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Comment by robertoandred | Hacker News Reader

Between this improved map and Look Around, reasons to bother with Google Maps are dwindling.

Using Yelp as a POI provider prevents me from completely dropping Google Maps. Even ignoring Yelp’s shitty practices, needing the Yelp app to view reviews and images is a showstopper. Apple needs to dump Yelp and go full Google here their own reviews and POI DB.

I don't believe you need the Yelp app. It will prompt you to use it, but reviews (and seemingly all other information?) can be viewed without the app.

Edit: never mind. I’m wrong. I could have sworn I used to be able to just view the web version of yelp last time this came up, but I might be misremembering the browser vs the Maps app experience.

Tested on iOS 13: I can scroll through thumbnail previews of images but tapping to view full size opens the App Store to Yelp. As for reviews, it shows 3 of them as shortened previews, so I can’t even view a single full review (unless it’s trivially short). Tapping on them again opens the App Store to the Yelp app. Around the review previews are links to “Open Yelp” and “Find out more on Yelp”, all leading to the same thing: App Store.

This is such an un-Apple-like UX. Idk if they signed a long-running contract with Yelp out of desperation when Apple Maps launched forcing it to be this way, but if not, then their insistence on this experience is truly dumbfounding.

Edit: I see you’ve tested it yourself.

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