MAPS program is inaccurate

I have the same problem - it shows I am located on the next street from where I am, and also gives the wrong address (I would have thought that since I have my correct address in Contacts, Maps would be able to get it right . . . . ?). I can't find anywhere that I can edit it

Same here both on Maps in Mavericks and on my iPad with IOS7, it would appear that Apple would like me to move next door......lol

If you have followed the dismal history of Apple Maps to date, you wi see that it is still a work in progress and using other Maps such as Google will give you a great deal more accuracy. Apple's Map Makers are a bit lost themselves!! lol

Cheers

Pete

Maps on Mac locates you using known Wi-Fi networks only. It does not use GPS or cell tower info as these modes of communications are not built into the computer.

So the location will not show as accurately as they would on say your iPhone.

If there are no know Wi-fi networks close to you, then it will not show you a particulary accurate location.

To compare the difference between using the iPhone and Wi-Fi only, change the phone to Airplane mode and then turn only the Wi-fi back on. Open Maps in both Mac and the iPhone, and you should see that the two will show in the same place. Turning Airplane mode off again, should show the accuracy on the phone increase as it is using its other resources again.

If they two are still significantly dfferent when both in Wi-Fi, then there may be a problem.

I didn't realize that your location was by a wifi network. Our wifi network is set to a stealth mode which is probably why location services pick up my neighbors network, which isn't "cloaked".

Yes, it will probably have an effect.

Known Wi-fi networks are networks that are known to Apple, not what your device can necessarily 'see' around it. So cities will probably be or become very accurate over time if not already because of the density and usage, where suburbs and regional towns will take longer.

I'm not sure how networks become known over time.

I know that iOS7 has some system location services such as 'Popular Near Me', 'Wi-Fi Networking', and 'Frequent Locations', so I would expect that these services are used to crowd source this type of data thereby increasing the acuracy over time.

Maps on Mac OSX is based solely on network information. This means if any local WiFi radios are nearby that it can recognize then this can place you in an approximate location. If there aren't any location services can also use your IP address. The way this works is even less reliable. But essentially from any one IP address a location can be approximated down to a city or neighborhood. If you combine the two you can then narrow things down more by pinging various systems in nearby neighborhood that are known and extrapolate relative distance from each to also help narrow down the system location. All of this is very subjective to outside interference. Without a GPS this stuff is very **** accurate.

Also keep in mind that running a wifi network in stealth mode does nothing for security. It might keep you neighbors from knowing your wifi name but it won't keep any network professional out.

But, given the inaccuracy, isn't there a way to go into Maps and put it right? There must be a way to edit this - I can't believe that we have to rely on big brother without any recourse!

I have this problem. My house is at the corner of two roads. Maps insists it has an address in the wrong road. I have tried continually to make a correction but it always reverts to incorrect details. That's in Mavericks on a MacBook Pro and on iphone 4S with io7. To whom can I communicate my displeasure?

firesidefromellenville wrote:

I didn't realize that your location was by a wifi network. Our wifi network is set to a stealth mode which is probably why location services pick up my neighbors network, which isn't "cloaked".

How else would the software be able to find your location (approximate)? Macs do not have a GPS radio in them, including the Macbook lines. In my personal experience Maps gives me a range of addresses, not a specific one. I also think Apple should provide a means to correct this apporximate location to the actual location. This feature would not be useful on a laptop, however, since a laptop is portable by definition and you might want it to know you are at a Starbucks instead of home.

Maccanna wrote:

I have this problem. My house is at the corner of two roads. Maps insists it has an address in the wrong road. I have tried continually to make a correction but it always reverts to incorrect details. That's in Mavericks on a MacBook Pro and on iphone 4S with io7. To whom can I communicate my displeasure?

http://www.apple.com/feedback

petermac87 wrote:

If you have followed the dismal history of Apple Maps to date, you wi see that it is still a work in progress and using other Maps such as Google will give you a great deal more accuracy. Apple's Map Makers are a bit lost themselves!! lol

Cheers

Pete

Cute. Real cute. Except for the fact that Google maps on a Mac can't locate you accurately either do to no GPS radios or cell radios on the platform. We're talking about the OS X version of Maps, not the iOS version. Finding your location accurately on a Mac is not possible because maps uses Wi-Fi network databases to get an approximate location only. Or didn't you know that?

When I opened Maps for the first time on my iMac a dialog box opened asking me to turn on Wi-Fi so it could find me. It took quite awhile but it got pretty close in time, within a few addresses.

firesidefromellenville wrote:

I didn't realize that your location was by a wifi network. Our wifi network is set to a stealth mode which is probably why location services pick up my neighbors network, which isn't "cloaked".

A non-broadcast SSID doesn't matter for these proprietary wifi-node location databases like Apple, Google and others maintain. They detect wifi nodes by "war driving", literally cruising through cities and towns with wifi-detectiong gear in cars (or in googles case, on all sorts of mobile vehicles from bicycles to hired pedestrians), and that gear will still detect the hardware address of any broadcasting wifi node, regardless of SSID setting. The database then associates the wifi node with the nearest physical address.

Nowadays, Apple and Google use their mobile Operating Sytems to also collect data via location system services (things like iOS's Frequent Locations does collect wifi-node data as you move around, and sends it back to Apple to update wifi-node hardware address locations, or to add new nodes as discovered).

In your case, it could well be that yours has simply not been picked up yet and added to anyones database (companies buy and sell this information as well as collect it themselves). Or, if in an area with a high density of wifi-nodes, many may get "mapped" to the same physical address as the signal intensity is not clean or clear enough to separate each node with a discrete or different address.

Either way you slice it, wifi-node locations are an approximation, and often a pretty crude one at that.

P.S., reportedly (Tom's Hardware is where I think I read this awhile ago), if you name your wifi node something like "mywifi_nomap", google will actively exclude it from their location database, but I've not seen that widely confirmed in tech news sites.