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.
I switched over to Apple Maps from Google Maps around 5 years ago. Still go back for certain kinds of details, but in general Apple’s offering works better for navigation for me.
Same. AM has been terrific for a long time now. And I’d say for directions and mapping, AM is essentially the same as GM. Where AM really shines is the quality, speed and responsiveness, especially when it comes to features like street view. The quality is insane compared to GM.
Frustratingly, the two are good at different things.
Apple Maps is mostly better at announcing driving routes. Routing quality is similar - they provide different, but similar-quality routes. Public transport routes are superior because - shockingly - they seem to have more accurate data than Google Maps. Google Maps is still superior in the specific location of a business within a narrow area. Apple Maps has more errors where the marker is on the building, but Google Maps has it at the entrance.
At the same time, local search is terrible. Their partners’ and their proprietary data is inadequate and it seems businesses don’t know they could/should care and don’t maintain listings. I’ve submitted several changes in my local area and while they are usually accepted, some of them ended up reverted a while later. They seem to be working on this and hopefully they’ll eventually catch up - but I’m not sure how, if businesses don’t maintain their listings!
Ironically, my home address is more consistent in Apple Maps than Google Maps. There are multiple accepted spellings of my street name, and which one you use with my house number yields a different location on my street in Google maps. Apple Maps always gives the correct location.
It’s a problem when I order food to be delivered because sometimes their system will auto correct the address I provide to one of the spellings that Google Maps thinks is way down the street from where I actually live.
Here in Norway they had a solid regression last year.
I mean in some areas the maps are about as accurate as your 2004 sat-nav, if you ever had one.
Roads that where there are missing, outlines are suddenly grossly imprecise.
Find my shows meaningless address information with a random number at the end.
Honestly have no idea wtf is going on.
Probably one of the European mapping companies demanded more money than Apple was willing to pay. Report all the problems, they’ll get fixed one by one. Apple will also detect problems automatically by comparing traffic data collection to their map.
I was on vacation recently and Apple Maps gave a weirdly circuitous route from our hotel to a restaurant. I checked Google Maps and it showed the direct route I expected, so I went with that.
Google Maps routed me on to a street that was closed due to construction, Apple Maps was smart enough to route around the construction.
I expect general parity between Apple and Google Maps, I had not expected Apple to have better data.
Something like that is usually because of users reporting the road being closed, not Apple or Google actively doing something better than the other
Totally anecdotal, but I’ve reported a couple of non-existant roads to Google. I occasionally check because I’m curious if they ever updated them, but Google still tells me to drive through a walking path and walk through a fenced off private property. It’s been years at this point. I don’t have an iPhone so I don’t have any experience with Apple maps, but maybe they’re better at taking user reports into account?
not good, sometimes still trying to use it and get lost from time to time
Counter-point. I have used Maps over the past 8-ish years exclusively on three thousands-of-miles cross-country (US) excursions on my motorcycle, I use it to locate unpaved/off-beaten path roads to take, and I use it regularly as my local way finder and when I am in unfamiliar cities. Not once has it lead me astray…
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.
I don’t remember this stuff at all, but it is quite amazing that a) Apple Maps was that bad and b) people blindly followed it’s directions to that extent without checking a real map or just applying some common sense based on the signage along major roads.
The official government maps that are that bad.
For example we used to have a road running along the edge of our property which didn’t exist. It was planned and budgeted 60 years ago but they never built it. The non-existent road was about 15km long and everyone who lived along it had no alternative. There was just a bush track which ran through private property (across a dozen properties).
