Duking It out at the Smartphone Mobile App Mapping API Corral: Apple, Google, and the Competition∗ †

In Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Mobile Geographic Information (MobiGIS’12), November 2012. Redondo Beach, CA, USA Duking it out at the Smartphone Mobile App Mapping API Corral: Apple, Google, and the Competition∗ † Hanan Samet Brendan C. Fruin Sarana Nutanong Center for Automation Research, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742, USA ABSTRACT commonly held beliefs (e.g., that the Earth was flat in pre-Columbus The recent introduction of the Apple iPhone 5 and the accompa- times). For example, labels for place names are placed on the map nying iOS6 software environment which, among other changes, re- in such a manner that their location does not overlap names of other placed the use of the Google Maps API in iOS5 by Apple’s own nearby places, winding roads with switchbacks are represented with Maps API, has led to significant changes in the user experience with a screw-like symbol where the number of turns in the symbol has no apps that make use of maps and has resulted in closer scrutiny of correlation with the number of switchbacks that are actually present, mapping applications on mobile devices. Many of these changes in etc. In the past, maps were used not only to present the information the user experience deal with the quality of the data that is being but also to store the information, and provide an easy and rapid way produced and presented to the user, and has led to a wide rang- to access it (also known as indexing using today’s parlance). ing discussion of data quality and the seeming lack of quality as- Traditionally, maps were drawn by cartographers who often had surance policies and protocols by Apple. These are widely docu- the social and professional standing of artists. This took a consid- mented in web postings. However, equally important are significant erable amount of skill, effort, and time, and the maps are still rec- changes in the manner in which the data is presented to the user, ognized by their value (both financial and artistic). The advent of but, surprisingly, not much attention has been paid to this aspect of computers and the increase in their use to produce maps, as well the user experience which is somewhat analogous to the concept of as the diversity and increasing sophistication of the output devices the “last mile” when discussing the bandwidth of communications with which their output can be presented and viewed, has led to a networks and its associated costs. The changes in the presentation dramatic decrease in the time needed to produce maps, and hence and in the amount of data that are presented to the user on the Ap- in their variety and distribution. In particular, maps are no longer ple mapping platform, with an emphasis on mobile devices with a created and produced only when there is a sufficient demand for small form factor such as smartphones, are tabulated and compared them, where “sufficient” is defined quantitatively. Moreover, maps along with other mapping platforms such as the iOS apps of ESRI, are not necessarily printed nor assembled in collections such as at- MapQuest, and OpenSeaMap (using the open source map data of lases which often have a common theme such as the display of par- OpenStreetMap), as well as Bing Maps and Nokia Maps for which ticular attributes like crops, landuse, rainfall, etc. Instead, maps are no iOS app exists and thus the corresponding mobile web versions produced in a custom made manner to display some specific spatial are used. relationship rather than in groups, and most often in units of one. The rise of the use of the world wide web and the ease with which Categories and Subject Descriptors documents can be accessed, regardless of their physical location, has had a profound impact on the accessibility of maps and their H.2.8 [Database Applications]: Spatial databases and GIS; H.5.2 customized generation and use. People don’t hesitate for a moment [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces in deciding whether or not they need a map, and, in fact, the results General Terms of many search queries are often accompanied by a map when the result involves some location information. The results can be viewed Design, Human Factors, Performance dynamically, unlike atlases which are usually static, meaning that Keywords changes can be made through actions such as browsing (e.g., [18, 29, 30, 34]) or manipulating what is termed a spatial spreadsheet [20]. Mobile Applications, Mapping, API, Smartphones Moreover, the web has made it easier to find and retrieve data by location (i.e., index it) regardless of whether the location is specified 1. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW explicitly or, increasingly more importantly, implicitly by virtue of the physical location of the user. The explosive growth of the Internet coupled with the increas- The explicit specification of location has traditionally been geo- ing use of location-enabled devices such as smart phones has led to metric (e.g., as latitude-longitude pairs of numbers). This is often an increasing awareness of the importance of location information, cumbersome as users don’t think of a location in this way, and often which traditionally has been presented with a map. In particular, for don’t know it in this way or have easy access to it, and, more impor- centuries, maps have been used to convey abstractions of spatial in- tantly, are not accustomed to communicate it to others in this way. formation in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing and familiar to Instead, they are used to specify a location textually (including ver- their users, often at the expense of accuracy, which, nevertheless, bally). A textual specification has a number of advantages. The first users have found to be acceptable often due to conformance with is that it is easy to communicate especially on smartphone devices where a textual (also increasingly verbal via speech recognition such ∗This work was supported in part by the National Science Founda- tion under Grants IIS-10-18475 and IIS-12-19023. as Siri on the Apple platform) input capability is always present. Another important advantage is that the text acts like a polymorphic †All images in this version of the paper have smartphone form factor type in the sense that one size fits all. In particular, depending on size so that readers can see exactly what is viewable on the device. The published version of the paper has fewer pages. the application which makes use of this information, a term such as In Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Mobile Geographic Information (MobiGIS’12), November 2012. Redondo Beach, CA, USA “Washington” can be interpreted both as a point or as an area, and apparent (e.g., [7, 17]). These include issues of completeness in the the user need not be concerned with this question. The drawback of sense of missing data (e.g., the towns of Stratford-upon-Avon and the textual specification of location data is that it is ambiguous. In Solihull in the UK are missing [3]) incorrectly placed data (e.g., the particular, there are many possible locations named "Washington" town of Uckfield in East Sussex in the UK is incorrectly placed [3]), and they must be resolved (i.e., "toponym resolution") [23]. More- mislabeling of locations such as marking “Airfield House” in Ireland over, in some cases we are not even sure that the term "Washington" as an airport when it is really a farm [3] and the Helsinki railway sta- denotes a location as it could be a reference to the name of a person tion as a park [7] as well as also locations in the US such as labeling (i.e., "toponym recognition") [22]. This can be the case when pro- much of the east side of Portland, OR as a park [7], and misplac- cessing documents such as newspaper articles, tweets, blogs, etc. ing the Washington Monument [6]; while others are of duplicate The process of understanding and converting location text to its ge- data (e.g., the disputed Senkaku (Japanese) and Diaoyu (Chinese) ometric specification is known as geotagging (e.g., [21]) and is be- Islands in the Pacific shown twice in Apple Maps — once as be- yond the scope of this paper. longing to Japan and once as belonging to China [3]). The source of The implicit specification of location is achieved either by the these errors could be attributed to multiple data providers where the IP address of the user’s computing platform (regardless of its size) appropriate checks for pruning and integrating duplicates were not or, increasingly more commonly, by an embedded GPS capability detected and applied due to conflicting positions. Still other issues which provides the user’s physical location. of accuracy can be attributed to the use of out of date data, simple Still another technique of location specification that is increas- positioning errors, as well as missing points of interest or wrong ingly coming into play with the rising popularity of touch inter- locations for them. faces is one that combines the implicit and explicit specifications Some other well-documented examples [11] of the shortcomings to yield an approximate specification. Observe that a map, coupled of Apple Maps versus Google Maps on iOS5 include the amount with the ability to pan and to vary the zoom level at which the world of map details where Google Maps on iOS5 has more street names, is viewed, provides an inherent granularity to the location specifi- building names, etc.

Load more