I don't care for the title. Clearly these spots aren't for engineers to come on board and fix maps in a couple days, they are there for future development. "Scrambled" implies an imminent deadline.
Or that, once shipping a piece of software, the team was ready to re-staff for the next major release, coming in a year.
You don't add engineers on at the end but at the beginning.
There was no mass firing for "Antennagate" in fact there was no "antennagate"... like this BS maps "issue" Antennagate was just a bunch of apple haters bashing the company.
The reality is, the iOS maps app is already far better than google maps around here. Apple has terrain data and correct streets, google doesn't even know this major city exists (becuase it isn't in the US or europe.)
>Antenna gate wasn't real? I can reproduce the antenna fault with a significant drop in signal strength with one pinkie.
I classify that as a major fault. For a premium product, that's unacceptable.
Really? Because tens (hundreds) of millions of people found it _totally acceptable_ and made that phone the top selling phone.
Not to mention that they found that the "issue" was a non issue in practice.
I know at least 3 friends of mine that bought the 4 on AT&T and suffered through several dropped calls - they even used my Moto once and Nexus the other time to complete their calls at the same place on the same carrier.
So Antennagate was real, iPhone <5 dropped more calls than any other phone on AT&T. That's the disingenuous part about how Steve handled Antennagate - sure competitors dropped bars when holding hand over their antennas but the competitors antennas weren't badly designed such that they would be easily covered while holding the phone and their phones didn't drop as many calls.
People decided to live with it but 2 out of my 3 friends are on non-iPhones as their work doesn't afford them dropped calls.
Well, I, for one, still have an iPhone 4. Never updated on 4s (or 5). Never had any reception problems that I can recall (i.e not getting through a call).
It might be that I get a good signal where I live and work (and in 2 different countries, neither of which is the states). So, YMMV.
But, I do remember iPhone 4 owners actually reporting LESS dropped calls than iPhone 3GS:
"iPhone 4 owners are reporting fewer dropped calls than iPhone 3GS owners":
And after the media noise blew out, there weren't any complains about it --as if the forums and people forgot all about it--, just people using their phones.
And AT&T could be to blame, not the iPhone. For:
""According to a March study by ChangeWave Research, AT&T is the reason the iPhone drops calls. Users of the Verizon iPhone 4 reported a 1.8% dropped-call rate, the same rate as users of other Verizon phones. Users of the AT&T iPhone 4 reported a 4.8% dropped-call rate, 2.7 times the rate of Verizon iPhone users.""
BS maps issue? It's comforting to know that the fundamental uselessness of this app to me is, apparently, just a figment of my imagination.
This whole thing pisses me off. People can't just be content to say that it works for them. They have to declare that the problem doesn't even exist, and all of us who are actually experiencing it are somehow wrong. How do you even get the idea to do that?
The advertisements for employees (whether there were or will be any actual hires is unknown) is Apple's way of controlling the narrative in a case where they have long known they would be shipping an inferior product.
Every update to maps is now newsworthy, and every piece will be themed "look at all these improvements." Part of me, the cynical part, suspects that the earlier copyright issue with OpenStreetMaps was deliberate and intended to positively brand the product with the FOSS community by drawing attention to their use of open source. It was TomTom that they threw under the bus this week.
TomTom got thrown under the bus and there were so many other players involved in making the failure. There are tens of companies that contributed to the data all of whom have gotten little exposure/blame.
>The advertisements for employees (whether there were or will be any actual hires is unknown) is Apple's way of controlling the narrative in a case where they have long known they would be shipping an inferior product.
Going out of your way to avoid the Occam razor, aren't you?
Hiring as a conspiracy to spin/control the eventual PR issues that would emerge from shipping an inferior product.
Seriously?
Somehow some job postings would make Apple "control the narrative"? Seriously? And how exactly do they "control it", now that they have made those postings?
How about using the bloody Occam Razor and saying that: Apple started work on their Maps app for iOS 6, saw it needed more manpower, and are expanding their team for the eventual iOS 7 release.
