I think of Apple Maps the same way I think of North Korea's missile program: I know it exists and it has continent-level accuracy.
Not sure which one got it wrong. We ended up in some neighborhood two miles from the theater.
I knew once we pulled off the main road and into that neighborhood that we were screwed.
Have you reported this to Apple? The Apple Maps apps (iPhone and macOS) have a means by which you can report a variety of issues, including incorrect search results. In my experience Apple tends to be pretty good about handling these.
I never reported it as I just immediately went back to Google Maps, but I'll do that now, good suggestion.
I just put the two following addresses into Notes:
23 California St, San Francisco, CA
23 California Ave, San Francisco, CA
California St is at 94104
Please don't blame Apple Maps for user error
You're searching for "California St, San Francisco, CA 94130" and Apple seems to parse this from right to left. California Ave happens to be the closest match to "California St" in ZIP code 94130 and apparently is a stronger signal than "California St, San Francisco, CA !94130 but actually 94104"
Several other people at my final destination reported the same problem, though they'd all caught it and fixed the destination manually.
I suffer with Apple Maps because I find Google that unethical, but... the UX is atrocious. Navigation with Apple leaves the phone unresponsive (unlocking takes a few tries), but not with Google. This behavior has persisted for me across a few different phones.
The biggest thing that leads to teeth gnashing for me is that after a while my location search will time out. Great if you've got network connectivity, not so great if you're trying to go somewhere more remote (or have your phone in airplane mode, etc, etc) and the location you just searched for disappears.
It makes the last part of journeys really interesting especially as it results in me taking my eyes off of the road trying to reinitialize navigation...
What a miserable service.
Privacy reasons aside, I just despise using GMaps for its clashing app styling on iOS and seemingly heavier battery usage. Apple Maps' design feels like it gets out of your way and focuses on the things that matter.
Yesterday I was trying to remember if this deli was on Howard or Folsom (and I forgot the exact name). The search results for 'deli' were basically everywhere on North America except for where I was (including across town). Searching for businesses with Apple Maps is nearly impossible, and the insistence upon installing the Yelp app to get more info is just infuriating.
Edit: Oh yeah and it can't find Grainger in Millbrae to save its life. Shit happens and business info is one of the hardest parts about mapping. Unfortunately Apple makes it damn near impossible to report problems to a real human.
Edit edit: My all time favorite though was asking Siri for directions to some club that I usually take BART to. I kept getting directions to a not that nearby and not that similarly named bail bondsman.
Click on POI, scroll down and select "Report an Issue" and similarly when a route is complete there is a reporting option.
So what happens when it's clear the route is all wrong and you don't want to follow it to its completion? And, honestly, while I remember a report problems thing at the end of a route I don't remember seeing it recently.
In addition to reporting wrong directions, you can also report the arrival entrance (ex: moving the pin into a parking lot vs. the entrance to the parking lot)
Where? If I go into the detailed list of directions nothing responds to taps and there's no "i" button, only a lonely "Done" button.
This is all anecdotal, which is kind of the issue, isn't it? I'm in the Bay Area, too, and I very rarely have any problems with Apple Maps. It isn't perfect, but it's absolutely not "pretty awful." I have no significant problems finding businesses with Apple Maps; I literally just typed "deli" and the first search suggestion that came up was "Delis - search nearby," and it, well, found delis nearby.
Problems due to long-term construction seem to be a weakness for it, but I've run into those issues with Google and Waze, too.
Even when I know the name I often have problems finding something in Apple Maps. Up in Marin, searching for "Apple Store" pulled up listings for the Apple Stores in the East Bay (the one in Corte Madera was significantly lower).
Or, if I'm looking for the specific address for the junk yard... for a while it would sort the results in seemingly random order. Right now it seems to at least be sorting by distance, but I think it default to heavily weighting towards what you were last looking at, which almost makes sense (but this seems to persist even if you move someplace else lending an utterly unpredictable feel to the results). This wouldn't be a huge problem but the distance is only shown for the top two results, and the city name is often truncated so chains will often be hard to distinguish from one another. Even better if I scroll up too far it backs out of the search itself and clears the search bar.
Edit: Oh yeah, and the deli was actually called a market (but I had also searched for market and only gotten results for Market Street).
Do you perhaps mean a (solid) quad yellow line (aka a painted island)? It's legal to turn left across a double yellow into a driveway, private road, cross street etc in California (and every other state I've lived in long enough to look up the laws) per [1], specifically (d). It's _not_ legal to pass on a solid double yellow.
[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
I'm pretty sure Van Ness only has a single set of double lines. What I remember from driver's ed is that you're allowed to turn into a driveway but that's about it. While it doesn't appear match up with the legal (or popular[1]) definitions, the DMV handbook[2] seems to indicate you're only allowed to make a U-turn or turn into a driveway on a double yellow.
That said, there are no left turn signs at every signaled intersection along Van Ness these days, and even if not there's so much traffic that a left turn from a busy state highway into a side street was just a blindingly stupid suggestion.
Today was fun. For the hell of it I fired up some walking directions. Instead of walking along the sidewalk, turning at major intersections Apple had me zig zag down an alley and then cross the next street in the middle of the block instead of at the signal.
1: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-08-10-me-4856-s...
2: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/traffic_l...
It turns out, and to answer your question more directly, 2019 is apparently a pilot year for a lot of initiatives with Apple Maps. It's got my curiosity, that's for sure.
https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection
https://www.fastcompany.com/90373170/apple-maps-is-catching-...
Rather than being a series of photo spheres and smearing between them as you move, the buildings and other objects are built out from 3D scans so that it can have accurate perspective as you move down the street.
There's still fudging for small objects like overhead powerlines, lampposts, trees, and street signs which don't get picked up in detail by LIDAR, but it looks very good:
In particular, watch how the cars, plants, and buildings slide by as you move from one spot to another.
Having all this information will also help Apple with their address locations, knowing exactly where entrances are to buildings, etc.
They'll need to work on keeping that updated in the case that the scan data goes stale, but having this in-house instead of needing to work through third party providers should allow them to close the gaps behind Google Maps significantly. In other ways (like the quality of the street imagery), they're jumping ahead.
Don't have the new maps available near me yet but I'm looking forward to it.
That's something that stood out immediately as it passed, their camera dome was actively spinning, at a pretty high RPM. Unsure if Google Maps cars are using similar technology, or if their imaging apparatus is still one pod with multiple cameras placed along laterally-I haven't seen one here recently.
Dude, Apple Maps jokes are so 2012.
Apple Maps has improved significantly in recent years. With iOS 13, it's going to annihilate Google Maps.
What you'll find is that they have two general options. From the west coast of North Korea almost straight south, threading the needle between the west coast of South Korea and the east coast of China. And from the west coast of North Korea to the north-east at the general direction of the Tsugaru Strait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwangmy%C5%8Fngs%C5%8Fng-4#/me...
(Something else to consider is the apogee of the launch. Typically those Tsugaru Straight launches are almost straight up with apogees several thousand kilometers above earth (for reference, the ISS hangs out at around ~400km))
It sure seems to me these are indeed tests, not earnest attempts to nuke Tokyo or anything like that. If it were the later, they'd probably start off by actually aiming for Tokyo.