MapKit JS – Embed interactive Apple maps on your website | Hacker News Reader

MapKit JS – Embed interactive Apple maps on your website

developer.apple.com

132 pointsplonkus26 comments

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The API is rich and neat, just hacked a little demo with driving directions https://github.com/vasile/mapkit-js-demo

Nicely done.

The window scroll gesture DOES NOT zoom the view.

THANK GOD.

This is absolutely stupid and hinders usage.

Wow, thanks for posting this. The user interaction is really great on mobile web! Usually maps like this suck on mobile.

Nice to meet a fellow Romanian obsessed about maps and public transport! Thank you for the projects on your website, they're great!

From a user's perspective, zoom is broken.

Between this and the Apple Music player, it’s great to see Apple finally take baby steps into actual web services (beyond the app clones inside iCloud.com)

First impressions:

- Doesn't seem very performant, panning behavior and zooming seems to redraw a lot unnecessarily, low framerate and not very smooth on good hardware - Poor support for touch events, pinch zoom and pan didn't work for me on touchpad - Looks to be using (PNG?) image tiles but and over-scaled canvas element, my laptop's fan came on during simple zoom and panning. I closed the tab and it promptly shut off.

The API seems okay but nowhere near as good as leaflet. MapboxGL has better performance imo.

I'm trying to understand what the compelling reason to use this would be? If you want the best quality basemaps, use Google Maps. If you want the most customizability and a great API, use leaflet. If you want a fancy map, use MapboxGL. If you like apple, use this??

This thing has been out for less than 24 hours. I’m sure they’ll need some time to refine and optimize it. Anyone remember how the very first Mapbox version compared in performance with respect to Google Maps?

I don't see anything about use limits (as in number of maps generated per day). Has anyone seen this documented elsewhere?

There is no information about use limits, but you need a paid Apple Developer Program account.

> but you need a paid Apple Developer Program account.

Where was "paid" bit listed? You don't have to pay the yearly fee to have a developer account. I let my paid subscription expire a few years ago, and I can still login and do various things.

You need to generate a certificate in the Developer backend, and for that you need a paid account.

Do you have to own a Mac or anybody can register one of those accounts and use MapkitJS?

Anyone can register for an account, no need for a Mac.

at this point, Apple would _pay you_ to use it if they thought it would help adoption. MapKit usage outside of iOS is a critical to the success of Apple Maps.

long term, I wouldn't be surprised if maps.apple.com gained a web experience, too

Is Apple Maps still far behind Google Maps?

It was never far behind; it was simply off an overpass.

It really depends which country you're looking at. Usually Google Maps is better, but not always. China is a good example of a place where Apple Maps is far superior.

>It really depends which country you're looking at. Usually Google Maps is better, but not always. China is a good example of a place where Apple Maps is far superior.

What you really mean is that Google is so artificially handicapped by the Chinese government that Apple Maps is actually decent in comparison. I do not envy that situation.

So what you say is Apple maps is better in China.

In the same way that Yandex is better in Russia, sure.

Yes:

https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat

Too bad Apple Maps < Google Maps, still.

mapkit.js is 500 KB after unzipping; I don’t think low-end phones can handle that well (^_^;)

I just tested it on 512MB $49 Chinese Android 6.0 phone and it works. Not the fastest but perfectly usable.

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