts are held at zero

\- Every other tile's value is the average of its neighbours' on the previous iteration

By hill-climbing this value, the ghosts will follow the shortest path to pacman. Also, since the ghosts act like walls, they will avoid following each other and instead converge on pacman via different routes.

I made a Python implementation years ago, and it was impossible to avoid capture!

<comment><USER3> What about a Bayesian search?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Pacman Dossier:[https://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.htm...](https://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Pac-Man goes Lego:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01CDZMjj1Oc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01CDZMjj1Oc)

</comment><comment><USER6> This page: [http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding- pac-m...](http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man- ghost-behavior) has even more on Pac-Man ghost behavior (and many fewer ads).

<comment><USER7> Ok, we changed the url to that from [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/10/ghosts- pac-m...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/10/ghosts-pac-man- work/). Thanks.

Edit: It was posted at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1963553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1963553).

<comment><USER8> I was confused as to why just today I found two separate links on the same subject. Probably clicked the initial link.

The todayifoundout version credits the older article though.</comment></comment></comment>


The Amazing iOS 6 Maps - <AUTHOR> http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/ <comment><USER3> I look at this and can't believe Apple _wanted_ to ship with this. And I mean that literally, not incredulously. I believe Apple wants to be in carol of its mapping future, but this product isn't ready yet, and I don't think Apple is so delusional to not be able to see that.

So that makes me wonder what happened in contract negotiations with Google to force it out. Did Google flat-out say "No"? Seems unlikely. Was it just too expensive? That's possible, especially if these negotiations happened during the time Google massively raised the prices on its API (completely random speculation: maybe the price increase was _only_ about Apple), so Apple had to invest elsewhere. Did Google just want control of their map data or want to give Android a massive competitive edge so they backed out? That seems unlikely, but may be answered if Google doesn't put out a map app for iOS.

<comment><USER4> You are probably correct. However if you look at Google's moves in the maps API with respect to charging money the simplest explanation is that Apple and Google could not come to terms on the price for access and so Apple went with 'plan B'.

Given the pain Apple is causing Google in its patent assault I don't doubt for a minute that the senior management at Google would have any regrets about 'losing' the Apple map business vs 'gaining' a poorly executed maps product on their premier devices.

I also don't expect Apple to approve any Google "maps" application any time soon either given how strategic it is for their mobile business.

My best guess is that Apple did the math and said "Well its going to suck rocks but we _have_ to dominate this space, this moves our time table up but doesn't change what we need to do, ship what you have and put your best team on making it excellent."

EDIT: Reminds me of Intel's response to AMD's multi-core where Intel literally glued two separate CPU chips into the same package and shipped it as a 'multi- core' CPU. That sucked too but they had an answer in the market, and they invested in making that answer competitive over the next 3 years to get a more real multi-core out the door.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_D>

<comment><USER5> > _I also don't expect Apple to approve any Google "maps" application any time > soon either given how strategic it is for their mobile business._

Soooo, their _users_ don't matter? "Business strategy" is more important?

This is Apple?!

<comment><USER6> You know, I'm starting to miss Steve Jobs. He was a businessman as well, but he also knew how to treat his customers right, because keeping the customers in the hype is extremely important in his high-benefits scheme. I don't think he would have let that kind of stuff happen. He would have paid the price: it's not like Apple can't afford Google Maps for another version of two of the iPhone, and now some customers are considering switching. If they get out of the walled garden that turns into a prison, they might not come back.

<comment><USER7> Not so sure about that. I tend to think he would have been less likely to put this new maps out though. Perhaps paid Google for a bit longer until the Apple maps were real competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The "roller coaster" effects in the 3-d view are my favorite. They've got some smoothing algorithm going, or it wouldn't curve the way it does, but the elevation data must not have a high enough resolution. Google has made this sort of thing look so easy for so long, but it's clearly very hard to get this stuff right.

So, I guess it's not that surprising that apple messed up something incredibly hard in their first attempt. I'm curious as to whether these issues are as widespread as they seem, or if they're more edge cases made to appear common by the internet. But the curiosity isn't enough to drive me to upgrade. I'm totally putting off that until I figure out a decent alternative app.

<comment><USER9> I don't think Apple gets a pass here. If they are forcing users onto their product it had better be competitive, no matter how hard it is. Microsoft got so such pass with WP7 and that was an entirely new OS/platform!

<comment><USER10> Anyone here actually used this version of Maps to find someplace yet? Not just to break it and point and laugh, but to actually use it?

I can only see 3D maps as a gimmick, so I can't bring myself to care too much that it's broken. I'm slightly surprised that feature shipped in that state, but meh.

What I care about: can it get me where I'm going? It's 2012 and I've still found nothing that can do that without occasional issues. This version of Maps hasn't been in my hands long enough to judge it properly. Considering the update was just released to the general public less than 48 hours ago, has anyone had time to judge it properly?

Worth noting: I've had the old Maps try to send me through concrete walls, or direct me 400 miles away looking for the nearest branch of a bank. My dedicated GPS unit has told me I've arrived at my destination… in the middle of a busy highway, and it too has asked me to turn through concrete barriers more than once. I've had both direct me to locations well off of where I was trying to go.

This is all from actual usage.

So if anyone knows of something that doesn't have these problems, I'd love to hear from you!

<comment><USER11> It works most of the time. Especially for businesses, as I think it accesses the yelp directory. If it gets point a and b correct, the routing seems ok.

