Hey all,
Check this out, couple of years is almost up, is this going to be in the new OS?... -
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27Apple-Q-A-on-Location-Data.html
I highly doubt that. Google Maps has this already on Android. Last time I used it I believe their traffic data was commercial sourced and didn’t have the ability to reroute as Waze does, however even if Google does has this or will have in the future there is always room for compeditors like Waze. There are also a number of third party apps like Waze on both operating systems. There is always room for compitition.
Apple hasn’t such a good trackrecord when it comes to social aspects of their stuff. Remember “iTunes Ping”? Would scare the shit out of facebook! Yeah, right…
Not to mention that so far early peeks have shown their base-maps to be years out of date. Even Bing imagery is more up to date than what we’ve seen so far from apple on this. So they are late to the field, and even should they get an instant userbase much work needs to be done to get the maps useable.
Google+ didn’t present the end of Facebook, heck Google hasn’t even killed of Yahoo yet, the yahoo system is one of the most heaviy trafficed set of sites on the web.
And finally, no device locked service is going to kill a multi-system service. Google understands this but Apple has never been able to comprehend this fact.
Uh oh, looks like this uses a lot of the same features as Waze.
Could potentially blow Waze out of the water. Unless Waze is collaborating with Apple in some way.
There are a lot of details that have not been released yet, such as how to report incidents while driving. I’m curious to see how Apple will handle this. Maybe using Siri to report incidents?
Yep, this could be a problem for the future growth of Waze and Waze being able to monetize their platform. The main draws of Waze look like they will be there:
- NAV with TTS
- Real time traffic
- Automatic re-routing based on traffic
- Alerts (accidents, construction, etc)
Plus, Apple is going to have significantly more traffic data since nearly every iPhone running iOS 5 or newer is sending anonymous traffic data back to Apple, by default - even when Maps is not running.
Of course this doesn’t come out into iOS 6 is released in September 2012. We don’t know how well it’s going to work until it is released. As we have seen from experience with Waze, this kind of functionality doesn’t appear to be easy to pull off without technical issues.
And I don’t know if Apple has stated where the map data is going to come from. On of the draws of Waze, at least for some, is the ability to edit the map and see the changes you make fairly quickly in the application.
Waze really needs to make their product the best in class or innovate quickly if they want to keep their user base growing. I wonder if Waze has any patents on the technology or features that Apple will license?
From the fine print at the bottom of the page of the URL that was published by the OP:
“turn-by-turn navigation will be available only on iPhone 4S and iPad 2 or later”
Huh, very interesting.
If they pull traffic data from all iPhones whether or not your in a navigation mode, don’t you think that will create alot of false reports just like we see? Driving a fire engine at one job might help them when I go to an accident, but at my second job when I’m driving along at 5mph watering flowers, that will mess them up.
Apple can pull in data from iPhones location, but I seriously doubt that THIS data would be used for their maps application. With millions of iPhone users worldwide, how would it be able to tell which users are driving, which are on their couch, and which are stuck in traffic. That would be impossible. Instead, I would assume that they would get road data from users when the Maps app is open (similar to waze). However, you know what they say about people when they assume…
And you are all forgetting one big drawback to this new Apple App. It only works on Apples. Waze is actively developed for how many different OS’s and available in how many more? Apple sells lots of iOS portable devices, as a single company they dominate the market. But as per market share per OS they are a distant second, and losing ground.
An unscientific Poll today on Slashdot.org has Android running at 43% to 22 % for iOS. Similar percentages though usually with both a few percentage points higher are widely reported across the web via more scientific studies.
If V 1.0t of his new app works as well out of the gate as Waze does now in version 3.1#####, there could be a negative impact on iOS users, but if it lacks in any way to what Waze has already established, and the added data of the larger Android community and the other OS’s out there that can run a version of Waze, many of those users will come running right back to Waze. Of course I’m betting the biggest factor will be the ease of user input as to the roads. Apple loves to keep as much in house as possible, and may not want to “risk” malicious edits disrupting their pretty maps, and thus lock out or at least heavily moderate any editing capabilities by the users. Or run a much slower update process for making such edits go live, which reduces the capabilities of the service. I know the maps in the areas I edit are now more accurate than what Google or Bing has, and it isn’t hard to edit those.
Previous discussions and peeks have indicated that at least the base maps are from the OSM maps, but, I’m guessing Apple will have to fork their data from the OSM databases in order to label it as their proprietary system and thus they’ll lose the benefit of the OSM community editing.
Yes Waze will lose some users, AOL could come out with a dial-up map system running on 14.4 modems and we’d still probably lose at least a couple users, it’s just the nature of the game. But In the end game, I think Apple’s love of controlling the products bearing their name will lead to it falling behind. That said, it will make it more difficult for Waze to monetize this system.
:lol:
Fully agree with all of your comments. If we lose half our Apple-wazers to Apple it would take about 1/6th of the userbase. No fun, but it would not be the end.
Apple has been collecting traffic data since October 2011. They have had 8 months to develop the algorithms to filter out invalid traffic data. They have billions of dollars to spend and the top engineering talent at their disposal.
If you don’t believe me that Apple has been collecting data, check your iPhone.
- Settings
- Location Services
- System Services
- Traffic
It’s on by default and there will be a purple arrow icon next to it if your iPhone is currently sending traffic data to Apple. If the arrow icon is gray your iPhone sent traffic data to Apple in the past 24 hours. Every time I check this my iPhone is either currently sending data or has sent data in the past 24 hours. I can assure you, they have been collecting plenty of traffic data in the past 8 months to work on filtering so that they have good data for this new Maps app. This is a great model since the traffic data is not limited to being collected only when the NAV apps is running. This is one of the primary challenges for Waze - getting users to run Waze all of the time when driving to gather helpful data.
