iOS users of Apple Maps or Google Maps: Why do you prefer one over the other?

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I use google for most things, for several reasons:
Google seems to have more data. Hours, reviews, photos, including usually more recent and frequent street views. They also have pretty good live traffic data
Access to offline maps. Nice to have a backup when you have no service. As far as I know, Apple Maps doesn’t offer offline maps except for your current route.
It syncs with my desktop use of google maps, including custom maps.
Apple Maps sucked when it first came out. Left a bad taste in my mouth
For navigation, unless I need an offline maps, I use Waze. Not part of Google maps, but owned by google.
- Access to offline maps. Nice to have a backup when you have no service. As far as I know, Apple Maps doesn’t offer offline maps except for your current route
  Apple Maps has that feature in the current beta version.
  Apple Maps sucked when it first came out. Left a bad taste in my mouth
  Maybe you should give it a second try. A brand new product is always going to be worse than an established one. Now that both products are established, it's a different story. It takes time to implement features like offline maps (in that case, it also takes time to negotiate intellectual property rights for the feature).
  Google Maps is still better at some things, but Apple Maps is better at most things. Exactly how much depends on your city... Apple tends to do particularly well in cities where they have a lot of users (a good mapping service needs data collection, and everyone who uses an iPhone is collecting data anonymously... even when you use Waze on your iPhone you are reporting realtime traffic data back to Apple).
  
  They should have had offline maps at launch. And Apple certainly has the resources to launch a very polished product from the start. They rushed it because the wanted to kill the Google partnership ASAP as Android grew.
  Frankly, it just adds to reasons I am pissed at Apple. Dark Sky was an incredible app, and even as Apple bought it and supposedly incorporated it into Apple Weather, Apple Weather is and remains hot garbage. The radar doesn’t load 90% of the time and the interface sucks. Try telling me Apple Weather is a new product.
  
  They only rushed it as google wanted user data and apple didn’t want to give them that. So yes it was rushed, but for all the right reasons.
  
  You really think it was solely Apple making a privacy stand and not being pissed at the competition?
  Heck, I’ve never even seen evidence of your claims. Not that Google doesn’t track stuff, but so does Apple. Someone was bragging to me about the data Apple collects in another post.
  
  Guess it was that and google not letting apple use Siri with it. Edit: turn by turn direction not Siri.
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/nov/05/apple-google-maps-iphone-dropped
  
  Google Latitude, the product mentioned in the article, was purely opt-in. There was no privacy issue.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Latitude
  It seems the issue was Google not offering the same maps experience through the API versus native Android, having to pay Google for it, not getting the location data Google was getting, and the general issue of working with a competitor.
  Still, Apple Maps launched as an inferior product, even worse than what they complained about Google offering. As such, many just added Google Maps back in as an app as soon as it was available.
  
  I won’t argue that it didn’t suck st launch, because Apple Maps did. Now depending on where you are at it is just as good or better in getting from A to B. It still lacks in searching for places to go and details on them.
  But as for the opt in/opt out? Google pretty much tracked you regardless
  https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/24/google-lawsuit-location-dc-privacy/
  I use Apple Maps as it is better integrated with the rest of my apple products and I just don’t trust google with my data. It gets me to where I need to be without issue.
  
  Yes, they track anonymous location data. The point is, Apple didn’t have a problem with it and was in fact not happy they didn’t get the data for themselves. In fact, Apple Maps does the same.
  The article you posted is nothing to do with pulling Google Maps as a default app and is, in fact, specific to Android.
  And that’s just it: I’m a Windows guy. Engineering programs just are not on Mac. My iPhone is my only Apple product. So Google is what better integrates for me.
  
  From the article:
  “His office began investigating how Google handles user location data after reporting from the Associated Press in 2018 found that many Google apps across iOS and Android recorded location data even when users have chosen privacy options that explicitly say they won’t”
  
  Ok, that was 2018. Apple dropped Google Maps in 2012.

64 comments