Most errors seem to be that of string parsing - the biggest sin is not recognizing town/state portions of search strings consistently.

Ironic since I'd bet some of the best language parsing people are busy working on llvm and clang somewhere else on apple campus.

<comment><USER10> For that matter, they have people working on natural language processing, though my phone's too old for me to know how that's working out for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area What confuses me about Apple's choice of maps here is why they didn't go with OpenStreetMap? It was the perfect opportunity to leapfrog Google and help the open source community at the same time, and they would have had more control over the data - as it is they are beholden to TomTom and other providers to try to get things fixed, or will have to try to merge future map updates with their own patches. As it is they are going to see increasing controversy as people realise just how bad the maps they have bought are, and that this was changed for political reasons, not for the good of their users, and there's very little they can do about it.

They seem to have tried out OSM in the photos app (with a horrible skin), but to have used purchased data for the street maps. Perhaps they felt it wasn't good enough in some locations they tested?

In my experience OSM is superior to Google maps in many locations (even in parts of central London), and it is of course continually improving.

<comment><USER12> Openstreetmap's doesnt address _any_ of the OP's issues. Having built maps for the past 12 years, I know exactly what of each of those issues are about. The blurry images are underlying base layers that drew first and then probably the upper layer timed out when rendering the tile. The curves are caused by elevation measurements that are incorrect (measuring elevation from a satellite involves bouncing from the ground - when there are structures below, depending on the material, it may go through or bounce differently) or precision problems when generating the elevation grid (very common). The big white thing are clouds, when you buy highly expensive imagery you get them with louds (say 30% cloud blockage) and you need to comnine several images taken a different times, color correct them, and stitch them back to remove it (try to do this for one city and then think about doing it for the entire world). The routes that don't match the pins is weird, but it could be that the snapping point for the routing engine snapped to the wrong street edge (it seems very far though) or that the geocoder and the routing engine use different geocoders (that would be bad). Creating a good mapping product is difficult, but Apple will have something much better in one year.

<comment><USER13> _Apple will have something much better in one year_

It certainly will be better but I'm not holding my breath about Apple maps surpassing Google Maps any time soon. Google bought a Rasmussen brothers' company (what eventually became Google Maps) in 2004. That's eight years of product development, data collection, storage and refining -- all at Google's pace. Will Apple find some shortcut to compress this time in one-two year? Unlikely.

It's very easy to underestimate the amount of pure, repetitive effort required to build products of this sort and how hard it is to "disrupt" the industries with players like Google.

<comment><USER12> I meant "much better" than what _Apple_ already has.

I don't think it will be easy for them to catch up (it would be absurd to say that they can have something better than Google Maps in such a short time).

What bothers me a lot, is that most people blame the _data errors_ to the algorithms or ability of the team to create good software. You can have the best coders in the world, and if they have data that is not good, they can only algorithmically clean it so much.

Google has several vehicles that they drive around and collect all kinds of information themselves. Sure you can hire Navteq (or in Apple's case, TomTom aka TeleAtlas) to go around and do it for you. Guess what? When you license products from either of those companies that means you are relying on _their_ editors. That means no fancy object recognition geotagged image that you can send to a support vector machine to flag an area as needed revision... the product you get from that licensing is the vector line with the attributes already attached to them. So that is what you work with.

Google has an entire army in India, using Google-made custom editing tools that do these things. Unless Apple builds the same, they will always be behind. Can Apple do it? Sure! They have the cash and the talent. Will they? It is up to them to decide if investing 400 million into their mapping infrastructure is worth it. I think it is.

<comment><USER14> Personally, I certainly never supposed that the current version of Apple's maps somehow proved that Apple had incompetent people on the problem.

At the same time, Apple has a carefully cultivated history of not shipping half-baked products. They famously worked on tablets for years before they built one that they were happy enough with to ship.

Now, for reasons that the end user surely does not care about, they have taken a product that was missing a key feature or two (navigation, street view) and replaced it with something that is much less reliable even for its fundamental task.

Yes, making a really good mapping application is hard, and requires many people on the ground, around the world. So either you need to make the commitment to do what it takes to deliver that app, or you should outsource the whole thing, and use Nokia Maps or Bing Maps or whatever. The third alternative -- doing it yourself and shipping it to end users before it's ready and without having done all the due diligence -- is likely to be embarrassing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like the quality level maintained by Steve Jobs is quickly deteriorating in favour of business moves designed to wrest more control off Google. They are operating in a very similar way to other companies now.

Google executives must be laughing very hard right now. If I was Google I'd avoid releasing a Google Maps application for at least a year and let the Android handset manufacturers ruthlessly exploit Android's superior maps.

<comment><USER16> > It seems like the quality level maintained by Steve Jobs is quickly > deteriorating in favour of business moves designed to wrest more control off > Google.

This stuff gets so tiresome. Apple has been buying maps companies for _years_. Steve Jobs personally ran acquisitions at Apple. He decided which mapping companies to buy and when he did he probably had a good idea of how they would fit into the platform. Development of the new Maps app was surely underway when Jobs was still alive. What do you think happened? Jobs died and the executive team was like, "Alright everyone, we've got 6 months until the iOS 6 beta is out. Let's cancel our contract with Google and get this shit maps app in there pronto!"

