We’ve had much hilarity online today over the awfulness of Apple’s new iOS6 Maps. I finally just got it installed on the iPad and of course decided to check the local situation. Actually not disastrous. The golf club is not labelled as an airship landing strip for a start. But then I spotted something interesting.
Back about 6 years ago, Google Maps was completely useless in West Cork. At one point it seemed to think there was only one road down here, the N71. And bizarrely it wasn’t labelled as the N71, it was called “Harbour Hopping in South West Cork”. Seriously, that’s what Google thought the road was called. I never found out how such a ridiculous bug got into the data.
Eventually Google re-mapped the country itself and bought some better data. Their maps around here are now pretty fantastic and Streetview even went up tiny one-car-wide lanes locally.
So imagine my surprise when I saw this on the iPad:
Welcome to 2006 y’all.
Yes, I’ve just been having a laugh at that one.
Even put a screen shot of it on FaceBook.
But Google still isn’t that good.
They have marked our driveway as a road, and not bothered to drive their streetview van down the actual road.
Google is very responsive to data bugs. Just report the issues using one of the methods listed here: http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=162873 and they’ll get back to you. Not sure when the next StreetView update is due tho!
I just used the map-right-click to report that they need to add the Mayfield and Cashel Motoroway services on the M7/M8. Unfortunately they haven’t enabled Map Maker here so we can’t make the changes ourselves.