Be Excellent To Each Other

How might one piss and with SHSH blobs?

I've been hoping that once ios 6 is easily and safely jailbreakable, there will be somewhere to download the proper google mapping app for those of us that have lost it. Failing this, a plan b would be nice.

Cheers GY, much appreciated

One thing is for certain that everyone can agree on, the Apple Maps app is fucking awful.

I upgraded my iPad 2 and now my daughter doesn't play annoying Talking Tom videos on YouTube anymore.

I HEART APPLE.

GODAMMIT FUCK OFF TROUSERS.

Worst BEEX member ever.

I don’t mind it. It needs tweaking, and a much better data set, but it’s not a bad start. It's certainly not useless.

I was actually going to ask whether I should bother updating. I have a iPhone 4. Getting to the point where new stuff isn't applicable. So yeah, I was going to legitimately ask whether someone in my position stands to benefit from the update.

Is there anything I 'will obviously want'?

Also, had to lol at an AE post, but it was unintentional humour. I feel his pain, but it was the way he phrased something.

AE: have you (or rather your daughter) tried google Earth on the ipad?

If she likes that (which has a lot of the stuff that google maps has), then maybe you can use that as a transition app?

let her use google maps and google earth on that version, and then when she's comfortable with that, upgrade, and then let her use google earth and apple maps?

I know that might be easier said than done, but it might be a worth a try (at least the google earth bit)

Malc

Earth doesn't have Street View, iirc. That would probably be a bit of a wrench.

We went to the Jonathan Coulton gig last Friday, and last night I got a mention on Twitter from someone I didn't know saying 'I know this is going to sound weird, but were you at the Jonathan Coulton show last week wearing yellow (I was wearing yellow). Looked at bio and she's a knitter, not someone I know or follow but must read my blog or something to recognise me. Not sure if I'm amused or slightly weirded out. I find it difficult enough to recognise people I've met five times before.

Not sure why I've put this in this thread, I thought it was bits and bobs.

And can't edit because tapatalk won't let me edit on iPhone. F***ing iF***ingPhone piece of s**t f***ing Apple crap.

(See how I cleverly brought that back on topic, there).

I wish mute would actually fucking mute everything. If I've turned the sound down for one thing, it's a pretty good bet I want it turned down for everything. Oh and apps that completely ignore it all together can fuck right off.

I particularly hate apps that stop my music from playing.

It's pretty much useless by me.
The aerial/satellite view has almost no detail at all, every "test" search I've done for a local business has come back with no results and several towns have been moved. And that's before you start on the roads that don't seem to exist any more.

Maps was the most frequently used service on my iPhone after email and this is such a huge step back that it's laughable.

It's the sign of a company obsessed with their perceived rival at the expense of their own strengths. Yet again, like they were years ago, trying to take on Microsoft at their own game. Only when Jobs took back over did Apple save themselves from the brink of obscurity, with unique products that sort of were the best in their field, though the USP of costing more has always seemed odd to me, especially when you end up with a worse product a few months after purchase, as I have.

Now that Jobs has gone, the idiocy is clearly creeping back in. Apple don't sell large swathes of data, just small bundles of mp3 or individual games. Google don't sell hardware, beyond the odd phone or tablet.

All of which have much better mapping than my six hundred quid tablet which until last week had awesome mapping. And this is all the wider public will know and see and remember. People who can find a way to rationalise the shitty maps and be ok with it aren't Apple's profit monkeys. Angry people like me are.

In other news, I wanted to copy a file onto my iPad last night. Booted PC, loaded iTunes, connected iPad. Nothing. Got spammed for iTunes update. Checked details... "Ios 6 compatibility". Took the forced update. It was about a hundred meg and insisted on restart while I was busy doing other stuff before I could copy a file over.

What's in the seventy megs of extra iTunes that they need to make it compatible with a new map and a talking calendar?

To copy the same file onto my phone (also new OS since last time I copied anything) I plugged in my phone and dragged the file to the phone's icon. Apple are becoming a joke, after a few months of painless use my big investment is really beginning to piss me off wherever it can.

That's a very interesting post.

I hope GY's right [1]; Apple deserves a black eye over this. But the huge iOS 6 adoption figures (100 million devices updated in the first five days) and iPhone 5 sales suggests few people care.

[1] Except for the "would never happen under Jobs" trope, which is codswallop. The MobileMe launch was a clusterfuck, the hockey puck mouse was awful, the G4 Cube fell apart, and the guy delayed surgery for nine months while he tried to treat his fatal pancreatic cancer with acupuncture. Mis-steps like this were made all the time on Jobs's watch.