The reality is that Apple has been dependent upon their biggest competitor for a strategically important smartphone feature. The Wall Street Journal reported[1] months ago that Google initially balked at letting Apple have access to Street View, and didn't allow Apple access to turn-by-turn data. If the issue was only quality, Apple could have turned to Bing or Yahoo. They didn't because owning this technology is a strategic necessity in the smartphone market as it stands today. Having features dictated by competitors is not an option.

It's true that the quality of the maps app isn't great. I get looney search results (even when tapping on their search suggestions) and it's extremely frustrating. But there is something to be said for getting it shipped and starting the process of refinement and improvement. It only becomes a strategic problem if the quality doesn't improve noticeably with time.

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FwvSLvr...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FwvSLvrrgcwJ:online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304543904577398502695522974.html+http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304543904577398502695522974.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER17> It's not that tiresome. Jobs would have clearly done things differently. He would have either 1) paid retail prices for Google Maps API access until Apple could build a shippable product, or 2) Gone on stage and painted Google as a big evil bully who was stealing good Maps from iPhone users -- the media headlines would read "Google Reneges on Loyal Apple customers" or something like that. Notably, the second option is not available to Tim Cook.

<comment><USER16> > Jobs would have clearly done things differently.

What's almost as tiresome as the now persistent refrain of "this wouldn't have happened if Steve was still alive" are claims to know what Steve would have actually done if he were still alive. Your second option is ridiculous on its face.

<comment><USER17> Look at what happened with the iPhone 4 antenna issue. He just went on stage and said, "This isn't that big of a problem, and if it really bothers you, put it in a case." That is clearly not an option for Steve Ballmer or Larry Page in the same situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So I've been seeing all this hatin' on HN this morning so I figured I should check it out on my device. I mapped my commute (1 hour) and the only oddity I saw was the waviness coming off of a bridge. Beyond that Philly's buildings were all rendered correctly and my route was exactly the same as Google maps. YMMV

P.S. I must say It was really cool to see Cira Centre (The Amtrak Building) rendered in 3d. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cira_Centre>

<comment><USER19> Try living somewhere that isn't a big US city. Of course the major population centers are going to be highly worked on. It's elsewhere, that google maps has gotten so good on, that people are complaining about.

The satellite imagery is as bad as googles was, but more than six years ago.

<comment><USER20> Actually, even in big US cities results are really bad in some cases. in Seattle, for example, searching for common well known intersections brings up results halfway across the country.

<comment><USER21> I hit a maps link for a restaurant in the Maryland suburbs of DC, _which had latitude and longitude in it_ , and it still took me to the wrong place. Removing the restaurant name and just leaving the lat/lon showed the right place, but of course I didn't figure this out until I had already driven past the wrong place and wondered where the restaurant was.

It's just atrocious. OK, so you have some bad POI coordinates, that's bad but somewhat understandable. But how do you prefer your bad POI data to the correct coordinates that you're given? It boggles the mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What actually bothers me the most, is poor quality of iOS6.

It has several bugs (excluding maps and unfortunate wifi bug), which already have affected me and users around me. Some most notable include following.

* Sometimes iTunes update screen does not refresh,

* You can't disable vibration for notifications per application (i love my email in notification center, still - i do not need it to vibrate; in 5.1 it worked).

* Also, phone from time to time vibrates, though nothing has happened (no new notifications or alerts).

* Most annoying one is that they changed keyboard input, so you can't enter special characters (common in Latvian) by holding and swiping left/right. You have to swipe up and then left/right. Makes big deal, when typing.

I know it all will be fixed in 6.0.1, but still - there is visible decline in quality of provided software, which actually makes me very sad as a user.

<comment><USER23> Apple's 1.0 release are always kind of buggy. I remember iOS 5.0 was really buggy, and OS X 10.X.0 releases are notorious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> To be honest, despite its flaws, it's going to be ok for most of the people, most of the time. Navigation is going to be a big boon. Using it I haven't noticed major differences personally. Some restaurants are in the wrong location, but on the flip side I like the yelp reviews. I'm sure they will improve on the areas that are flawed.

<comment><USER25> Directions being ok most for most people, most of the time, is hardly acceptable.

Google Maps had a tendency to drop pins for locations on the wrong spot. That meant I always had to confirm the location with street view, 100% of the time.

Going to the wrong spot can be catastrophic in some instances (wrong or non existent hospital.) In others it can be really bad (missing a critical meeting, walking in during a wedding.) I don't need to give more examples.

Google giving not so great search results is one thing. I can look at the page and quickly tell that its wrong. When maps are wrong, it can add another 30 minutes between figuring out you went to the wrong spot and getting to the right one.

If Apple's management thinks its acceptable to roll out beta products on all of their users, I'll be moving to Android.

<comment><USER26> > _I'll be moving to Android._

Google's Android? As in Google, the inventor of the "perpetual beta"?

<comment><USER27> But they don't usually revert in quality.

<comment><USER26> The Google Reader redesign fiasco? Google Wave to Google+ transition?

It's not like Apple "usually reverts in quality" either. This was a business decision, probably forced. They had to create something of their own for maps from what they could license and buy quickly.

Goes to show that you should not depend on your competitors for core technology. Which Apple always tries to avoid, but probably in 2007 (when the iPhone come out) the didn't think of Google as a competitor. They weren't in the phone business back then...

<comment><USER27> They weren't?

