Last year's article from the same author [1] about Goggle Maps' use of photogrammetry and other building scanning techiques was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting HN submissions ever (its comment section[2] is also worth a read).
He's written multiple articles about maps, even before that one: https://www.justinobeirne.com. He's very good at spotting details in maps–IIRC he worked on Apple's maps team before, so this isn't particularly surprising.
Sadly he took them down, disappeared into the memory hole the way so many Apple employee's work has a way of doing. I'm glad he's out and writing in public again.
For some reason I thought he is some random guy just passionate about maps, I was actually looking for donate me buttons on the site because I love reading his articles whenever they are posted to HN.
Complaining gets results. I'm a total believer in negativity. You could say I'm positive about it.
What I mean by "relentless" is that this article in the OP covers the changes in detail for the first half, but the second is the same content as his last piece:
But while this one has a lot of specific speculation, the Google article is about how cool they are, links to PR and basically says "look at all those buildings, they must have done it with computers". I suspect someone who worked at Google wouldn't have said that.
"...it’s a dramatically different map from before, with a staggering amount of vegetation detail"
"...what’s really remarkable about this new vegetation detail it how deep it all goes—all the way down to the strips of grass and vegetation between roads"
"...some of these upgraded buildings are spectacularly detailed"
"...Apple is filling its map with so many of them that Google now looks empty in comparison"
"...Apple hasn’t just closed the gap with Google—but has, in many ways, exceeded it"
Maybe not! The last half of the article is all about the faults; the closing line of the article (before footnotes) questions whether or not Apple is making the right maps at all.
And the footnotes are relentlessly negative about Apple:
"These building height regressions are surprising because they contradict TechCrunch’s claim that Apple’s buildings are now 'more accurate'."
"Consider that just two years after it started adding algorithmically extracted buildings to its map, Google had already added the majority of the U.S.’s buildings. But after four years, Apple has only added buildings in 64% of California and 9% of Nevada."
"All of this new detail is not without cost. In many areas, Apple Maps’s roads are now harder to see than before."
"Part of the reason why Yelp’s place database is so much smaller than Google’s is because Yelp is largely focused on businesses with consumer-facing storefronts. And you can see the consequences of this on Apple’s map, especially with government-related places."
"Or maybe the issue is that Apple’s extraction algorithms just aren’t as good as Google’s yet?"
"Another advantage of the Local Guides program is that Google owns everything that’s contributed, including all of the photos."
"For instance, here’s the Six Flags Great America theme park that’s just seven miles away from Apple’s headquarters." (With a shot of Great America lacking detail in Apple's map.)
"It’s odd that Apple refuses to track trip start/end points but sees nothing wrong with mapping tennis and baskball courts in people’s backyards."
"It’s almost as if Google is saying this is now a map of destinations—all of the places it’ll be able to take you to, someday soon."
"I think Google’s ambitions here run far deeper than being just another Yelp or Foursquare. If you zoom out on everything Google is doing, you see the makings of a much larger, end-to-end travel platform."
It's kind of interesting -- it's as if halfway through he forgot that he was writing about improvements in Apple's mapping and decided he was writing about the promise of Google's mapping as a new kind of platform.
But either way, this is a classic rhetoric. It's the bit where you praise a specific thing to the skies, then pull back and reveal how in the big picture that thing doesn't matter so much. Note that I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm just saying that this is not, over all, an article that praises Apple.
"led the development" pretty much implies he's not working there anymore.
Reading the article it's also pretty clear he doesn't have any insider-insights, particularly with the speculation about building shapes and how Apple supposedly outsourced that, as a manual task, to a couple of thousand Indians.
I doubt an Apple insider would be too keen on speculations like that because if it turns out to be true it would be kind of bonkers.
Last year's article from the same author [1] about Goggle Maps' use of photogrammetry and other building scanning techiques was, in my opinion, one of the most interesting HN submissions ever (its comment section[2] is also worth a read).
[1] https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653