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soyagi @yiffit.net

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

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.

16 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.

  • 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.

16 comments