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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

I accidentally used Apple Maps once as I was going to a (new) doctor's office. I realized I was using Apple maps halfway through my drive and I joked with myself that it wouldn't bring me to the right place. I was heading to a fairly large medical complex in Orange County (CA) and I sort-of had an idea of where I was going anyway, but boy, was I wrong.

According to Apple maps, the doctor's office was literally in the middle of a field. I missed it the first time around (drove past it for a few miles, following my GPSs instructions) and then soon realized that I was already going through residential areas.

Never again, Apple. For context, this was 3 months ago. This doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve. My guess is that Apple just gave up.

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I was using Apple Maps a few weeks ago, and wanted to get something to eat. I saw a place called “Shake Shack” and decided to go there. Not only did it not exist, I checked online, there has never been a Shake Shack in my town, there’s only a handful in my country.

How Apple Maps got that wrong, I honestly don’t know. Where did the data come from, and why is it that incorrect?

I reported it, and it’s since been removed, but I can’t do that for everything in my town, and there’s so much missing; I can’t report that, or edit the map like you can on OpenStreetMap.

Honestly, why does Apple Maps exist? Either it needs to be like Google Maps (and just work), or be like OpenStreetMap and let Apple fans edit the map and get more involved.

I gave them a lot of patience and understanding years ago (mapping the world is hardly an easy task), but my patience has run out. It’s been a shit show from day one and I honestly don’t see that changing anytime soon.

It seems they wanted to be Google Maps but failed. You raise a very interesting point with OpenStreetMap - just like WebKit, Apple could just have put some of their billions into boosting that effort, I agree that this would have been way more productive, especially given how engaged smartphone users are with their maps.

They did (partially) use OpenStreetMap at the start of their mapping efforts: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2012/10/02/apple-maps/ . No idea what their current involvement is though.

Apple have people working on OSM; they're just secretive about it as they are with most things.

Not sure what you are saying with the comparison to Webkit. As Webkit only became what it is because someone actually took Apple to task over the Khtml (K as in KDE, used to power their Konqueror browser) engine license.

And even then the first response from Apple was a plain source dump with zero documentation on the changes they have made, that made it basically impossible to roll the changes back into Khtml.

Would not surprise me that this was one of the reasons Apple went to work purging GPL licensed code from their offerings.

Google's not infallible either. I was looking at a map and noticed that it labelled a restaurant called OPH in Chanhassen, MN. The Original Pancake House is one of my favorite restaurants and is sometimes abbreviated OPH, so I was intrigued. Going to the street view you can see that it's a purely residential area with a park and a pool and no restaurant in sight. Try it for yourself.

I just tried it and ended up being sent here:

https://www.google.com.au/maps/@44.8508646,-93.4259796,3a,15...

Back out of Street View and you'll see I've landed at Prairie Center Dr, Eden Prairie, MN. Is this right?

What's interesting is that if I type "oph chanha" Maps autocompletes "OPH Summerfield Drive, Chanhassen, MN, USA" but then if I hit Enter, it thinks for a fraction of a second then just stops dead. If I hit Enter again it comes up with no results. Interesting glitch!

I did the autocomplete test in incognito to get non-cookie/history-polluted results.

The Summerfield Drive address is the one I noticed that is wrong. I have no idea how they determined there was a restaurant at that location.

Probably an autocomplete cache not being purged properly. There are only two problems in computer science...

I reported a pharmacy that was supposedly in my neighbours garden. On about the 3rd or 4th report (over a year) it was removed.

Apple Maps still struggles with POI accuracy, and speed of map data updates, but it's much better than it was since launch.

To offer a counterpoint, I decided to start alternating between Apple Maps and Google Maps a few months ago and — so far — I haven’t been led astray by Apple Maps. I do live in L.A., however, which is probably among the best case scenarios for Apple Maps at the moment.

Google does have the better product, but for the most part I can see Apple Maps being at least “good enough” for my use, much the same way that Safari, for me at least, is “good enough” compared to Chrome. Unfortunately, anecdotes of Apple Maps underperforming are all too common, and I think Apple needs to keep investing (and probably a lot) if they intend to win users over.

