Apple Expands 'Maps Ground Truth' Hiring to Rest of the World
Apple has expanded its postings for Maps Ground Truth jobs to the rest of the world, after initially hiring for similar positions only in Australia. 'Ground Truth' refers to information collected on location versus data collected remotely, such as satellite imagery.
The jobs, for 'Maps Ground Truth Manager' positions, have been posted for the U.S., The Americas, Western Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East & Africa.
The Maps team is searching for a manager for the team responsible for regional map quality and ground truth in the U.S.. Each of our regional teams is responsible for the quality of our maps in their region. This team's responsibilities include:
• Testing new releases of map code and data around the U.S.
• Collecting ground truth data to allow for analysis of the impact of potential map code or data changes relative to known truth
• Utilizing local expertise to provide feedback about U.S.-specific mapping details
• Evaluating competing products in-region relative to our maps
As the manager of this team, you will be expected to drive all of this team's work, determine where and how to allocate resources, and clearly communicate test results and other feedback to teams in Cupertino. The U.S. regional team is also responsible for driving communication between engineering teams in Cupertino and our other regional teams, as well as evaluating new regional testing initiatives in close coordination with the rest of the Maps quality team before those initiatives are rolled out to the other regional teams.
Apple has been working to improve its maps after criticism led CEO Tim Cook to publicly apologize for issues customers had. Google's Maps app for iOS was downloaded more than 10 million times in two days after it became available several months after Apple's maps were released.
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Those hiring posting are for Managers. If you have any common sense at all, you'd figure that each Manager would be responsible for "managing" a bunch of employees working under them. So conceivably this might end up being several dozen to a few hundred "Ground Truth" employees under this single Apple project alone.
But I expected the Google fanboys to come and pour some salt in here anyways, as if it's some heinous crime for Apple (or anyone else) to work on improving their own mapping software. By the way, Android OS in its first year of existence sucked balls compared to iOS. Does that mean Google should have stopped improving it back then? ;)
I wanted to use Street View to see the signs on buildings and find the right one.
Unfortunately....
a) Street View was completely blurry and shadowed and even enormous signs were unreadable on storefronts.
b) Google had the location completely wrong.
c) Compounded by the fact that getting around (reaching the CORRECT location manually) in Street View is an incredible pain compared to smoothly zipping around in Flyover. (Which, granted, puts you 50 feet in the air at best, but is still a great, immediately recognizable view of street in high detail. You can zoom in quite far in Flyover, and even read larger commercial signs.)
So I went back to Apple Maps and followed the route. Lo and behold, Apple has the location exactly right. The pin was in front of the exact building, and I didn't need a sign after all.
Some people have problems with Apple Maps, no doubt. We forget how often Google Maps has problems too.
* I do use Google for transit... but I do my destination search in Apple Maps because it has been easier and equally accurate. Then I hit the Transit button in Apple Maps which hands the query off to the Google app. Very painless: I get Google's transit results without having to deal with Google's painful searching... such as a failing to access my Address Book and Home locations, and failing to remember a search I just made 10 seconds ago! It's too bad, because Google IS the best at getting a badly-typed query right: I give full credit there.
Trust, but verify.
This kind of thing should have been going on long before the Apple Maps app ever shipped.
Meanwhile, once Google has the autonomous cars legitimized (which is getting closer everyday), you can bet they'll never send out a manned Google Car again. Those things will be eventually be all electric and have their own tiny garages to charge overnight in every part of every major area and go out everyday and constantly be updating StreetView without anyone ever setting foot in one.
How's Apple's StreetView coming?
I dunno, when I'm in the car (which is often here in the greater Los Angeles area), Apple Maps are a huge improvement and load way way faster over cellular data than Google's. Traffic information is much better as well, Google is always slow to change and misses a fair amount of pesky congestion.
I guess if your walking around, stopping to study details on the satellite/street views, then you might prefer Google Maps, but for driving and getting around California, Apple Maps destroy the Poodle. Most times, I don't even look at the screen, Siri does all the interfacing.