Tokyo Olympics Apple Maps: Death by Point of Interest
[1]Tokyo Olympics Apple Maps: Death by Point of Interest by Joel
Breckinridge Bassett:
Apple tells Engadget Japan reporter Masaichi Honda that [2]Apple
Maps Japan will be ready for the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of
2020. Apple Maps will have robust indoor maps for tall buildings and
underground station malls in Tokyo, and [3]Real-time transit for
better transit route searching and transit updates. That is exactly
one year from now, far into the iOS 13 life cycle. Honda san also
reports that Apple is not ready to show Japanese reporters a demo
yet, not an encouraging sign.
In addition to the [4]Apple Maps image collection vans combing Japan
right now, WWDC19 unveiled the [5]Indoor Maps Program for registered
developers and building owners to map indoor areas and encode the
data using (Apple's ?) [6]Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF). Once
the data is encoded in IMDF, surveyed and validated, developers and
building owners can use the data in their apps and designate indoor
areas to share on Apple Maps.
That's great for building owners to indoor map their own building.
What about shared public places like Shinjuku Station which is
spread out and shared by 8 different owners? There is also the
localization problem. It's one thing to indoor map for Japanese
users, but who's going to localize all those Point of Interest (POI)
icons and information sheets in English, Chinese, Spanish, etc. That
costs serious time and money.
Let's take a comparison look at indoor maps of the primary entrance
gate for inbound visitors coming to the Tokyo Olympics next year:
Tokyo Station, and compare Yahoo Japan Maps, Apple Maps and Google
Maps.
Yahoo Japan Maps
Yahoo Japan Maps only offers Japanese language but it has best
cartography and attention to small details that matter, like yellow
station exit signage colors that match what you find on the ground.
Apple and Google don't.
Yahoo Japan Maps Tokyo Station indoor mappingGet Link to
VideoSharePlay Video Yahoo Japan Maps Tokyo Station Indoor mapping
Apple Maps Japan
Apple Maps does not offer indoor station mapping in Japan. It does
offer multilingual support but judging from the English Point of
Interest information, it's not robust. As usual [7]Apple Maps Japan
overwhelms users with Point of Interest icons. It's map death by
Point of Interest. There's a lot of fixing Apple needs to do if they
want to present a good map product in time for the Olympics.
Apple Maps Tokyo Station (no indoor mapping)Get Link to
VideoSharePlay Video Apple Maps Japan Tokyo Station (as yet no
indoor station mapping)
Google Maps Japan
Google Maps offers indoor mapping for Tokyo Station in multiple
languages. For all the detail Google offers here, it's much less
helpful than Yahoo Japan Maps. For high density areas like Tokyo,
good cartography and smart editing makes all the difference between
a good map and lousy one.
Google Maps Tokyo Station indoor mappingGet Link to VideoSharePlay
Video Google Maps Japan Tokyo Station
A solid breakdown by Joel yet again. He harps on the same topics around
this. I hope someday someone from Apple Japan will listen.
__________________________________________________________________
My original entry is here: [8]Tokyo Olympics Apple Maps: Death by Point
of Interest. It posted Sat, 22 Jun 2019 19:50:06 +0900.
Filed under: general,
References
1.
https://atadistance.net/2019/06/11/death-by-point-of-interest/
2.
https://japanese.engadget.com/2019/06/10/apple-wwdc19/
3.
https://atadistance.net/2019/06/04/wwdc19-apple-maps-2-0-scorecard/
4.
https://atadistance.net/2019/05/13/wwdc19-ios-13-apple-maps-2-0-wish-list/
5.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/245
6.
https://register.apple.com/resources/imdf/
7.
https://atadistance.net/2019/05/13/wwdc19-ios-13-apple-maps-2-0-wish-list/
8.
https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=2988
