Linked List: June 29, 2018

Friday, 29 June 2018

Apple Is Rebuilding Maps From the Ground Up 

Matthew Panzarino, writing at TechCrunch:

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the launch of Apple Maps went poorly. After a rough first impression, an apology from the CEO, several years of patching holes with data partnerships and some glimmers of light with long-awaited transit directions and improvements in business, parking and place data, Apple Maps is still not where it needs to be to be considered a world class service.

Maps needs fixing.

Apple, it turns out, is aware of this, so it’s re-building the maps part of Maps.

It’s doing this by using first-party data gathered by iPhones with a privacy-first methodology and its own fleet of cars packed with sensors and cameras. The new product will launch in San Francisco and the Bay Area with the next iOS 12 Beta and will cover Northern California by fall.

Panzarino was granted some extraordinary access, including an interview with Eddy Cue and a ride in one of Apple’s sensor-packed street vans. The new maps sound great, but the big question is how long will it take to roll them out everywhere. All Apple will say is that they’re starting with San Francisco next week (for iOS 12 beta users) and “northern California this fall”.

See also: “Questions About Apple’s New Maps, Answered”.

Field Notes: ‘Three Missions’ Edition 

My thanks to Field Notes for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote their just-launched [Ed. Note: Come on, we don’t do puns here.] “Three Missions” edition celebrating America’s quest 50 years ago to land men on the moon — and bring them home.

Look, I’m a huge fan of Field Notes, and I have an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for the early NASA missions. (I feel America today is in dire need of something epic that the entire nation could get behind.) So I was bound to love this edition. But man, I’m telling you, the Field Notes crew went above and beyond on this set.

Each three-pack contains three memo books, one each for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The full-color printing quality is amazing, including “Orbital Silver” metallic ink. Each pack also includes three “Punch-Out and Assemble” mission-specific crew capsule models. I loved putting these things together — and I also love how they hearken back to the ’60s and ’70s, when punch-out model kits like these were common.

Where it gets downright nuts is the promotional video they made. They put in what must have been a ridiculous amount of planning, research, and driving to get about five seconds of footage of one of these models in the upper atmosphere in near-space.

You can buy the “Three Missions” three-pack for just $12.95. Start a quarterly subscription with “Three Missions” and your first shipment will also include two 3-Packs of their original Kraft Memo Books and their “Tenth Anniversary” 3-Pack. This special edition features very early iterations of what would eventually become Field Notes, with all their faults and weirdness.