I think people are reading a lot more into it than it is. It strikes me that Apple took a look at the fee for licensing Google Maps, and went "I reckon we can do this ourselves cheaper, you know". And they've not done a terribly good job of it.

NYTimes article this morning suggest, based on talking to Google sources, that Apple's licence for Maps hadn't run out. Hence Google's surprise in June when Apple announced it was replacing Google Maps, and hence there being no iOS GMaps app ready yet. Same sources confirmed Google is working on it.

How many of those would even have known about the maps thing beforehand? They would just have seen the update and done it.

It's a way of reverting to old iOS versions but it's not something you can do retroactively. You store a special encryption key (the SHSH blob) while iOS 5.1.1 (say) is still the latest, then at a later point you can revert to 5.1.1 via your stored key. This is of no use to you now, GY, I'm sorry.

Anyone who reads newspapers or watches news broadcasts, for a start. The problem was widely reported by the mainstream media.

It was widely reported before the update that Apple's attempt at maps was a complete joke?

That was my thinking as well. A lot of people will surely just have seen 'an update is available' and tapped Go without thinking too much about it. And as you can't downgrade there's no way to know the stats for "people who did the update then were annoyed enough about some aspect of it to go back again" which would be the real acid test.

*out of character*

My 60 year old parents knew about the shitty maps, which is why they haven't upgraded yet. It's been in the news, so the general public seem vaguely aware.

My mum's annoyed as she wants FaceTime over 3G, but not in return for bogus maps. And the maps app is crap - snap!

*back into character*

You're assuming people only update on day one. They don't; iOS adoption graphs show a smooth line as more and more people update.

http://getpocket.com/blog/2012/09/more- ... -on-ios-6/

That's still only over 7 days. That's a pretty sharp incline for a week. Also, does that take into account then new iPhone 5 owners who may be registering their phone for the first time?

How come the iOS 6 users flatline, but the IOS 5.1.1 continue declining? Where the fuck do they go?

Apple has it good at the moment, there stuff looks nice and runs ok but it’s not as perfect as they want everyone to believe. Despite this they sell their new models by the truckload thanks to the fanboys, there were 2 million orders for the Iphone 5, I would imagine that most of these were from owners for 4S models.

Also nobody ever questions their monopoly on M3 players and music distribution, Microsoft got telephone number fines for putting IE on the OS, I know that MS were out of order with what they did with this 10 years ago, but they are still getting shit for having IE on Windows 7.

And you are assuming that everyone with an Apple device is a technology obsessed nerd. Most people might have vaguely heard that there was "something to do with maps" in the new update. The detailed differences between the Apple maps app and the Google one it replaced were not national headline news.

That's not even close to how monopoly legislation works.

The first of those BBC stories is on the 20th September though, after the majority have already updated according to that graph.

It's "daily active users". So it's going to have some variations based on people not using the app on a particular day.

But would these people even care?

You could have just said "You're right".

It was in the tech press, but what percentage of Apple owners would read that?
Higher than the industry average perhaps, but still not many.

Nah, it was on news at ten, and in the Metro and the Times. Certainly not tech-only.

They would if they used Google Maps at all and were used to it's features and accuracy. How many iPhone users have maps stuff as one of their main use cases is impossible to even estimate though I'd have thought.

That was after it had been released though - too late for a lot, plus there's the blind faith that everyone has in apple that means that some will have thought it was all a bit of an exaggeration.

Ok I'll admit not knowing much about it

But how does MS get stick for IE on Windows 7 when its now virtually impossible to put music onto your touch without ITunes or some Apple runtime. Before they moved to the touch range there were a number of great apps that would let you quickly put music on the Ipod.

It’s a shit load easier to use another browser on Windows 7 than it is to use an alternative to ITunes

I thought I'd dodged the trope. Jobs was a nutbar but his mentalist never cost the company progress, inasmuch as the g4 Cube didn't damage the brand and I for one have never heard of MobileMe. These things weren't hugely in the public eye. First big launch after he fucks off and look what we've got.

Turning to the "who knew" question.... There's a lot of updaters reading that maps isn't as good and updating anyway, then finding out that it is completely useless because you can't navigate. The headlines don't explain how broken it is, most Apple customers have e news on because it isn't time for the One Show and look at the BBC website because their preferred celeb gossip pages are blocked at work.

