iPhone Map App Steers Users Across Airport Runway

Status
Not open for further replies.

g00fysmiley

Distinguished
Apr 30, 2010
476
0
18,930
such a good example of how apple users will follow the device and maker despite all good reasoning saying they should not... you must blindly trust the apple!
 

bustapr

Distinguished
Jan 23, 2009
550
0
18,930
honestly, you have to question the peoples intelligence if they just follow a gps without paying attention to where they are driving. Youd think Apple would invest a little more into updating their app with actual road info. seems as if the app just picks out what looks like a road on the map and throws you at it. if a route isnt registered as a an actual drivable street, then theres no reason to send people in that direction.
 

mihaimm

Distinguished
Apr 6, 2009
33
0
18,580
Good airport security that you can actually get on the driveway with your car! This is an international airport... you'd think they can afford a fence.
 

TeraMedia

Distinguished
Jan 26, 2006
185
0
18,630
They need those tire-poppers like you see at the entrances of rental car places, where driving in the wrong direction means you have to call AAA. Combine that with an employee badge scanner, and there you go.

If SJ were alive, he'd say something like "you're following it wrong. The App isn't supposed to be taken literally, but rather only to provide a suggestion for an optional route to the approximate destination to which you want to travel." Problem is, some younger people these days struggle immensely without their GPSes. They even seem to have difficulty reading a map, or determining their location or direction/orientation. I say this having often been the one called upon to rescue them.
 

unksol

Distinguished
Sep 12, 2011
473
0
19,210
Who says it was younger people?

"but did not tell drivers to cross the main runway in-between."
"Once the drivers reached the runway and saw the terminal on the other side, naturally they drove straight ahead and crossed the runway."

The map put them in the wrong spot, and apples being ridiculously slow about fixing it, but it doesn't sound like it was the directions. More like they got to where the directions said to go. They stopped. Weren't where they wanted to be, looked around, and then thought "oh there is the terminal, I'll just drive across a runway".

The Apps bad, but this is all the users. if you're using turn by turn directions to get around in something like an airport anyway that's enough evidence. Maybe you use it to assist you getting into the airport, but once there you read the signs.
 

house70

Distinguished
Apr 21, 2010
1,465
0
19,310
LOL. This is hilarious.
Not only iOS is insecure (see repeated hacks that get fixed, only to introduce more holes in security), but individual apps suck, as well.
Good luck trying to uninstall this flop.
 

EvilMonk

Distinguished
Mar 10, 2010
20
0
18,560
and if you still get on the runway with your car you still deserve to be opted out by darwinism... damn tomshardware its getting ridiculous to read articles like that. the primary school newspaper in my neighborhood is more serious now :eek:
 

JOSHSKORN

Distinguished
Oct 26, 2009
952
0
18,930
I would say Apple just needs to give up and give into Google, thus using Google Maps/Navigation but I love being entertained by Apple Maps fails. What's next? Apple drives its users off of a cliff? I'll put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Maybe I'll get an iPhone just to see if Apple Maps can get me driving directions from California to Europe. That shouldn't be too hard, right? Just drive across the Atlantic Ocean.
 

brucek2

Distinguished
Dec 31, 2008
21
0
18,560
Dear TSA: If you're going to pat me and every other passenger down before boarding a plane, you might also want to prevent terrorists from just being able to drive up the airplane or gate with a truck bomb.

Its fun to pick on the defective map app, but bottom line is it just should not be possible for random people to be driving on a runway with 737s regardless of what their map tells them.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.