And they did.   And now people are upgrading to iOS6.

Here is what I read in techcrunch. “We observed since the launch of Google Maps for iOS 6 a 30 percent increase in unique iOS 6 users, and we think it’s related to Google Maps,” MoPub’s CEO told TechCrunch. “It verifies the hypothesis that people were actually holding back to upgrade until Google Maps was available.

and from TUAW

MoPub CEO doesn’t think this jump is random and attributes it to users who were waiting to update until Google Maps became available.

We observed since the launch of Google Maps for iOS 6 a 30 percent increase in unique iOS 6 users, and we think it’s related to Google Maps. It verifies the hypothesis that people were actually holding back to upgrade until Google Maps was available.

There is no better proof that maps was holding people back then this.

If this is the case, can Google adjust? Sure, I would bet with a little tweaking of the servers they will be running smooth in a week.  But for now, I’m going to be keeping a close eye out.  You never know, could be even more downloads as non iOS 5 users like myself start using the app.

Here is the description from the site.

Navigate your world with Google Maps, now available for iPhone. Get comprehensive, accurate and easy-to-use maps with built-in Google local search, voice guided turn-by-turn navigation, public transit directions, Street View and more. Use Google Maps to discover great places to eat, drink, shop and play, with ratings and reviews from people you trust. Sign in to save your favorite places and quickly access all your past searches and directions from your computer, right on your phone.

Search
* Find addresses, places and businesses around the world with Google local search.
* Discover places to eat, drink, shop and play, with ratings and local reviews.
* Sign in to sync your searches, directions, and favorite places between your computer and your phone.

Directions
* Get voice guided, turn-by-turn driving directions.
* Find your way by train, bus, subway or walking directions.
* Access live traffic information in cities across the world.

Street View and imagery
* View 360-degree panoramas of places around the globe with Street View.
* See inside more than 100,000 businesses worldwide.
* View high resolution satellite imagery of locations around the world.

Simple and easy to use
* An entirely new Google Maps experience on your iPhone.
* Newly designed and streamlined interface for even easier navigation of your world.
* Use gestures to explore the map and browse results.

I’m going to repeat some of the things I said in my first post; why iOS 6 maps is a disappointment, but before I do, I want to repeat a point. When ever a new iphone is released, there tends to be an issue here and there.  Antenna-gate, poor battery performance, crashing, etc..  Also, new features tend to need a little help. Siri was not all the perfect in the beginning… when it worked.  normally its pretty forgivable (except antenna-gate) because even though they almost never admit it, they tend to get things fixed.  However, this time, they have not released something new, but instead replaced something that was working well with something that CLEARLY does not.

Maps on the iphone was the killer app for me.  It was like nothing I have ever seen before with my other smart phones (yes there were smart phones before Apple folks) but the beauty, speed and usefulness of Maps was mind blowing.  Then came GPS, then directions including public transit and traffic.  It was sweet.  Life was good.  Now its sucks.

I’m not even going to start with the lost of public transport, it was there, now its gone.  Done.  No, its search that really bugs me.  I use Google map search A LOT.  And its very good. Not perfect, but very good.  Now when I try a search, like ‘fast food’, I do not get a list of fast food places near me, but places that have ‘fast food’ in their review. Did you know Jamba Joice is fast food?  Yup.  Next time I’m going to try a burger via their drive through.  Worse, its finding places that do not exist anymore, and sometimes gives you the wrong directions on how to get there.  Really!  How can you mess that up?

Oh and traffic.  Fu get a baw it.  I do not like how cluttered Google maps is but at least I can get the traffic info when I need it.  iOS6 maps?  A dotted red line. That’s it.  And not for all roads either.  Nice.  So not only cannot I not always find what I’m looking for, when I find it, IF I find it, it may not be there and I could get stuck in some serious traffic on the way.  Great.

I’m not the only one finding issue with iOS6 maps. There is even a tumbler dedicated to the screw ups.

