2y ago

A decade after a disastrous launch, is Apple Maps finally good?

www.theguardian.com A decade after a disastrous launch, is Apple Maps finally good?

Engineers’ work on cycling and public transit have transformed the app – but rural directions remain a sticking point

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.

43 comments

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.
- Same here. I find myself going to Google Maps if I want to search for something and Apple Maps to navigate to whatever because actually searching for destinations in Apple Maps is usually buggered.

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?

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.
  
  Do we live on the same street? I have the exact same issue with Google vs Apple maps
- 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.
  
  Ugh that sucks. That really shouldn’t happen
  
  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.

- 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).

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...

I use it constantly in city and rural areas and find it works pretty well for me.
- Yeah, I’ve been using it for years and it’s been perfectly fine

My work phone is an iPhone and Apple maps has, more than once, put me.on the opposite side of the city from where I'm supposed to be.

I use Apple maps almost exclusively because it's easier with my car. Works great. The only thing I've noticed is when someone warns me there's a crash on my route, Google generally is already routing me around it while apple is sending me through it.

I use OSMAnd whenever I can

It’s pretty good. Using it locally as well as internationally (to France and back). Haven’t faced any issues, really. The only thing that is, to me at least, pants on the head levels of stupid, is not having cycling directions in The Netherlands of all places. Come on!!

I haven't used Apple maps because I have an android phone. But I can tell you that Google maps is steaming hot garbage now. The UI is so bloated and unintuitive.

It's better than it used to be, but still sometimes takes me on ridiculously circuitous routes.

I’ve been using it in lieu of google maps for quite some time now and it seems to work fine. It no longer assumes I’m The Blues Brothers and direct me to drive straight through shopping malls.

I deliver pizza and I'd say probably half my coworkers use it over Google. I've used both but I think I prefer Google maps.
I've actually really liked Bing Maps' routing options online but they don't have an app and don't seem to be expanding in that direction

I'm an android user and Apple maps has become a real problem numerous times in the past for me. My daily work involves me and multiple people traveling from one place to another and meeting at odd places (event production). And people using Apple maps can go from something simple as them not being able to find a destination in a search to being sent to the wrong location way far away, tricked into going down over way streets, and the most annoying, directed straight into bumper to bumper traffic. Ugh, everyone learns the first time but still...

It’s pretty impressive in my use across the US. Listings are not as good as Google Maps, but the directions are as good yet it looks much nicer.
However I spent a lot of time in West/South Asia. It’s functional here, but Google Maps takes a big leap here since user suggestions and corrections are implemented much quicker.
The Apple Maps team is very slow to react, which is unfortunate as many roads are places are way off.

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary 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 find it works great for navigation and the map quality is so much better than Google Maps. My only complaints are that it lacks extra features such as business information, reviews, etc. It's better than it used to be but they still use things like Yelp (ugh) at least in my area.

I recently purchased a car with CarPlay and use Apple Maps daily. I feel like I'm the only one that finds Apple Maps ok in my city and don't have issues. I do keep Waze on the phone as a backup though because I'm sure one day I will experience what everyone talks about. :D

I ended up using Apple maps when I was in Japan and it worked great, drove all over the place and it got me where I needed to go. I tried Google maps but it kept reading the kanji street names as if they were chinese and it was really confusing.

My SO just upgraded to an iPhone and she keeps talking about how much better the voice directions from CarPlay with Maps are. Sitting outside a fitting room right now, she said "Now these are my kind of directions" on the way here.
- Personally I’m a huge fan of TomTom Go. It’s free to try out, but costs money if you want to use it for anything but a negligible amount.
  TomTom has really dialed in the turn by turn directions over the years, and of all the navigation software I’ve tried over the years they still reign on top.
  And in a country littered with speed cameras I’m more than happy to cough up $20 a year for a family subscription.
  
  Apple Maps reports speed cameras - fixed and temporary (if drivers report the temporary ones).
  
  I haven't tried their app, but my car, unfortunately, has TT built in. Still looks and works as bad as it did 15 years ago on my Windows phone. I accidentally started it once when I didn't notice that my phone didn't connect via Android Auto. I'd rather Mitsubishi just included nothing when negotiations with Google failed.

43 comments