- cross-posted to:
- apple@lemmy.ml
- openstreetmap@lemmy.ml
- technology
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.
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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.”
I’m in the middle of a fairly populated US suburb, and Apple maps still sends anyone trying to find my house 3 blocks away, so I’m going to say that it’s not “finally good.”
As soon as I get those people to use Google Maps, they’re on their way without issues. I can see why Apple Maps might make the mistake that they do, but the fact is that Google Maps doesn’t and hasn’t ever in the last 15 years. I recently had a bunch of contractors around for quotes on some renovations and the iOS users ended up lost every time while the Android users never had a problem.
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!
The only way Apple Maps is good is if you put in a million requests to fix all of the issues with mislabeled business, incorrect routing, nonexistent places, etc. Only then would I consider Apple Maps to be on par with Google Maps. Since I have an iPhone and like the interface I tend to use Apple Maps more often, but the terrible search (which routinely doesn’t list easy to find locations), awful routing (it loves to take the express lane which has different exits without providing a toggle not to use these lanes), and out of date mapping data (I’ve gone to multiple nonexistent locations) makes me go back to Google Maps every time. I will admit I do love their 3D maps and street view which I find to be higher quality than Google Maps. Besides this and the interface, Apple Maps is inferior to Google Maps.
I’ve anecdotally had a fine time using Apple Maps since I switched a few years ago. Just wanted to mention there is a setting to avoid tolls; Settings->Maps->Driving will bring up a toggle. It’ll still give you the option, but it won’t default if it’s the shortest route.
I’m fine with toll roads, however, I would like to avoid express lanes (usually two lanes of a toll road with extra tolls so it’s less congested) and there doesn’t seem to be a toggle for that. I will admit that for some cities Apple Maps is on par or better than Google maps and for others it’s the opposite. For my city Apple Maps just doesn’t get the job done.
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.
It’s a superior visualisation of public transit routes but otherwise not great.
I use Apple Maps for directions and Google maps when I want to “explore” or look for restaurants. Discovery on Apple Maps is still awful and requires you to have Yelp installed. On the flipside though they beat Google to having intersection lights and stop signs on the map while driving. The overall experience and animations are also far smoother on Apple Maps which is what makes me use it for driving. Google maps, like many Google products has a low framerate for its animations.