 _In what could be a key move in its nascent wireless strategy, Google (GOOG) has quietly acquired startup Android Inc., BusinessWeek Online has learned. The 22-month-old startup, based in Palo Alto, Calif., brings to Google a wealth of talent, including co-founder Andy Rubin, who previously started mobile-device maker Danger Inc._

\-- BusinessWeek, August 16, 2005

[http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google- buys-a...](http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google-buys-android- for-its-mobile-arsenal)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It isn't as much fun, but the imagery of the places I care about is better than google, in some case dramatically better.

Their place data needs a lot of help. e.g. If you look for the nearest hospital from me it will take you to a new retirement community built on the site of an old hospital. It is easy to report the problem, now to see how long until it is fixed.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, it seems to really vary. In my short time of playing around, I haven't noticed much reduction in quality at all around my city (Brisbane, Australia) over Google Maps.

The only thing I noticed so far was that St. Lucia Golf Course was incorrectly labelled as Indooroopilly Golf Course (which is a few kilometres away). I reported it.

I'm actually fairly impressed with the number of businesses from Yelp - <USER2> wasn't aware that it was available in Australia, but it has all of even the most obscure little cafes and shops I've searched for around town.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm clueless about mapping/geocoding/etc (it's amazing I make it to the grocery store and back) but I keep hearing that Apple needed to get this out there so that they could start getting data feeding back from the millions of iOS users, and thus (presumably rapidly) improving the quality of the maps. Is there any truth at all to that? I don't quite understand where they'd be getting that data back from - e.g. if I search for the hospital and I eventually find it 3 miles down the road from where the map took me, how would Apple/their mapping partners ever know that the POI should be moved?

<comment><USER31> _e.g. if I search for the hospital and I eventually find it 3 miles down the road from where the map took me, how would Apple/their mapping partners ever know that the POI should be moved?_

One possibility is that the phone keeps track of the fact that "you drove 3 miles past where you were 'supposed' to stop, and then stopped at some other (specific) location."

As more and more people do that --- search the hospital, drive past it, and stop at the _same_ specific location != the phone's predicted location --- then, statistically, we can infer that the "specific location" that everyone eventually stops at is, in fact, the location of the actual hospital.

Interestingly, this implies that the current mapping problems will eventually sort themselves out... after annoying a sufficient number of customers!

<comment><USER32> There are lot of privacy problems with essentially having every iphone phone home with where it is all the time.

<comment><USER31> I'd wager that the phone sends back "areas" rather than GPS coordinates. So rather than the phone reporting "My owner was at (lat,long) at 3:21PM!" it would instead report "My owner came within range of Starbucks' Wifi Hotspot at 3:19PM, and left at 3:23PM!"

In reality Apple has been doing exactly this type of thing since iOS 4 was deployed[1], so unfortunately the privacy problems are apparently very easy to sidestep.

[1] [http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+is+Tracking+its+iPhone+iPad+U...](http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+is+Tracking+its+iPhone+iPad+Users+Every+Move/article21429.htm)

<comment><USER33> Weren't they going to use user locations in their traffic update service?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> With maps.google.com (html5 version) I get some of the old functionality back, but the thing I miss most is street view. Having flyover is very pretty for demos but completely useless unless in real use. Street view, however, is actually very useful and I use it on a regular basis. As far as I know there isn't any work around to that. I will try ios6 again, but for now, I'm going to restore my backup until (if) google come out with an iPad version of maps and YouTube (instead of the iPhone only)

<comment><USER35> TomTom vehicles with StreetView-style 360 cameras have been spotted around Toronto. I have little doubt Apple is pushing TomTom to compile that data and it will be the first billed feature in iOS 6.1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The beauty of this: Apple is definitely going to sell record numbers of the iPhone 5, shitty maps or not. And when they eventually do claw their way back to being on par with Google's maps, people will act like they invented maps themselves and all will be forgiven.

</comment><comment><USER37> While we are ragging on maps...

I live in New York City. Sometimes Google doesn't put the street names on all the streets. I often have to scroll left or right or out to see what street it's on. Obviously you can't list the names on every street when it is zoomed out, but even when there aren't more than 4 or 5 streets on the map, the street names still don't appear. It's like they'd rather list local restaurants than street names. Has anyone else experienced this with Google maps?

<comment><USER38> Happens to me all the time here in Berlin. Very frustrating. Sometimes I have to scroll 2 screens away before I find the street labelled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> But you're still going to buy Apple because that is what all of your rich and trendy friends use.

I have never owned an Apple product. The main reason for this is related to class and/or culture and financial circumstances. My family was always very frugal and on the lower side of middle class.

And honestly I'm frugal and so when I buy devices I am focused on value and bought a laptop with a good graphics card and other features that I put Linux and Windows on. Also I am not comfortable around people so I have pretty much no friends. If I had more friends in web development I might have felt an overwhelming peer pressure to buy a Mac.

The point is that these decisions are not actually based on technical merit, not for me or for Apple fans, because that's not how humans make decisions. We need to be very careful to take a step back every now and again and make a conscious effort to correct trends towards a more rational basis.

The Apple ecosystem is generally more polished, that is true. However, its also very much closed compared to other systems like Google's and outdated in some ways. For example, Objective-C is a ridiculous over-complex relic and it is very embarrassing that so many people waste their time with it.

Its obvious that we need to focus our attention and money on more egalitarian and open businesses. And pretty soon, even the most open and inexpensive products and services are not going to be a good value as better knowledge and data sharing becomes more practical and popular.