Waze just hasn’t see it as important to improve their traffic algorithms to filter out the data that causes false traffic jams in Waze. I can’t understand why they don’t attack this issue. Maybe they are afraid to filter out valid traffic data by mistake since in many areas that are not enough Wazers to generate enough valid data? Even as an avid supporter of Waze it’s a joke when I see a traffic jam in a residential neighborhood or on a segment by POI’s that have zero traffic.
Yes, the iOS 6 Map application likely won’t kill Waze by itself. But you need to consider that Google also just announced an upgraded Navigation application for Andoid and they are going to release for iOS too. This segment is getting very crowded with lots of resources going into developing solutions that will be bundled with the OS and/or provided for free.
I don’t have the numbers to back it up, but I would assume that many more Android users navigate with the built in Google NAV than they do with any other Navigation application, including Waze.
The only reason all of these Navigation applications even exist for iOS is because Apple has offered nothing with TTS or automatic traffic rerouting. The previous built in Maps app is basically unusable when you are driving. Who wants to click through with a button every time they make a turn? Not to mention that the data consumption is quite high.
Yet another point, I am sure that the % of Waze Version 3 Wazers that are using iOS vs. Android is well more than 20%, world-wide. I would venture to guess 50%, maybe more. Again, Android has had a built in NAV application that offers TTS and good traffic data. How many Android users even go looking for another NAV application? Yes, many Android Wazers that participate here in the Waze forums, but what about the average Android user?
It’s difficult to know how iOS 6 Maps and the updated Google NAV are going to impact Waze. Too early to tell since neither is available to the general public. If the number of Wazers decreases, so does the traffic data. Less useful traffic data, even less Wazers. It’s a vicious circle. In addition, if Waze is going to leverage advertising and other promotions to monetize, they need as many users as possible.
Waze certainly has not helped itself with unreliable service, promised features that are never delivered, faulty fixes to problems, as well as false traffic jam data. In addition, Waze is still a bit feature poor compared to many general NAV application offerings. It may be very difficult to continue as a commuter focused application if the free, bundled with the OS application do it just as well or better.
Even worse is going to be the impact on other NAV applications for iOS. Why in the world would you shell out even $.99 if you have one already installed on your Smartphone with the OS? Forget about the $20, $30, $40, $50 NAV apps.
I would love to see Waze succeed. Instead of seeing 400 Wazers ‘near you now’ I would like to see 10,000. I want an accurate ETA. The most accurate traffic and rerouting. I don’t want to have to review events on my route, I just want Waze to tell me the fastest way without interaction. The best, up to date map. Service that is very reliable. As well as important features like toll road avoidance, HOV lane support, avoid part of route, etc. I have put well over 1200 hours of my personal time into map editing, helping other Wazers in the forum, providing feedback to Waze, Beta testing the map editor and Application. I am sure others here have contributed just as much if not more It’s time for Waze to work harder to stabilize and fix things as well as add the important features that we have been asking to be added for many months. Waze now has up to a few months to respond to ensure that their users don’t defect.
Confirmed turn-by-turn nav in iOS 6. Crowd sourced traffic from ios devices.
If you look at the map data source copyright document for the iOS 6 map app (posted around the web), you will see that Waze Inc. is listed as a source for map data, in addition to Tom Tom and others. I think this speaks to Waze monetizing the community’s efforts, as well as Apple’s efforts to make their new map app THE best, with up-to-date data.
Waze will use considerably less data than this new app, and I’m sure it will continue to work after iOS 6 is released.
– Len
Some of that copyright info is surely for licensing of features related to patents. Some may be bigger pieces such as data.
I do not suspect that the Waze map itself will be used. Likely Apple won’t agree to be using mapping data with the current security model where anyone can edit (and unfortunately break) the map. Apple is generating their own traffic data. So what data is left to use from Waze? Parking lot landmarks?
I also don’t believe Apple is going to ‘fork’ some other map data and start their own. That would likely not be wise. I don’t think they will be using OSM either. There are multiple options of mature, viable maps. They may even need to use different providers maps in different parts of the world.
Apple has billions of dollars just sitting there waiting to be spent. You can be sure that they thoroughly explored all of the available commercial maps and chose the one that they wanted. The legacy mapping providers are surely more than happy to take Apple’s money.
Interesting discussion. I never knew that Apple was currently gathering traffic data from my phone.
Although Android does lead in market share, I would suspect, as someone suggested, that a majority of waze users are currently running iOS. This is only because Android currently has a built in app for turn by turn navigation. Since iOS currently does not, users flock to the App Store to find one that does. It will certainly be nice to see what it looks like.
Since iOS 6 beta was released today for developers, I’m going to bet some YouTube videos will be posted in a day or two showing the new Maps App in use… I’ll post here if I find one.
I believe there is at least one regular forum poster who has an Apple Developer account. Hopefully he / she will get a chance to compare directly to Waze. Most of the current info on the web that are basing announced features, a few screenshots in Apple’s keynote and a copyright screen are not of much value.
Although I do believe it’s feasible that Teleatlas (owned by Tom Tom) is providing at least some map data and maybe even some of the routing algorithms. Surely some data is also coming from the acquisitions that Apple has made in the past couple of years.
I just did a quick YouTube search and as you mentioned, there’s not much out there yet. A few demos, but nothing where I can see waze-like features yet. I’ll keep looking, I’m sure one will pop up in the next few days…
The other thing amusing about the copyright screen - it’s similar or identical to what has been previously disclosed over 1 year ago. The same thing that made some believe that Waze was providing mapping data to Apple or that Waze would be built in to iOS 5. We see how that worked out…