What people do remember is that their mates were really angry about the new Apple.

There's also cognitive dissonance to factor in, like the guy at work who was number one in Hull to get the phone and told everyone about it all day. Seem people can't see the problems with maps because they've bought into the brand too heavily and it works as fashion to them. They'll try to argue arund the issue when theres no point. The app is fucked. That was Job's master stroke, play up to the fashionability of the brand and making things simple for the user.

What always happens in fashion, though?

Facile, but.... reputation?

Do people go after Microsoft because they're an acceptable target? A better comparison would be Windows 7 browser versus iOS browser. Come to think of it, how come the Safari issue isn't fucking huge?

I assume somehow there's some bullshit about iOS not being an OS so it doesn't count as evil.

The main problem isn't that Apple's Map are bad (and I'm not denying they're not), but Google's are so so good that we've got become used to that being the norm. Before Google was prevalent I remember trying all sorts of different websites back in the day before smart phones were widespread. They were usually all pretty terrible.

In five years time we may look back and wonder what all the fuss is about (either because Apple Maps improves, Google releases a standalone app, or another reason), but that is cold comfort at the moment.

I'm lucky I have Co-Pilot, which is excellent and even has a walking mode, but I did use Bing Maps for two years and coped ok, even though it wasn't brilliant either.

I don't think this is the end of days for Apple though. It'll get fixed and people have short memories.

The original iPhone didn't even have 3G and it was the end of days for Apple and a complete failure...

There are so many Apple fanboys out there that this won't matter a shit to sales.

Most issues regarding Microsoft stem from it abusing (not merely having) a monopoly position. Within Windows, it at one point stole QuickTime code while simultaneously fucking QuickTime. Elsewhere, it attempted to subvert web standards in order to make IE the default/standard, because its OS ran on the vast majority of PCs. (The funny thing today, of course, is that MS is being really good regarding standards and IE 10, bar perhaps integrating Flash. IE10 looks like it's going to be a great browser.) Apple has never had such a monopoly in any industry, let alone abused it. People have pointed at iPods/iTunes, but they play relatively open formats and never had 'all' the market. Additionally, iTunes was a device conduit—there was nothing stopping you using an alternate MP3 player, which is, after all, an accessory.


But you can use a different device. You can't for Apple's own products, but Apple's products are not the market. In tablets, they're a majority, but smartphones? Not even close.


The new iPad?

But on Maps, I agree with Gassée—the problem is in part Apple's tedious boasting, rather than having a little humility. Had they gone with "We think it's really important to have beautiful maps that we can improve with your help." and outlined both the positives and the existing problems, slapping on a beta label… well, Apple would have still been hit but not as hard. But by going BEST MAPS EVAR, Apple deserves a kicking. That all said, people still don't know why this situation happened at all. There are so many rumours swirling around that we can't tell if this was Apple arrogance (the default assumption), Google holding back data or making demands (just as likely, given the company's history), or a combination of factors. One thing's for sure, though: this is very Apple. It likes to control the things it does—see the Ax chips. It's just in this case, it royally fucked up. (That said, I'm seeing an increasing number of reports stating Maps for iOS 6 are in some ways an improvement over the Google-data version. The main issue appears to be inconsistency rather than out-and-out crapness, with the datasets in some European countries being particularly poor.) Also, I wish people would stop reporting that iOS 5 had Google's app—it didn't. It had Google data in Apple's own app.


What issue is there? There are alternative browsers. There isn't an alternative core—you use WebKit—but in what way is Apple abusing that position? (There are actually some arguments here, notably in the way Apple messed up caching in iOS 6, but with iOS 6.0.1 or 6.0.2 we'll find out if that was a bug or deliberate. My guess: bug. Other arguments stem from Safari alone having access to faster JavaScript capabilities, and that doesn't really have a counter argument, but it's still not in a Microsoft-style ballpark. But are there other problems? And don't anyone dare say "Flash".)


Quite, and even today, Google Maps aren't always accurate, yet it took years to get here. Mapping is hard. The problem for Apple is I'd say it has three-to-six months tops to sort this mess out to an acceptable standard (i.e. accurate routing, mostly accurate buildings, better satellite imagery), but then it certainly has enough money to chuck at the problem.


This. That all said, Apple's QC has been an issue for years now. OS X is increasingly buggy, and I do wonder whether Cook runs too tight a ship at times. But then that was also the case when Jobs was still alive.

Next you'll be using the word 'sheeple' without irony.