On the plus side, they haven't found anything to realy moan about the phone, so there had to be something for the press to complain about. A company new to maps release a map that they can update as they go along and make it better, oh the shock, what was google maps like on initial beta, I know last year google maps got me lost and upon one occacion traveling thru a brick wall, bless. It'll get better and or there will be something new to complain about. Poor Apple, were is RIM when you need them :D.
Imagine the level of shouting there would be at Apple from Jobs after the iOS 6 maps fuckup. Is there anyway whatsoever that anyone at Apple is feeling that much heat right now?
The trouble here is that, from a user's perspective, this isn't a launch. It's version 6.0 of a product, by which we expect the kinks to be thoroughly worked out.
By replacing Maps with something new that was presented as just an upgrade, they put themselves in a really tough spot that they don't normally do.
Outside the iOS line, Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) is a good example of something that shipped before being really done.
In the iOS line, I'd say iPad 1 is woefully underpowered with RAM. Browsing in Safari suffers due to repaints when scrolling and page reloads.
In 20/20 hinsight, shipping iOS without an SDK and even without a plan for an SDK. If they haven't introduced the SDK, iPhone would probably never had taken off.
The initial iPhone OS, before it was called iOS, shipped without copy and paste or 3G at a time when all mobile operating systems had both copy and paste as well as shipped with 3G on their premium models. The first iPhone certainly qualified as a Premium Device.
The early firmwares were buggy as hell, it would crash from time to time. Heck it was imposible to type with keyboard lag that could be as bad as 10 SECONDS.
My first tweet ever was abot how firmware 2.1 fixed many of this issues, mind you this was 4 years ago
Steve Jobs: "If you're not failing once in a while, you're not trying hard enough".
iPod: "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame".
iPhone: "What? No copy/paste? No third party apps?"
OS X 10.0/.1 shall we even go there?
Apple's way was always one of iterative enhancement.
The only reason for the current regression was that they started from zero, were the previous offering was from a third party competitor (Google) with 8+ years head-start in mapping.
Nirvana: I usually (50-60% of the time) agree with your comments here on HN, but this time... I disagree with your first, second, third, fourth and fifth paragraphs (too much hyperbole!). Android might've been bad, but is quite allright now (in many areas, including "intents" it's far ahead of iOS. Though in ease of use, ease of development and things like Core2D/CoreData lags behind iOS). iOS maps is good IMO, but worse than current GMaps.
The company is not infallible. Apple has the best advertisement of any company (IMO), but remember those unbelievably stupid and corny Olympics ads?
I don't really care to debate it with you, because despite making a compelling argument-- that people always bash apple products when they first come out, including several notalbe examples (iPod, iPad, iPhone) where people said they were terrible... my "crime" of not bashing Apple and pointing out that android sucks (and it does. people use it for ideological reasons, I'm convinced, or because they've never used an iPhone.) my comment is sitting at -4.
HN is a site overrun with mindless, ideologically driven jerks. Your comment was fair, but the censorship means that only ideologically approved opinions are seen, and everything else is cut, so there's no point in participating here at all.
You're being silly. A very large majority of HN users use Apple products in one form or another. I can't speak for the rest but I am just not automatically going to accept each and every thing that any entity does as good. And that includes Apple.
If you think everybody around you is an idiot on a forum that contains an extremely large number of well educated and tactful people then I think you should consider the possibility that the problem lies with you.
Calling the majority of HN "mindless ideologically driven jerks" is collective name-calling, something that is simply not done here.
If there is 'no point in participating here at all' then why do you continue with your endless non-coherent tirades?
If by ‘relaxed’ you mean ‘tabloid’, sure. It seems to be a requirement that any Register article about Apple products has to be dismissive towards people who use them (even though that is most people who might read the article these days):
> fanbois and fangrrls across the world branded the new satnav-like service as rubbish
1. needlessly trollsome, 2. alludes to them being irrational supporters, and yet… these are the people being critical? Maybe they're not irrational fanatics after all…?
I'd describe it as less credible. Especially articles written by Leach. A hack if ever there was one. In fact a hell-banning of Register articles wouldn't be a bad thing at all.