The problem for Apple is why would anyone want to use "good enough" when the alternatives are better, free, and easily available?

If it weren't for the fairly deep tendrils Apple Maps has in iOS itself, or if it were possible to change the 'default' maps app to a competitor's, there wouldn't be a particularly compelling reason. As it is, however, using a third-party app sometimes means awkwardly copying and pasting addresses, not having a turn-by-turn map present on the lock screen and so on, so there are compelling reasons against using third-party maps apps.

These limitations are, of course, entirely of Apple's creation.

These limitations are really a byproduct of the deal falling apart between Apple and Google. Apparently, Google wanted access to more user data in exchange for adding turn-by-turn directions to Google Maps. They could not reach a deal, so Apple Maps was hastily created and Google Maps was booted from the default image.

In the end I can understand the limitations on the lock screen because it can be tricky to figure out the right way to give third-party apps special permissions like that. This is not some kind of tacked-on limitation that Apple added, but instead it's something that didn't exist on iOS until Apple added it. Remember that Google Maps, at the time, didn't give turn by turn directions at all never mind on the lock screen. Given how cautious Apple has been with the iOS permissions model (compared to Android, for sure) this shouldn't be even slightly surprising.

The fact that you can't make Google Maps the default handler is stupid, though.

> In the end I can understand the limitations on the lock screen because it can be tricky to figure out the right way to give third-party apps special permissions like that

Interestingly enough, I did some exploring into how Apple was doing this and it seems like there's already an (internal) "API" for bundles of code that work on the home screen and lock screen. Currently it's taken advantage of by apps like Assistant (Siri), ChatKit (I assume this is Quick Reply notifications?), Wallet (which shows up on the lock screen), and the Wi-Fi picker in addition to Maps. Check out /System/Library/SpringBoardPlugins if you're curious.

The amusing thing is that although Android theoretically allows you to change your default map application, no one would do that since Google Maps is installed by default, and it's so much better than anything else out there (as illustrated by the article above).

I don't understand why this would be a problem. Apple Maps is not competing with Google Maps. Apple Maps is simply there so Apple can provide turn-by-turn navigation out of the box without paying Google for it. The fact that Google Maps is free to consumers is irrelevant, because it's not free for Apple to bundle with iOS.

> Apple Maps is not competing with Google Maps.

Uhh, it 100% is. The fact that I don't use Google Maps and use Apple Maps instead means that it's in direct competition.

Maybe you're both right? I do think there's a different type of competition here. Apple has their own mapping app as a hygiene feature of their platform, whereas Google is building out Google Maps as a platform of itself.

I'm sure Apple would love it if you used Maps so much that it created ecosystem locking, but I doubt Apple is too upset that you downloaded Google Maps on your iPhone.

> because it's not free for Apple to bundle with iOS

Would love to see a citation for that. Wouldn't Google want to boost maps usage on iOS?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/09/apple-is... mentions that, and links to this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/30/google-m...

I didn’t follow all the links, but apparently this was referenced in a court case.

"better, free, and easily available" is variable, especially if you're in Apple's ecosystem.

The problem with maps is that in order to be reliable, they need to work everywhere - in familiar areas, people know where they're going; but it's the weirder parts where they start to really care about the accuracy of maps. It's not sufficient for you not to be lead astray in LA, the question is whether you're sure enough to rely on it when driving through a rural area in the middle of USA or on a business trip overseas to a country you've never been to - can you be sure that you can just type in your destination, follow the directions, and actually get where you should be even if you have no idea about any of the landmarks?

I can't be certain of that with any maps app. It's not as though I've never had the occasional problem with Google Maps, and even if I didn't, surety is an impossibly rare thing.

With Google Maps I feel I'd have greater confidence for its accuracy, but placing complete confidence in any maps app would be a mistake.

i so badly want apple maps to be good enough but it's not there yet. maps is the only google product i use regularly (i use apple maps maybe 20% of the time).

apple has hundreds of billions in the bank, so they could easily fix the problem if they wanted to. but they (mistakenly, imho) don't see it as core to their business so it limps along like it does.

