Daniel Eran Dilger
Apple has expanded its 3D Maps Flyover support for the east side of the San Francisco Bay Area, including the city of Berkeley, the University of California birthplace of the flavor of Unix used in OS X and iOS.
Apple has continued to expand the areas supported in Flyover, the explorable 3D representation of satellite imagery it introduced as a significant feature of the insourced mapping service it launched in iOS 6.
Apple's 3D Flyover mapping technology, acquired as part of C3 in 2011, provides a detailed representation of buildings and topography significantly superior to alternatives from Google and Nokia, the world's largest map vendors.
Flyover image glitches were targeted by Apple's critics from the beginning, with the incorrect portrayal of Hoover Dam being frequently cited as an example of Apple's "terrible maps."
However, while Apple has enhanced a series of 3D representations (including that of Hoover Dam, above), other vendors haven't. Google Earth still depicts the landmark's famous highway bridge as collapsing into the river below, nearly a year after AppleInsider last profiled 3D imagery available from Apple, Google and Nokia.
Maps for Macs
For OS X Mavericks, Apple brought its Maps to the Mac in a standalone application with improved tools for reporting errors and integration with location data leveraging Apple Data Detectors.
The new Mac Maps app provides an even larger canvas for exploring 2D, 3D models and 3D Flyover imagery, as shown in the above representation of UC Berkeley, where the "Berkeley Standard Distribution" originated.
Apple uses a custom OS kernel derived from Mach and modern versions of BSD Unix in both its OS X and iOS operating systems.
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21 Comments
GO BEARS!! Too bad the campus is dirtier than shown
Wish they'd do Pittsburgh ... They've done Philadelphia; Pittsburgh is VERY cool with the Three Rivers meeting at the park. Very iconic buildings galore, including the one for PPG.
Wish they'd do Pittsburgh ... They've done Philadelphia; Pittsburgh is VERY cool with the Three Rivers meeting at the park. Very iconic buildings galore, including the one for PPG.
How far away is Carnegie Mellon University from Pittsburgh? Submit a request. NeXT/Apple had some very prominent grads, perhaps they can grease the wheel a bit.
Much of the East Bay, including Oakland all the way down to Hayward has been covered by Flyover for at least the past year. (FWIW, I thought Berkeley was already included) There were some Flyover coverage gaps that this update apparently fills in.
Apple also seems to tip off which areas will add Flyover coverage, because the turn-by-turn navigation had been showing the 3D building outlines in those East Bay cities where Flyover had not yet come online. I guess this could be something to check for those who live in areas that do not currently have Flyover. If you see 3D buildings in the navigation, then Flyover might be coming soon.
The crazed, insanely biased and unbalanced assessment of Apple maps can simply be evidenced by the Hoover Dam example- where in Google's case, no one have a shit to ever even mention it (even though Google has been doing maps for more than a decade), while in Apple's case, the exact same image became the headline of how horrible Apple maps is, used as the cover image of thousands upon thousands of Articles decrying maps. Meanwhile, this was promptly addressed in Apple maps, while it is still exactly how it was in Google maps, because Google (and Google maps users) couldn't really give 2 shits. This single example shows how much weight you should give the Apple (maps) bashers- they're drowning in their own despicable hypocrisy, lies, and deceit. Gleefully mocking a flaw in Apple's (just released) product, while pretending the exact same flaw in the "golden standard" of maps didnt exist- because, well, that would make the narrative alot more boring.