Now Google is already working on, and most likely already finished with, their own map app.  I’m looking forward to seeing this as well as a jailbreak that will make the Google maps app my default mapping application.  But I would not be surprised if Apple decides to block it via non compete.

The iPhone 5 is a nice phone.  Its lite, the bigger screen looks odd but I’m sure I could get used to it, its SUPER fast, but I have no plans of getting one till mapping is sorted out.  I just hope Apple does not do something duchbaggery like killing support for the original Google Maps.  Hey, they might!  You never know.   And you know, that could push me over to Android.

“Apple went out and partnered with the weakest player,” he said. “They’re now coming out with the lowest, weakest data set and they’re competing against Google, which has the highest data set. What’s going to happen with the Apple maps, is that you’re literally not going to find things. When you do find them, they might be in the wrong place or position geographically. And if you do have it, the route to it may not be the optimal route.”

This lines up with what I have found when I finally got the beta working and tested it.  Shame.  Right now I rely on google map search to find almost anything and it works great.  For driving directions I use motionX which is a great turn by turn navigation app.  I do not know what motionX uses for search, but I really hope its google.

I have a hard time imagining that Apple is not aware of this limitation and thus must have a plan in place to try to improve the dataset, but I imagine this will take time.  In that time they may manage to piss off a number of users like myself who fell in love with Maps before anything else on the iPhone. In fact, it was Maps on the iPhone 1 that really impressed me, impressed me enought to become an iphone fan boy.

I still have hope though.  One of my MAJOR complaints with google maps on the iphone is how messy the traffic display is.  If you need to see what is going on with the freeways, I do not need to see every little side street as well making it almost impossible to see what is going on at a quick glance.  I have not see a good screenshot to see what this will be like, so I guess I have to wait to see this in action to really know.

Graphics aside, I’m expecting a pretty strong backlash from people complaining about poor search results and perhaps sub par navigation based on what I’m reading.  And who knows?  That might be enough to move a few people to Android.  Might be for me.  We’ll have to see.  In the meantime, no iOS upgrades for me thanks.  I wonder of one day they will simply cut off google for older iphone users?  That would really s&*k.

The two nice points, is VERY fast refresh, smooth transition from 2D to 3D and much nicer rendering of buildings when zoomed in.  I tried this on my laptop, that does not have graphics acceleration, and only Chrome would offer me the chance to access the mode.  Nice.  Sure it slows down a bit when zoomed out and making new calls, but once those vectors are cached, its pretty quick even in software rendering mode.  Now if I can only get this on my iPhone!

Check the Vid from Google…

Latitude - xkcd

Seems that Google has included a Location History dashboard with their latest release of Google Maps 5.3 for Android. The dashboard is a feature for Google Latitude that allows you to view your location history on a personal dashboard at google.com/latitude or on the phone by tapping view location history from your Latitude profile.

The dashboard allows for standard ‘FourSquare-ish’ type services such as checking in at places and adding your own notes for places while rating them. For those that opt-in, you can delete your travel history at anytime and your history is private to only you. Well you and Google.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Oq-9enE-k

Yes, Google announced that turn-by-turn navigation is coming to the iphone. I have not tried the Android version yet but from what I have seen online its looks really promising. The only downside to using the iphone for Nav is the small screen so you KNOW someone is going to build a car mount for the iPad. Yea, street level turn by turn on that big iPad screen?? Yeaa baby!

My main curiosity is how is the voice guidance going to work through the web player? Unless they release it as an application, and then I could see Apple trying to block it. But predicting what apps Apple will or will not block is about as easy as guessing a coin flip. Either way, I’m just glad I do not have a GPS Nav app for the iPhone as my business.

This could turn iphone google maps into a type of yelp I guess, and that may not be so bad, but my fear is when I search, say, sports bar, or car repair, I will get more ads then links to places I want to see.

What bothers me is there  is no way to turn this off!  THAT is the major issue here. Still its early.  We’ll see how this pans out.