There was off ramp that changed 4 years ago near where I live. Google maps was correct, but Apple always would have you take the wrong exit and you had to loop back. With the most recent update this is finally fixed. However most people still saying that Apple Maps in unreliable. Having big issues like that for years can really damage people’s perception of your product long after it has been changed.
And yet it's still wrong often enough to be useless. I'm in near-Boston suburbs (Arlington), and every so often I give Apple Maps a try, and literally every single time I do it's just awful. I just asked it for directions from my work to my house, for example, and it routed me on a limited-access, no motor vehicle bicycle path.
I work in downtown Boston and my building's address isn't in Apple Maps. It "corrects" it to some place in JP, which is a residential address. There are several restaurants and and companies in this building, all marked as being in JP. I have submitted a lot of map corrections but all that does is move the location of the business on the map even though it still has the wrong address listed, and navigating to it still brings you to the wrong place.
Yeah, perceptions like that are really hard to shake, because those people are likely all using Google Maps. I found Apple Maps used to be less reliable than Google Maps, but would still use it. For places that I wasn't sure of, I'd often double check on Google Maps just to be sure. Lately I've been finding more and more instances where - when they differ - the Apple Maps result is the correct one.
It'll be interesting to see how Apple communicate this to iOS users, and if they'll go out of their way to get back users they've lost to Google Maps.
In my area (Santa Rosa, CA) Apple Maps is still worse than Google Maps. The routing is often very strange and it sometimes still can't find stores like OfficeDepot close by.
I can't speak for US but in Australia and UK it is so far behind Google. It feels like 1/3 of them are simply missing and a 1/3 of them are inaccurate in some way e.g. opening hours.
I don't know how Foursquare and Yelp who supply Apple are surviving right now with such inadequate data.
Years ago Apple maps got me really good. It told me to drive down a road, and then exit on what turned out to be an overpass. Which forced me into a very long round trip that went through a toll gate twice.
I've recently switched to using apple maps exclusively as much as possible, and TBH its gotten quite comparable to Google maps.
There are still remote places (e.g an address in a small town) which apple maps struggles to find, but for the most part within cities I find myself reaching more often for apple maps.
I'm also one of those people who struggles to translate navigation instructions on a map to real world turns.
So features such as highlighting and Stop signs & Traffic signals go a long way in helping me navigate safely.
How does he get those cutout comparison tiles exactly identical in perspective, position, and zoom level? Does he have some call that allows doing that?
Was wondering that myself. Presumably when you update your maps app or when the server updated, you have no more access to the old maps. Unless he took a whole lot of screenshots in preparation?
The URL to an Apple Maps tile includes a version number and numerous style options. It's possible the author knows about historical tile versions and updates the URL to fetch older versions, or has been archiving Apple's tiles periodically.
There is still too much use of green. At least for me, I think green = park. I live near the end of a bypass and on apple maps it looks like a big park. I don't think I would want to go have a picnic on the slope of an off-ramp.
Can someone tell me where did Apple get all this new data from? Was it taken from OSM, bought from Here Maps or some other provider or just built on their own from sattelites and on the ground surveys?
Previously they licensed TomTom's data and tried to fill in gaps with data from OpenStreetMap and others.
Now they have decided to build their own data set from scratch.
>So a new effort was created to begin generating its own base maps, the very lowest building block of any really good mapping system. After that, Apple would begin layering on living location data, high-resolution satellite imagery and brand new intensely high-resolution image data gathered from its ground cars until it had what it felt was a “best in class” mapping product.
I appreciate the work this author does to compile these posts, but man, every time I visit his site, I get frustrated that there’s no way to stop the map animations to inspect in detail what has actually changed. Invariably, I get frustrated by the constant flashing back and forth and just close the tab without getting the information I’d actually like to get.
Readit News
It'll be interesting to see how Apple communicate this to iOS users, and if they'll go out of their way to get back users they've lost to Google Maps.
I'm based in the UK, YMMVI can't speak for US but in Australia and UK it is so far behind Google. It feels like 1/3 of them are simply missing and a 1/3 of them are inaccurate in some way e.g. opening hours.
I don't know how Foursquare and Yelp who supply Apple are surviving right now with such inadequate data.
I'm also one of those people who struggles to translate navigation instructions on a map to real world turns. So features such as highlighting and Stop signs & Traffic signals go a long way in helping me navigate safely.
But Apple Maps exists as an OSX app so you could possibly use Apple Script to open the app, navigate to a point and take a photo.
The author also has their email address listed on their site if we'd like a definite answer.
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Edit: Looks like MapKit provides an easy way to take snapshots: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/snapshotsNow they have decided to build their own data set from scratch.
>So a new effort was created to begin generating its own base maps, the very lowest building block of any really good mapping system. After that, Apple would begin layering on living location data, high-resolution satellite imagery and brand new intensely high-resolution image data gathered from its ground cars until it had what it felt was a “best in class” mapping product.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-f...
That TechCrunch article has a good overview of their old and new mapping systems.
https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/issues
Apple does use OSM data, but only in some countries (Belarus for example IIRC), as allowed by https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Community_Guidel...
https://www.justinobeirne.com/new-apple-maps