The future is open, knowledge-based (some derivative of KR) operating systems where machine code isn't even allowed. The future is knowledge-based programming language and platform development and evolution. The future is ubiquitous open cross platform applications. The future is content-oriented peer to peer web knowledgebases and applications. The future is open source phones that you print out in 3d on your desk.

The future of technology is open, distributed, cohesive and yet decoupled, mature, substantive, and egalitarian. Apple is none of these things.

<comment><USER40> >And honestly I'm frugal and so when I buy devices I am focused on value

The iPhone is $200. You still can't get a tablet that matches the iPad 3 for $500. Saying Apple is expensive is like making one button mice jokes.

Value is a product of usefulness and longevity, plus resale value. It's ridiculous to proclaim that Apple products aren't high on value--I still use my 2007 MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion. It works out to well under a dollar a day and I didn't have to make any compromises in the process.

>The future is open source phones that you print out in 3d on your desk.

The future is also a Star Trek replicator, and just as relevant to the discussion.

>Apple is none of these things.

Because talented people want to be paid for their efforts, and I'm fine paying people for doing great work?

<comment><USER41> > The iPhone is $200.

The cheapest new iPhone on sale (the iPhone 4) is $450. If you think it costs less, that's because you have let Apple and the carriers fool you.

The cheapest Android, meanwhile, is less than $100. Even better, you can even get a new Galaxy Nexus for $100 less than the cheapest new iPhone.

<comment><USER40> Fool me? What are you talking about?

If I get a S3 or an iPhone 5 via AT&T, the cost will be the same over 2 years.

So what you're really saying is, if I get an iPhone on contract, I'm getting more hardware for my dollar?

<comment><USER41> First, I'm saying that the number you cite is not the true cost of the phone because it does not include the subsidy that AT&T pays the manufacturer on your behalf.

Second, I'm saying that the true cost of an iPhone is usually greater than they true cost of the typical Android phone they're matched up against. In AT&T's case the apparent cost of ownership looks the same because they pay larger subsidies to Apple than they pay to Android OEMs. This works differently on other carriers (especially prepaid and overseas carriers) where the headline cost-of-ownership changes depending on the phone you buy.

Third, I'm saying you end up paying the true cost of your phone one way or another regardless of what the headline prices look like. In AT&T's case, I'd say they recoup the larger subsidy with things like stricter unlocking policies and changing app restrictions (e.g. FaceTime, tethering, ...).

Fourth, I'm very much _not_ saying you get more hardware for your dollar by buying an iPhone. From what I recall of the estimated component costs, I think the hardware costs are roughly equivalent between competing phones (and if you insisted on picking a "bang for the buck" winner, you'd end up on the Android side most of the time). Apple's high margins and profits come from somewhere, after all.

<comment><USER42> The subsidy rate is the same regardless of which phone you get on AT&T/vz. This means the logical course of action is to choose the phone that gives you the most backend subsidy amount, which happens to be the iPhones. Apple gets paid handsomely and a lot more than android makers. Therefore the best deal is an iPhone.

The argument you SHOULD have made is "tmobile lets you sign up without a contract at a discount without subsidy baked in".

Now, on a more "touchy feely" note, I owned 4 android phones (moto blur you sucked!), but they have all been crappy in comparison. Hardware build quality, software quality, general "polish" etc... My 4s has been better in every single way. Oh and my personal data on the phone more secure to boot! (iPhone's hardware encryption is VERY good) Life is too short to worry about saving $200 every 2 years, fuck that shit and go with the better device.

Being frugal is a fine trait, but it can be "cant see the forest for the trees". Don't pull the fucking poor card on me, I came from extremely modest background... And even when I was poor I knew the value in buying, well, VALUE.

<comment><USER41> The frontend subsidy rate isn't the same, at least according to AT&T's stated online prices. The price difference for any on-contract vs off-contract iPhone is $450. I couldn't find another new phone (Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, ...) with a on-contract vs off-contract price difference of over $400. Most were $350 or less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Since Apple doesn't have a website for their maps, just knowing what is broken is going to be a problem for them.

I wonder if they will put in a map editor in their next version to crowd source fixes or at least bug reports.

<comment><USER44> It already has that, to some extent.

When you click somewhere, one of the options you get is "Report a Problem" which lets you say that something is missing or indicate where a point of interest _should_ be by placing a pin.

</comment></comment><comment> grey-area For those who think this is just a problem with the 3D images, or are not convinced there are serious problems even after seeing this tumblr, try looking outside of California, at both satellite and standard maps. Some example searches:

"Brighton, UK", Satellite - a major UK city is so blurry you can't see streets.

"Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands" - ends up in the middle of the sea, and no roads on the islands at all.

"Colchester" - satellite shows clouds, in B&W

"Senkaku Islands" - compare satellite with standard to see duplicates of these disputed islands.

"Puno,Peru"- in lake Titicaca

etc.

They probably had to rush this out, but it's really not ready for widespread use in some areas; they'd have done better to cut back the features and massively extend their testing (or use a crowd-sourced alternative). Given how extensively this is used in iOS, both by apps using Mapkit and by customers every day round the world, it's vital that is it correct, and getting it wrong in such obvious ways is a massive strategic error on Apple's part.

<comment><USER35> Arguable, but there is something to be said for pushing it out there. Maybe it would have been better as a staggered release, but it's not like they need to wait for the next update to solve these problems. These are all issues with server-side map quality, which can be updated on-the-fly.

