Apple Maps has been down for hours, users unable to search for places/directions | Hacker News Reader

Apple Maps has been down for hours, users unable to search for places/directions

9to5mac.com

63 pointsel_duderino57 comments

In New Orleans, Apple Maps continues to give users extremely dangerous directions from BUS US 90 E to I 10 E that require cutting across two lanes of traffic in a few hundred feet when an alternate, safe ramp has been in place since 1989 (!).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontchartrain_Expressway#cite_...

When I was in Duluth, MN a few months back it told me "You have arrived at your destination" as I was driving 70 MPH down the interstate.

The restaurant I was going to is above one of several tunnels under the city which hold I-35. Apple Maps assumed this meant the restaurant was actually on the shoulder of the interstate. Took me an extra 15 minutes to backtrack and get there on the correct surface roads. Immediately switched back to Google/Here

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pickwick+Restaurant+%26+Pu...

This has happened to me with Google Maps, too. The destination was up a hill and over a ridge on a side street.

"You have arrived!".

This happened to an Uber driver when I was a passenger, too. He needed to get off the highway and then turn left, he got off the highway and Google Maps told him to make a u-turn, so he crossed the (paved) median and got onto the on-ramp. Once we passed the hotel, Google Maps told him to stop and let me out... still on the on-ramp. We had to turn off the mapping and turn on some common sense.

Off topic, but I love that the state of mapping can be so absolutely horrendous, yet there are people who think we are just on the cusp of autonomous cars.

"You have arrived at your destination"

-- Apple autonomous car, inside the tunnel.

All kinds of apps are buggy. That doesn't mean that we aren't doing brilliant, reliable things with others.

An autonomous car depends on reliable maps.

As other commenters has mentioned, these types of quirks happen on all mapping and navigation systems. Turns out reality isn't as clean and clear-cut as computers would like for them to be, and things in the world are always changing, so it's all but impossible to keep things up to date.

With that said, you can always help out when you find quirks like this by reporting them. I went ahead and made a report for this particular problem, so it should hopefully get fixed shortly.

Have you reported this? Apple Maps has a built-in reporting feature, and it will even send you a push notification when the issue you reported is fixed.

I have reported Apple Maps issue in the past. It’s been 3 months and the issue is still there. And the problematic place is 7 minutes driving distance from their Apple Park. I don’t think I’m reporting any other issue - waste of my time.

Do you normally give up after a single bad experience in other areas of your life?

Try reporting it again. Sounds like your first report simply got lost somehow. I think every issue I've ever reported has gotten fixed, so it's not like they're habitually ignoring reports.

For all the (well deserved) Apple Maps hate, using Google Maps in South Africa on a recent trip was just as bad. Good at finding POIs, but navigated to dead ends and through wrong roads quite often. South Africans, what do you use?

There’s a button in the Maps app to report this, please do.

I will, thanks.

Kind of unfair but any thread about Maps turns into piling on the product rather than actually talking about the issue at hand. I thought Apple maps is actually quite good now. What would it take for that impression to go away?

Anecdotally, it still can't navigate to my old apartment in ATL (a complex that has been there for decades.) There are also lots of rural areas I visit that Google Maps has no problem finding that Apple Maps cannot locate.

There has yet to be a time that Google Maps failed to get me within a couple of lots of my destination while Apple Maps has been off by more than a mile multiple times.

I was in Seattle a few weeks ago and Google Maps consistently had me 2 blocks north of my actual location, but Apple maps had me within 100 feet. I thought it was super interesting, but I didn't think too much about it at the time.

Rather irritatingly, my house address seems to lead people to a random location two miles away when entered into google maps but the house next door works perfectly.

It makes using Uber or any other google maps-based app particularly irritating and as-yes there is no fix after almost a year of reports.

Open Street Maps works perfectly well, as does apple.

In my small town, we have a long street that's just a strip of restaurants. Google and Bing get it right, Apple Maps lists the entire mile-long strip as KFC's. If you select one, it's the same KFC. Been that way since launch. And not a huge deal, we're a tiny town, but it's just humorous and weird when others don't have that issue.

Ha may I know which town this is?

I agree. In a fair comparison it is as good as the alternatives for the most part. I don't know what it would take for the collective opinion to change, probably the same thing that it would take to change the collective opinions about Microsoft or Apple or Obama. Change is hard.

I don't think it's unfair, the product is better than it used to be, but still quite bad compared to google's.

- One can't even search "Point A to Point B" and get a result.

- When driving, it always seems to lag behind me, barely giving any time to make a turn.

It has been years and they have plenty of resources to be competitive. The whole product just feels like it was designed by someone who is driven to work on a tech bus.

> The whole product just feels like it was designed by someone who is driven to work on a tech bus.

That's funny because you could say that about google, bing, or apple maps. And Probably true for at least 2 of those.

It’s like Google vs Bing...Google simply has the bigger brand which it has (rightfully) earned over a long time!

For a new incumbent to surpass it takes more than being just as good

> What would it take for that impression to go away?

Reliability?

>I thought Apple maps is actually quite good now.

It's pretty good in most places and straight up terrible in others. Google maps tends to have higher lows even though there definitely are cases when Apple's highs are actually higher. But you have to remember: users are using this for going to new places. They don't know they're getting the lowest of the low quality results until it's too late. After a few times getting burned, most people just give up on it which means their most recent impression of it is probably post-failure where-the-fuck-am-I panic.

>What would it take for that impression to go away?

Raise those lows up. I almost think it'd be better for it actually give up and say "I don't know" instead of possibly routing users incorrectly. Users will still think it sucks but they won't be stressed out about the sucky-ness and might be willing to try it again later. From my experience, Siri is a good example of this. It's probably the worst "assistant" out there but it's pretty good about knowing when to give up so users can just Google something.

Maybe a coincidence, but I noticed this week that without wifi enabled the location service has been particularly bad - at least four blocks difference. I generally leave wifi off and had never noticed that degree of accuracy prior to updating earlier this week.

It's a coincidence. Your raw location comes from GPS, cell towers, and (if it's on) wifi, not from the Apple Map's services.

> It's a coincidence. Your raw location comes from GPS, cell towers, and (if it's on) wifi, not from the Apple Map's services.

IIRC Apple has their own wardriving database which makes the WiFi-based location services work, it's possible that was flushed and not refreshed from their services.

I think your memory is accurate. When I've had WiFi turned off in the past I'll sometimes get a pop-up message on my iPhone suggesting turning WiFi to improve location accuracy.

Yes, they do, but my parent was saying that his location was worse, with wifi off in the last week, than it was before, also with wifi off. Apple Maps being up and down won't affect your location accuracy if your wifi is off.

(My parent was almost certainly incorrect. Having wifi off has always made location pretty bad on iPhones.)

They should sort that product out before venturing into the self driving car world

This could happen with any online service people rely on. For maps and directions, at least at some places, decent offline solutions exist and not relying on availability of a third party service and a good internet connection is helpful (and is probably better for privacy).

Doing this for enough services also might be a way to lower energy consumption (?) and mobile bills.

I read this as “Users unable to reach places” and thought “That’s just apple maps.”

> Whilst Apple’s system status reports no issues

there are lot of good materials here for comedy writing about maps apps.

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