<story><title>Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-from-the-ground-up/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>macintux</author><text>OSM is orders of magnitude worse than Apple&amp;#x27;s current data set in my area, and I doubt that&amp;#x27;s unusual.&lt;p&gt;So the question for Apple is why tie themselves to a 3rd party platform? If they&amp;#x27;re going to go to this massive level of effort to generate the best data set they can achieve, they&amp;#x27;ll want to control the full stack for quality and predictability.&lt;p&gt;They could feed the OSM-relevant data they create to the platform, but that means a lot more work to create and maintain the integration tools and manage the workflow, along with potentially reduced revenues if they make OSM too good.&lt;p&gt;I doubt they&amp;#x27;ll care about any threat from OSM, but I doubt they&amp;#x27;d see the overall effort as a good business investment. This isn&amp;#x27;t as straightforward as open sourcing some software.</text></item><item><author>untog</author><text>They could sponsor OpenStreetMaps and dedicate resources to it, donate satellite imagery etc. They&amp;#x27;d get a lot of great data in return.</text></item><item><author>macintux</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll quote my reply from a similar comment...&lt;p&gt;What choice do they have? Maps, location data, and the services they enable are critical to mobile devices today, and will only get more so with AR and devices without screens.&lt;p&gt;“Everybody but Google” isn’t good enough judging by the current state of affairs, and Google doesn’t play by the same privacy rules as Apple, so they seem to have few options.</text></item><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>Apple maps is an odd sort of problem for apple to have taken on.&lt;p&gt;First, it&amp;#x27;s Google head on. This is exactly the stuff where Google is very hard to beat. For Apple, it&amp;#x27;s a little outside their strengths. Too fiddly. Every damned place in the world has their own little public transport issues, data sources. Apple are more of a &lt;i&gt;clever solution with the right compromises&lt;/i&gt; bunch than a &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;slog our way through 10 million random issues until a pattern emerges&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; bunch.&lt;p&gt;I like the moxy, but there&amp;#x27;s always going to be an &amp;quot;are we the new Bing?&amp;quot; cloud hanging over projects like this, unless and until they &amp;quot;win.&amp;quot; All that said, I&amp;#x27;m glad there is something out there that isn&amp;#x27;t google.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Doctor_Fegg</author><text>&amp;gt; OSM is orders of magnitude worse than Apple&amp;#x27;s current data set in my area, and I doubt that&amp;#x27;s unusual.&lt;p&gt;As ever, define &amp;quot;worse&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;my area&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;OSM is consistently worse worldwide (compared to Google, TomTom and Here) for geocoding. OSM is consistently worse for lane guidance. OSM is generally worse than Google worldwide for commercial POIs (shops, restaurants etc.), but on a par with TomTom and Here, and this is very location-dependent.&lt;p&gt;OSM is better worldwide, by several orders of magnitude, for pedestrian and bicycle mapping. OSM is generally better for non-commercial POIs. OSM is very often better in all aspects (save geocoding) in rural locations, particularly in Europe.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re an American motorist then Google is your best map right now. If you&amp;#x27;re a European cyclist then OSM is really the only game in town. It&amp;#x27;s not a black-and-white issue.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-from-the-ground-up/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>macintux</author><text>OSM is orders of magnitude worse than Apple&amp;#x27;s current data set in my area, and I doubt that&amp;#x27;s unusual.&lt;p&gt;So the question for Apple is why tie themselves to a 3rd party platform? If they&amp;#x27;re going to go to this massive level of effort to generate the best data set they can achieve, they&amp;#x27;ll want to control the full stack for quality and predictability.&lt;p&gt;They could feed the OSM-relevant data they create to the platform, but that means a lot more work to create and maintain the integration tools and manage the workflow, along with potentially reduced revenues if they make OSM too good.&lt;p&gt;I doubt they&amp;#x27;ll care about any threat from OSM, but I doubt they&amp;#x27;d see the overall effort as a good business investment. This isn&amp;#x27;t as straightforward as open sourcing some software.</text></item><item><author>untog</author><text>They could sponsor OpenStreetMaps and dedicate resources to it, donate satellite imagery etc. They&amp;#x27;d get a lot of great data in return.</text></item><item><author>macintux</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll quote my reply from a similar comment...&lt;p&gt;What choice do they have? Maps, location data, and the services they enable are critical to mobile devices today, and will only get more so with AR and devices without screens.&lt;p&gt;“Everybody but Google” isn’t good enough judging by the current state of affairs, and Google doesn’t play by the same privacy rules as Apple, so they seem to have few options.</text></item><item><author>dalbasal</author><text>Apple maps is an odd sort of problem for apple to have taken on.&lt;p&gt;First, it&amp;#x27;s Google head on. This is exactly the stuff where Google is very hard to beat. For Apple, it&amp;#x27;s a little outside their strengths. Too fiddly. Every damned place in the world has their own little public transport issues, data sources. Apple are more of a &lt;i&gt;clever solution with the right compromises&lt;/i&gt; bunch than a &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;slog our way through 10 million random issues until a pattern emerges&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; bunch.&lt;p&gt;I like the moxy, but there&amp;#x27;s always going to be an &amp;quot;are we the new Bing?&amp;quot; cloud hanging over projects like this, unless and until they &amp;quot;win.&amp;quot; All that said, I&amp;#x27;m glad there is something out there that isn&amp;#x27;t google.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pythonaut_16</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s kinda like Google working with Android as an open source project. Google makes money on Android primarily by using Android as a means of delivering the Google ecosystem. They don&amp;#x27;t care that it&amp;#x27;s open source because they don&amp;#x27;t make money by selling it.&lt;p&gt;Apple could do the same thing with maps. Support a robust open mapping initiative to make sure their primary business (selling iPhones and other devices) has a solid platform for emerging technologies like AR. Making sure they have a solid maps offering supports the Apple (aka iPhone) ecosystem.&lt;p&gt;Also similarly to Google, they can still push plenty of proprietary things on top of the open parts of the initiative.</text></comment>