We can only hope they're aggressively removing dead POIs and adding new ones. If it has been a week and nothing has changed for anyone, I would start to worry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> iPhone 4S with iOS 5 > iPhone 5 with iOS 6

Nice work Apple - that's going to save me a few hundred dollars!

<comment><USER46> Your comment is relative and adds very little to the discussion here.

<comment><USER45> Sorry - my point is that (minus sarcasm), for the first time, Apple has done something to discourage folks from upgrading both on the hardware and OS fronts. Not a great move.

<comment><USER47> I agree: I am not installing iOS 6 until I can install a Google mapping app (besides their Google Earth).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'd really like to know where the data from Brazil comes from, specifically Florianopolis, SC. The first thing I did when I updated to iOS 6 was testing the maps app. The building I live is at least 5 years old, but the map shows it under construction

</comment><comment><USER29> I really hope that people are using the 'Report Problem' feature in the app every time they post a screenshot here. Because that is one of the biggest things everyone can do that will help the map data to improve.

<comment><USER49> As Gruber likes to remind us at every chance, Apple has more than $100 billion cash lying around. How about they use a little of that to license some half decent maps from Google or, failing that, Nokia/Navteq?

Even Amazon(that Gruber sneered for making far less money than Apple [1]) managed to license Nokia maps and wrapped a nice API around it, and you think the iPhone buyers have a responsibility to work on making Apple maps better after paying for Apple's high margins so that Apple can make even more money on selling "premium" phones? Give me a break.

[1] [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit- corr...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/07/27/amzn-profit-correction)

<comment><USER50> There is no possibility that this platform change was over Apple's inability to come up with the cash to license a competitor's dataset. Their move was political, strategic, or both.

<comment><USER41> Then they could have spent the money hiring armies like Google's to get the map data right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Looks like it works well in bay area but outside bay area it's pretty bad. Apparently, Redditors are pretty pissed off - [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/106rvw/new_ios_6...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/106rvw/new_ios_6_apple_maps_app_angering_users_and/)

Looks like AAPL tested it in Cupertino and worked well. Thought it will work well in rest of the world too. Classic mistake?

</comment><comment><USER52> I just upgraded to iOS 6 last night and just used it to get around downtown Boston. It was unusable. It had some incorrect data about some locations, it was confusing to use, and when I typed in a location, it would look in different cities instead of the one I was currently in. Unfortunately, one of the biggest apps I use regularly has taken a big step backwards.

</comment><comment><USER53> I just use Waze for turn by turn (iphone 4s) available for blackberry and andriod. Plus if you go to google on mobile safari, it basically pesters you to install a google map shortcut on the "desktop". This works very well.

I'm sure apple maps will get better, but seeing as they're not a search engine, I don't think they'll ever get quite as good at finding by location names.

</comment><comment><USER54> I think my favourite image was the state park with this caption beneath it, made me laugh out loud: "Valley Forge State Park became Valley Forge National Historical Park a few years ago… in 1976" in all seriousness Apple's maps offering quite clearly isn't up to scratch in comparison to Google's maps application.

While Google have made mapping look easy for a long time now, it quite clearly isn't as easy as Apple thought it was. If Jobs were still alive, maps would never have been released in the state that it currently is. Seems like Apple rushed the release of maps, I wonder what the real agenda for moving away from Google maps in the first place was here? It quite clearly wasn't because Apple had a superior maps offering than Google could offer.

Way to force us iPhone users to use an inferior mapping product. Luckily Google have submitted a maps application to the maps store, but it'll probably get rejected for competing with the iPhone maps application.

</comment><comment><USER55> And I thought I had it bad with Bing Maps on WP7. Well, goes to show that lower-bounds exist to be breached.

</comment><comment><USER56> Funny subtitle: "The Apple iOS 6 Maps are amazing. Not."

People seem to think "amazing" == "cool". Not so! It just means astonishing or surprising. Which makes the word so much more interesting to use. "We charge $9 for a bottle of Corona." "That's amazing!"*

So the iOS 6 maps really truly are amazing :)

*True story

<comment><USER57> Same thing goes for the word 'incredible'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why did they stop using Google Maps?

<comment><USER53> Probably a business decision.

Apple probably decided that having core phone functionality in the hands of a competitor wasn't such a good idea. Also Apple users were helping the competition with all the information they were uploading about geographic data.

When the original iphone shipped with google maps (and the Google CEO on hand), Apple and Google were partners, now not so much.

<comment><USER58> Do you think Google will eventually release a 3rd party maps app?

<comment><USER59> Google using Maps exclusivity as a lever to drive the sales of Android hardware doesn't really make sense. Google's goal is to place Google properties in front of as many engaged eyes as possible.

Sure, there's a cohort of iPhone users at the margin who may now choose Android over this issue (and we're hearing from some of them in this thread). But there's no leverage Google can apply with Maps that will significantly diminish the growing bulk of tens of millions of iPhone users. And Google surely wants that vast army of iPhone users to be engaged users of Google properties, including Maps and related features. Google Maps on iPhone is a net win for Google, and does nothing to diminish Android, where Maps will always be one step ahead and better integrated.

Of course Apple may have something to say about Google Maps for iOS 6...

<comment><USER60> The key is to remember that android is the trojan horse to get maps in front of eyeballs not the other way around.

