Filed under: iPhone
Subway maps available for iPhone
OK, one subway map (NYC) is available for the iPhone. The fact is, Little Bill is having a bit of trouble at iSubwayMaps (formerly iPodSubwayMaps). When importing his huge library of maps, he noticed that the iPhone resizes any image to its native resolution of 320×480 at 160dpi. With only one zoom level available, the detail required by a subway map suffers. So, he's asking Photoshop wizards for advice. If you've got a quick solution to share, drop Bill a line. You'll be helping all of us!
Thanks, Little Bill. And good luck!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
drmongoose said 10:55AM on 7-08-2007
don't just tap the map, make it bigger by pinching it bigger. I do this on the google maps app on the iPhone and it works great, same for safari. pinch it big and don't tap.
Reply
Mark 2000 said 11:15AM on 7-08-2007
This is unnecessary. Just look up the transit's web site before you get on. They have plenty of maps and schedules.
Reply
Digger said 11:22AM on 7-08-2007
Dugg:
http://digg.com/apple/Subway_maps_now_available_for_iPhone/
Reply
escargot said 11:25AM on 7-08-2007
I thought the point of the multi-touch display was that you can drag and resize pictures on the fly. Should be perfect for maps!
Reply
jmg said 11:33AM on 7-08-2007
of course you can zoom in to the picture of the map. The problem Little Bill is dealing with is that iPhone automatically downsizes the map file so you lose the necessary resolution to zoom into it and still be able to read it.
Reply
yood said 11:41AM on 7-08-2007
Hello, how about saving them as a vector pdf, that will give you infinite resolution and should be supported natively on the iPhone. Or not?
Reply
Mister Grundle said 11:44AM on 7-08-2007
A good solution might be to save the files as PDFs and either access them via teh intrawebs (embedded in a web page) or, better yet, have the pdf emailed to your phone. Then it can be browsed even when you don't have an edge signal. Like under ground. In a subway tunnel.
My $0.02
Reply
Invader J said 12:10PM on 7-08-2007
It's actually iTunes that does the scaling, and does a piss poor job of it. My photos, from 2MP to 10MP, about 80% of them come out horribly dithered on the iPhone. It's our 4GB or 8GB, I'm hoping that Apple updated iTunes to provide control over the optimization that iTunes is doing to photos. That beautiful screen is going to complete waste with this low quality processing!!!
Reply
mnewsom said 12:11PM on 7-08-2007
I've been messing around with this for Chicago. I've had some luck chopping pdfs into quarters and accessing them in Safari. For instance,
original: http://web.mac.com/mnewsomchicago/iWeb/Site/Blank_files/55-2.pdf
cropped: http://web.mac.com/mnewsomchicago/iWeb/Site/Blank_files/55.pdf
The automator workflow I put together involves converting the original pdf to a jpeg and specifiying the new dpi. this may have some bearing on how far you can zoom.
Reply
Greenline said 12:14PM on 7-08-2007
Well HELLO TUAW, that is almost 24 hours between posts? What gives?
Reply
Charles said 12:15PM on 7-08-2007
The solution is obvious. Put them on a web page at high rez, either as a pic or a PDF. You can zoom in and rotate the pic or PDF if it's on a web page. Unfortunately, this means the user has to download the map each time it's viewed, but this shouldn't be a huge obstacle since iPhones are online 100% of the time, and that's how Apple intends apps to work, as online apps.
Alternately the site could email PDFs of the maps to the user, the only problem here is when viewing a PDF email attachment, you can not rotate the screen. I personally find this hugely annoying. The other problem is that you'd have to go fishing through your email for the map every time you want to use it. Much preferable to make it an online web page and bookmark it for easy access. Once the page is loaded, you can put it in a Safari tab and the iPhone will continue to display it even if you're on a train underground without net access.
Reply
Modano said 12:29PM on 7-08-2007
I just downloaded both halves of the MTA's subway map: http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/submap.htm
loaded those into iPhoto and that's it. They are a little blurry but I think this beats having 20+ images in the mix, even if they are clear.
Reply
Charles said 1:48PM on 7-08-2007
I looked at Modano's link to the online MTA map on my iPhone. The image looked great and zoomed in quite close, but was still readable. Then I loaded the PDF. Wow was it slow (even after downloading via WiFi). It took ages to scroll or zoom, hanging for 5 or 6 seconds each time. I could not zoom in very close, not even close enough to read the small text clearly. If I tried to zoom in closer, it would spring back to a larger size. I noticed when it loaded the PDF it said something about converting the PDF. Apparently there are still some mysterious behaviors in the iPhone, PDF resolution and conversion is one of them. I'm going to do more research.
Reply
Little Bill said 2:53PM on 7-08-2007
Charles, the solution isn't obvious because the iPhone isn't online all the time. The point of iSubwayMaps is that the iPhone isn't online when it's underground in a subway. You get no service. Otherwise yes, it'd be as simple as putting them all on a web page at a high resolution.
The PDF idea is interesting, assuming everyone's got their iPhone set up with the, IMHO, dismally bad email system. It'd be nice if we could access PDFs like we can photos.
Reply
Matt said 3:24PM on 7-08-2007
I've gotten an email from an iPhone user that the maps at http://zsubway.com/ work just fine on the iphone. Can anyone confirm this?
Reply
chrisjur said 3:25PM on 7-08-2007
I've run into the same issue myself, but it's not the end of the world. I first uploaded the NYC subway map to my Blackberry Pearl, which my iPhone replaced and resolution was great. Zoomed resolution with the iPhone is poor, but is still readable - I used it just last night.
Reply
John Sample said 4:02PM on 7-08-2007
Aaaarrrgh!!! Stop.
This is a desire to do something that the iPhone is more than capable of doing, but the lock-downs have prevented (or made it tricky). So; we need a workaround until 1.1 or 1.2.
The workaround (I'm working on it and will post it shortly) Take the map in question, and cut it into the 4x5 grid of thumbnail previews. In other words use the photo-album-view as the first level of zoom. The main post suggests a photoshop solution, and thats exactly what it is.
Reply
docnilay said 4:53PM on 7-08-2007
Just "installed" zsubway onto my iPhone. Its a series of hundreds of pictures of "bits" of the subway map that sync's through the photo section of iTunes. personally, I find this useless in this format, as I cannot scroll across large swaths of the map, you literally see a small piece of the map and 3 or 4 stops. You have to back up and load a new picture to see where the line continues.
Not intuitive or useful in this format for the iPhone, IMHO.
- Nilay
Reply
John Sample said 5:22PM on 7-08-2007
Ok, here, give this a shot.... Twenty 320x480 jpg's that you can stick in iphoto, and sync to the iPhone. This gives you the proof-of-concept of how to get this done, you might let the iSubway people know this is the way they should do it for iPhone, at least till Apple lets you import high-res without downsampling...
http://homepage.mac.com/quibbler/subway.zip
(In my experience, however you kinda have to re-order them like a giant puzzle iPhoto doesn't seem to keep them in the right order. Importing row-by-row works best it seems).
Reply
Ryan P. Mack said 6:22PM on 7-08-2007
I was just in the Apple Store playing around with na iPhone today and they had a demo email account with some messages in it on the phones. In one of the emails they had what looked like a vectorized PDF of the subway map for Paris.
I was able to double tap and pinch in/out with no loss of resolution.
You could just keep a special folder of this kind of stuff in your email for when you needed it.
Wish I had this when I was travelling in Europe last summer.
Reply