I was using Google Maps in Amsterdam a few months ago and tried to go to a restaurant. Google Maps led me into a tunnel and in the middle was it was happy to announce I reached my destination. It happened to be that this restaurant was located on an island above the tunnel and I actually drove right under it. I have no experience with Apple Maps though.

I've noticed that Google maps doesn't correctly render a spaghetti junction near my neighbourhood ...

Amsterdam is a very interesting case. From my own personal experience it's very easy to get lost there. There's even a coffee shop with that name!

In Singapore the Apple Maps capabilities seem to be a little better, after they introduced bus lines a couple of months ago I’m using it as my main guide to go around the city or when I’m lost. The general direction is always correct, points of interest or businesses are sometimes missing, but it feels like they’re improving, so I don’t think they gave up on it. I think they just don’t put so much effort on it compared to Google, because the data gathered from the service doesn’t have the same value for Apple.

The problem in Singapore is that Apple (or whoever they contract this to) hasn't updated major parts of the city in several years - Go take a look at Maxwell Road near the Singapore Chinese Cultural Center connecting to Central Blvd from Straits Blvd - that road hasn't been there since 2015 (at least, maybe longer) - but Apple Still says that it exists and uses it for directions.

Maps are one area where Apple has a "meh, good enough" attitude, but Google really seems to want to really bring the next level of quality.

I live in a city in Germany (280k population) where Google hasn’t updated the 2D satellite images since 2004.

A few months ago, they introduced 3D buildings, and Earth shows up-to-date satellite imagery now, but still didn’t update the satellite imagery used in the Maps app.

Worse yet are maps and transit – roads and sometimes entire districts missing, data from somewhere between 2005 and 2009, and no transit data at all.

Every other map service has it all. Apple, Here, Bing, OSM, everything. Google doesn’t.

And yet people here continue using Google Maps, because "it’s the default", and Google Now can only give you estimates from Google Maps.

That's very odd, and unusual for Google - outlier. The place I grew up, Fawn Lake, British Columbia, has had three or four revisions to its satellite pictures since 2008. I watch my mother do construction on her property, and by how many outbuildings there are, I can see that it has been updated in at least the last 2 years. Population about 250 (generous estimate) in the 200 square miles around Fawn Lake.

The big problem with this is, we have a situation where Google maps is very obviously inferior, to all competing solutions – even paper maps are now more up to date – and yet, everyone still uses it. Because it’s the default.

That shows just how powerful the advantage of a default app is, and how at this point, Google Maps is entirely without competition just because it is the default.

Not even when Google Maps sucks do people switch away – often because many don’t even know there are alternatives.

(And btw, this issue isn’t just like that in one German city, Google Maps is here like that in many places).

Google Maps has sent me astray a few times as well. Strangely, I've had the worst experience with GM in the Bay area.

Going to the Golden Gate Recreation Area, Google Maps sent me to a trailhead parking lot instead of the visitor's center. And for a small business near the Bay Model, GM directions stopped about half a mile away, and the map pin was on top of the Bay Model building.

The problem I have with GM is that it will often send me past my destination, then have me do a U-turn, in an apparent attempt to make sure the building is on the right side of the street. Even if there is no center divider and a left turn lane. Even if there is a traffic-light-controlled intersection to get me into the parking lot of the building.

Starting Google directions while on a highway often includes a few unnecessary steps of how to get on the highway that I’m already traveling on. Worse though, recently my girlfriend brought up some Apple Maps directions and it suggested a 5 mile U-turn to get onto the road we were already on.

i had bad experiences with Uber and Lyft in the Bay Area, and mostly because of Google Maps and lousy GPS chipsets on the bargain basement phones everyone seemed to be using. GPS that was taking forever to lock on, so drivers were missing turns and having to backtrack.

here in Texas, different story. Although Google Maps isn't always that great with the parallel service roads that we have all over the place.

I usually use Google maps, but after being led astray like 3 times while visiting LA recently, switched to Apple maps there. Google maps seemed basically broken in LA while I was there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interestingly, Apple maps seems to have more accurate maps in some places like Chiang Mai, Thailand. I've noticed locals there using Maps instead of Google Maps

This doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve. My guess is that Apple just gave up

Apple under Tim Cook isn't interested in hard problems. But hey, look at their amazing animated poop icon!

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