Archived version: https://archive.ph/hguLn
Excerpt (and context):
Apple Maps’ offering might surprise people who remember its disastrous launch in 2012, which the Guardian described as the company’s “first significant failure in years”. Users were more than furious – they were lost, sometimes dangerously so. In Australia, police had to rescue tourists from the huge Murray-Sunset national park, after Maps placed the city of Mildura in the wrong place by more than 40 miles. Some of the motorists located by police had been stranded for 24 hours without food or water. In Ireland, ministers had to complain directly to Apple after a cafe and gardens called “Airfield” was designated by the service as an actual airport.
But mostly the map was just glitchy and unhelpful, its directions always a little off kilter. Users revolted and Apple made a rare retreat, allowing Google Maps to be used as the default on many iPhone apps and apologizing for the product.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But with one earbud in and Siri activated, you can have a friendly voice guide you through a foreign city, drifting you towards cycle lanes and safer routes and navigating often complex one-way systems.
In my hometown of London, where a lot of cycling routes are pathways in woods or through reservoirs, it has a habit of sending you down these dark and sometimes dangerous paths at night when the streets are much quicker and mostly empty.
In the post-apocalyptic, post-internet world in HBO’s The Last Of Us, there’s a scene in which the main character Joel, having spent weeks traversing an icy wasteland, happens upon a small cottage inhabited by an old couple.
As Cue himself recognises, “there are really only two mapmakers left in the world, in ourselves and Google” – and that monopoly of information, says Clancy Wilmott, a professor specialising in digital cartographies at Berkley, has consequences.
For their part, the Apple Maps engineers I spoke with acknowledged that they were more reliant on AI, aerial photography and existing data in rural settings and were focusing on expanding to more cities.
I’d say: ‘Once you’re on Ascension and you see the brick column, that driveway right after is mine.’ We’ve been working hard on that as well,” Cue says, adding that the future might be Siri telling you to “make a left at the yellow house”.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Betteridge’s law (of headlines) is an adage that states “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
Exception that proves the rule? Cause yeah, Apple Maps is actually a Google Maps competitor now, which is great.
It really isn’t so long as they’re using Yelp for reviews.
For just driving directions, sure. Google Maps is far more feature rich and I frequently end up regressing to Google whenever I need more info.
Really? Google reviews is manipulated horribly. The underlying project, the maps, Apple isn’t far behind and in some cases I’ve noticed it’s actually much better.
If you live in some developed part of the world, sure. But it’s garbage in my country. Still shows my house location to be in a middle of a national park which is like 100 km away.
Appple maps sucks outside of the US. I can’t even get cycling directions anywhere in canada. It barely provides even the most basic driving directions. Probably the most useless app on my phone. I don’t even know why they include it outside of the US.
is Apple Maps finally good?
No. Definitely not “good.” It used to be terrible and maybe isn’t so bad anymore, though.
For instance, around here there are a lot of private driveways; farming roads, dirt paths on private property, things like that. Apple would route me through those, I would mark them as not a road, they would be reviewed, and a month later they would reappear on the map. Why would I trust a map that jeeps trying to route me down a private washed out dirt path?
I was going to a meeting and typed in the address they provided. Apple popped up a location, but it was about an hour away in the wrong direction. It turns out that Apple didn’t know the correct address, so they helpfully corrected it to a different number, street, and city.
I needed to get to sports practice at a community center, so I put in the address. Apple took me to a literal empty field ten minutes away from the actual location.
If that’s the best they can do, why would I ever trust them? Maybe it’s better, but it was so bad for so long that I don’t even want to try it again.
In the Netherlands, I want to say that Apple Maps is actually better than Google… but only if you’re driving.
For some insane reason they don’t have biking maps here (or at least in all the places I’ve tried) which is such an enormous blunder.
I was in the Netherlands a couple weeks ago and I really liked using Apple for public transit. I had to open the NS app a few times for some more detailed route info but overall it was a nice experience.
I also had issues with Google’s walking directions having a hard time figuring out where I was and what direction I was going but Apple was fine.
Tbf, I was only there for a week so I might not have had a full experience.