You could even go as far as saying that mobile maps was the most important reason to create android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> In regards to "Where did my university's buildings go?" ([http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31928845471/where-...](http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/post/31928845471/where- did-my-universitys-buildings-go)), it does bother me that so many universities have provided specific map details to Google (see [http://google- latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/map-your-campus-a...](http://google- latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/map-your-campus-and-win-announcing.html)), but not OSM.

</comment><comment><USER62> This [1] made the news in Ireland today, when a city farm in Dublin called "Airfield" was labeled as an airport. It was thought that pilots in trouble might attempt to land there, but I can't see why checking maps on their iPhones would be part of emergency procedure.

[1] [http://searchengineland.com/irish-politician-calls-apples- ne...](http://searchengineland.com/irish-politician-calls-apples-new-maps- dangerously-misleading-after-farm-is-labeled-an-airport-133842)

</comment><comment><USER63> Google spend much time organizing the name of the cities and road in a particular way. Now Apple has another way of doing it, the maps at higher level show less information. Some city name are picked and some are not, but at a closer level, the cities are there. Their algo to find what to show on the map is just different from Google. I'm not saying it is better, but different. I am pretty sure the same comparison can be made between google maps and let's say bing maps.

</comment><comment><USER64> I think Apple did the switch with bad timing, before having a good solution in place... but in the end maybe facing some _real_ technological challenge can be good for them? Every time they have to do serious software / infrastructure stuff they seem to be weak, even with iMessage that is not exactly that super- hard thing to do, there are reliability problems. I hope that this map stuff will make Apple a bit more CS oriented, but not as much as Google is.

</comment><comment><USER65> How can someone release a product like this !!!

What were the PM, team manager, technical architect, developers and QA doing !!! Didn't they observe this !!!

Is this a deliberate product release ???

</comment><comment><USER66> Note that you can still go to maps.google.com in Safari. Give Safari location permission and it works similarly to the old maps app, but a bit slower.

</comment><comment><USER67> Relevant: how Google test maps <http://youtu.be/49JepTyK0NA?t=36m57s>

</comment><comment><USER68> It's obvious that Google withheld or made it prohibitively expensive for Apple to pay for the liscence to google maps.

It does retroactively make the case for handling these things in-house, especially when the partner is a competitor. After years of giving Google valuable data to the point where it becomes a major competitive advantage, google presumably says "go to hell."

<comment><USER69> I don't know why you got down-voted, because you're most likely correct. A lot of people blame Apple for making this move out of pure spite (and perhaps some grudge), but they probably did a huge cost-benefit analysis to be able to justify the switch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Can't wait to see the consequences of this. I hope Google delays their iOS maps a while so people can get frustrated with Apple.

<comment><USER71> I don't understand your giddyness. It would be better if there would be competition instead of Google having a map monopoly.

<comment><USER70> I'm of the opinion that many things Apple does stifle competition. This is enhanced by the "Apple can do no wrong" bandwagon.

<comment><USER72> How do you feel about Samsung's behavior?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I was expecting much worse. I don't think the problems with the 3D are that big of a deal. And things like the Washington Monument being off by a few dozen feet are fine.

What I will say is that Google for the longest time did not locate properly my home or my store in the middle of downtown San Francisco and Apple's maps have them correct on Day 1.

</comment><comment><USER74> The mapquest app is better than this. I wonder how much it would cost to persuade AOL to part with the mapquest division.

</comment><comment><USER75> I love the one of houston highrises with gas stations on each one (they're actually the corporate headquarters of oil companies).

[http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mantx26oqv1rhptwbo1_1280.p...](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mantx26oqv1rhptwbo1_1280.png)

</comment><comment><USER76> Seeing the poor state of the Apple Maps, I think Google can wait 2 years or so before even considering releasing Google Maps for iPhone. More people will want Android phones as they can't leave without it, just like some can't live without the Gmail app for Android.

</comment><comment><USER77> The iOS 6 Map issue is nothing more than a PR stunt from apple.

I think it's brilliant. What's the best way to get people talking about their new map feature?

Release a map product that is inferior to Google maps then push a major update.

Everyone will be surprise how good iOS 6 map will be in a few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER78> Umm well Google maps are waaaaay superior. Apple give us the choice to use what we want, till you get your act toghether. Spend some of thoese billions and drive a bunch of cars around or heck buy a few satellites

</comment><comment><USER79> Its now very clear that Apple is loosing its direction after steve jobs gone. People who used to get crazy about the release of apple products will no loose the passion if apple follows this path.

</comment><comment><USER80> Are there alternate map apps on iOS that anyone could recommend?

<comment><USER81> Apps+ - it's free Google Maps basic, with a 2.99 unlock for added features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I just got a Mac but this is the first time their closed source monopoly crap has bit them in ash. The more it happens the quicker they will change. It's a good day.

</comment><comment><USER83> This is bad.. really bad. I'm not sure whether Apple screwed this up so badly or Google really did a brilliant job on Maps.

</comment><comment><USER84> _"ZOMFG APPLE SUCKS!"_

There's a new _huge_ undertaking of making a modern, competitive "Maps" product. Who'd have thought that when the first version ever is released, its data is not as accurate as a _seven-year-old competitor's_?

This is fucking ridiculous. Let's see how long it takes for Google to replace everything it has with vector graphics. You know, to _get even with the iOS 6 Maps_. Who's the incumbent in two years?

<comment><USER85> I could be mistaken but I've read that Android has had vector based maps in its app for awhile.

