<story><title>The Amazing iOS 6 Maps</title><url>http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grey-area</author><text>What confuses me about Apple&apos;s choice of maps here is why they didn&apos;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&apos;s very little they can do about it.&lt;p&gt;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&apos;t good enough in some locations they tested?&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rburhum</author><text>Openstreetmap&apos;s doesnt address &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; of the OP&apos;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&apos;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Amazing iOS 6 Maps</title><url>http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grey-area</author><text>What confuses me about Apple&apos;s choice of maps here is why they didn&apos;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&apos;s very little they can do about it.&lt;p&gt;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&apos;t good enough in some locations they tested?&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>VonGuard</author><text>&quot;It was the perfect opportunity to leapfrog Google and help the open source community&quot;&lt;p&gt;The only time Apple helps open source is when they hire the most important people in really important projects, and then they graciously allow them to continue contributing. CUPS, LLVM, it&apos;s happened a couple times. They take good care of these guys, but I always feel like their contributions to the projects after Apple are being written with one eye watching over their shoulder to make sure they dont get sued for talking to the public about some super secret project.</text></comment>