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Comment by knasmai | Hacker News Reader

What is the value (to Apple) in providing this kind of detail in maps, other than aesthetics? I'm trying to understand why Apple (or any company) would invest money into what seems like a marginal improvement in UX. The city landscape is constantly changing, so there's associated maintainence cost too.

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This was previously covered by a well-known post by the OP:

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

The necessary link between aerial imagery and on-ground navigation by mobile phone is a 3d map.

I'd like to know where the front entrance is vs. the side entrance, is there a ramp vs. stairs, are these two buildings connected or not, is there a skyway, is there a penthouse on the roof, is there a garage behind the main house, etc.

So Google Street View is chopped liver? Flat gray 3D representations don't seem to answer those questions as well as just tooling around the building in Google Street View.

Google's also moving towards adding 3D topography to their maps so I don't quite see what your point is. This isn't an Apple vs Google thing; they're both doing the same things, they just seem to have different priorities about the order in which they do it.

> So Google Street View is chopped liver

Yes.

Because this is missing an important point. In order to render the data, the data has to be in a format understood by computers, which street view is not.

Its great especially as a duckDuckGo user. I no longer have to use Google/Google Maps to see a satellite view.

Better, more accurate maps are a good incentive to keep people using their platform. It's an incentive to continue using iOS, as now even better maps are built it! (This is my quick off the top logical explanation.)

potential bet on self-driving cars in the future - you'd want higher fidelity maps for those.

Also, they can get more accurate navigation for pedestrians etc.

Overall, IMHO, this is an investment in user experience.

I don't think the fidelity here is high enough for self driving vehicles, but the expertise built-up in the process would pave way for next steps.

Agreed, but also we don't know what exactly Apple (and also Google) is collecting - Apple Maps might only have subset of their data.

Not to mention, having a good way to build realistic virtual environment for acceptance testing is probably key here to enable self-driving.

Privacy and no ads are also features/competitive advantages. Also avoiding being beholden to Google.

They're chasing parity with Google Maps

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