<comment><USER84> The Maps app on my phone is still based on tiles. But you're right, there's a new version with vector graphics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> This thing is an AMAZING atlas, especially on the iPad. It's a horrible navigation tool though.

</comment><comment><USER87> Wow. That's all I have to say. WOW.

</comment><comment><USER88> The Amazing Parchment Maps 6

1/100 of the cost of an Apple device.

Thinner.

Lighter.

Faster.

Powered by clean, green energy.

No Chinese workers exploited.

</comment><comment><USER89> ddsfdsfdfdf jjjj jj

</comment><comment><USER90> tl;dr

"iOS 6, Navigate Differently"

[At least I find it amusing]

<comment><USER91> "Navigate Different" -- remember the details, Apple loves details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Amazing? This is old tech. Google maps. Perhaps you've heard of it?

</comment><comment><USER93> Apple made this decision just to dump Google and try to gain more control. Apple dind't want to use OpenStreetMap because its open source solution and Apple never uses open source solution. Yeah, its iOS and OS X is based on Linux (sort of) but they will never tell this to anyone. iOS 6 Maps sucks just like the App Store on the New iPad. Maybe it is just me but I found it very, very slow. It's better on iPhone

<comment><USER94> I've said this a few times (as have others) but it seems it could do with repeating.

Unless you've got inside information we have no idea who dumped who, all we know is the contract expired and it wasn't renewed. Google might have applied financial pressure, Apple might have thrown their toys out of the pram. It's unknown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I hope this is meant as sarcasm. I cannot open the article from workplace, but I truly hope it's derision.

EDIT - People are downvoting without reading it entirely. I have mentioned I CANNOT ACCESS THE ARTICLE. So the only truth available to me is the Post here.

<comment><USER96> Tagline is "The Apple iOS 6 Maps are amazing. Not."

<comment><USER95> Did you even read my entire statement?

<comment><USER97> I think that's why he posted the tagline of the article for you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: It's like Discord for investors and traders - <AUTHOR> https://tiltchat.com <comment><USER2> Interesting concept. I think to get over initial fear of joining a room of strangers. You may have to seed the net with some "names" in the world of trading and finance. Best of luck ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a valid point, and thanks for sharing that. We'll try to keep it simple so that anyone can feel welcomed to share their thoughts and ideas. You don't have to be a world-class investor to have an opinion, and Tilt will be the place to do just that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Validate my startup idea - <AUTHOR>

Want to change or improve a part of your life?  We'll help you get there.  All you need is new habits.  As your accountability partner, we help you upgrade your habits.
No matter what your personal or professional goal is, we'll help you set goals, gauge their feasibility, and hold you accountable to help you get there.
- Get a better relationship
- Get a better job
- Write that book
- Lose 20 lbs
- Make more money
- Release that new product
- Work less
The idea is simple.  You pay a tiered membership initiation fee and get most of it back if you submit proof of progress such as images, receipts or written proof showing you are working towards your goal.
Membership pricing depends on how much you value your goal and how much motivation you need.
Example pricing: pay $500 per year and get $1 per day back (up to $365) if you make satisfactory progress toward your goal.  If you need more motivation or really want to reach the goal, we'll adjust the initiation fee and daily rewards accordingly.
Email me [yuzshan AT google's famous email address dot com] if interested. <comment><USER2> Accountability is a tricky thing. Mostly though, it requires a certain amount of non-monetary social proof and community (on or offline familial, school, work peers, friends) to really make that feeling of accountability 'stick'. You need someone around who's like, "Hey, this thing you're doing is important to ME that you finish/do it for no other reason than we like to see you being awesome and happy, not because there's a financial reward."

Figure that out, and this could work!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great point. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you honestly think you can compete against wives, girlfriends, friends, frenemies and family who could do the same thing for less?</comment>


8 Surprises I learnt about Swift - <AUTHOR> http://ristkof.be/posts/8-surprises-about-swift.html <comment><USER2> > _I was surprised to find out that tuples are not AnyObjects. The reason is > that AnyObject corresponds to an Objective-C object, an object that can > exist in the Cocoa world. We still write apps in the Cocoa framework so > mostly we deal with AnyObjects. And often times (in the case of strings for > instance) there is implicit bridging between the two sorts of objects. Then > there is also an Any object, which is not (necessarily) an AnyObject, but is > the Swift equivalent of the Objective-C general object (represented in Swift > by AnyObject). All very confusing, and inexplicably confusing if you > consider that Swift had a chance to start with a clean slate._

How is that confusing, and much more "inexplicably" so?

It's clearly because Swift wanted to take advantage of its clean slate that this is the case. So you have AnyObject for items that need the legacy Objective-C object tree support, and Any for the Swift native equivalent.

Eventually this allows them to drop AnyObject, and keep Any when they're finally able to go all-Swift.</comment>


Intermittent living; the use of ancient challenges as a vaccine - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987718305723?via%3Dihub <comment><AUTHOR> Paper discusses how intermittent cold, heat, fasting, dehydration, lack of O2, too much CO2, together with stresses from phytochemicals in multiple food products, can improve overall health.</comment>


It's time for RIM to abandon BlackBerry 10 - <AUTHOR> http://gdgt.com/discuss/it-s-time-for-rim-to-abandon-blackberry-10-and-adopt-either-android-or-windows-phone-iaf/

<comment><USER2> Ridiculous. What the market needs is more choices.</comment>