I haven’t given it a fair shot in almost a decade I guess, and it was almost unusable then. Does anyone here use it as a daily driver? What are the strong and weak points?
I only kept Google Maps installed for info on things along a route or opening hours but since then I’ve deleted it and just use Duck Duck Go to do searches, combined with Apple Maps for GPS.
Edit: one more thing: in the city I am from there has been a lot of development. Google is missing a ton of roads in near areas where Apple Maps is not.
If Apple Maps had knew those backroards, they would probably output the same routes! :-D
Being able to express your preference isn't what Google is all about. Their attitude is that they know best.
Those rental Pandas can take you everywhere though.
I will never forget being led from a highway, to a side road, to a gravel road, to a rougher gravel road, to a one lane gravel road, to something that looked like a washed out river at best, only to be blocked by a large steer standing in the middle of the "road" that appeared to be as stunned by my presence there as I was. I ended up having to reverse quite a bit before I could find somewhere to turn around. I deleted Google Maps shortly thereafter.
I would pay money for this feature.
"Go past this stop sign, then at the light, turn right on X Avenue" - it's exactly how you would expect human directions.
Google Maps is absolutely worst in class, behind all competitors I have ever used, in spoken directions. Here is a very common Google Maps direction from where I live: "In 300 feet, keep left toward Alabama 231 South / Alabama 431 South / Memorial Parkway Southwest, then keep left onto Memorial Parkway Southwest."
By the time Google Maps finishes reading this direction, it's taken so long that you will actually miss the next step in the directions. Google Maps doesn't interrupt itself in this situation, and it is often extremely long winded.
Even when you start directions on Google Maps, you get a mostly pointless, long-winded direction. "Head east on Pratt Avenue Northeast." And if you start by traveling perpendicular to that direction, you'll often get, "Head east on -- Head east on -- Head east on -- Head east on --", repeating every time you pass an intersection, until you finally comply by heading east. Good luck if you don't know which direction is east.
Speaking of this nightmare scenario, Google Maps will also get stuck rapidly talking over itself if you accidentally select walking directions, but you are driving. Apple Maps detects this situation and automatically fixes it.
So I guess I use Apple Maps because it doesn't have any of these extremely frustrating and borderline dangerous problems.
Argh, don't you just love that. Hey, dumbasses: if I knew which way was east, I wouldn't have needed to ask you!
Google Maps has given me directions that just increase my stress level on the road.
I recently had GM tell me to go the wrong way up a one-way street; OSM knew better.
Motorways show up in blue with white-on-blue-rounded-rectangle labels (matching road signs) with A-roads in green. Junction numbers show up as white-in-black-rounded-rectangle like on road signs. On google maps, the motorways and A-roads are yellow. Motorways get blue labels but it’s the wrong shade and shape. A-road labels are slightly better. A failure of apple maps is that they don’t show junction numbers on the regular maps while google does. But their maps mostly look like the road atlases I remember.
If I look at public transport, apple have made a much better attempt to match the look of underground maps in London (failure example: the map doesn’t make it obvious that the jubilee line stops at green park.) Google maps don’t get such good results though they try to match colours of lines. Google maps don’t have national rail but apple do. If I look at New York, apple have tried to capture the different style of their metro network (also their American road labels look like the road signs and this seems less the case for google but I don’t know so much about US road signs.)
The feature I really wish for, especially in car play, is plan views of road junctions like roundabouts or weird intersections. Neither maps app does this.
I find it to be better, but there’s a major caveat that I primarily use it in the Bay Area.
Outside the bay it’s worked for me too, but it’s just rare that I test it in that way (where failures are a lot more likely).
UI is much nicer and app performance feels way faster too.
I really really like OSM through Organic Maps (previously through maps.me) but it has no congestion data, so mostly useless for driving during business hours.
I live around Austin, TX, so there could be variations in my experience, but generally for common use cases, Apple Maps is on par. Where I find it excels above Google Maps is on navigation and directions, hands down. When my wife puts on Gmaps navigation on her phone I put on Apple Maps on mine. (we have same phone and network). If there ever is a mistake, slow update, mispronunciation, etc. it is always on Google Maps side. This has cost us a lot of time, until we finally switched over to rely on Apple Maps for navigation. The search and interface are also about the same, but I prefer the Apple Maps a bit more, but that is more personal preference.
Where it underperforms is in the search and reviews avenue, as it primarily relies on yelp reviews rather than native reviews, which can be hit or miss. I don't really miss it, but if it do, I just search google for the place to read their reviews. Also, Some place results lack correct details in Apple Maps (rare)--I think since many places have to update the info themselves, this might drive the issue. Example would be updated menu links or hours for holidays.
Many of the other posts on this thread point out the differences along other use cases, where Google Maps excels, but for daily, average use, I am happy to use Apple Maps as daily driver.
I am not going to enumerate strong and weak points. It’s a matter of taste at this point. Just try it again.
Actual arrival times tended to be about the same as Apple’s original estimates when, say, it turned out that I-95 really did have traffic at the same places it always does.
The OP's comment about Google's directions often giving you things like unprotected left turns across major roads matches my experience with Waze, so I wonder if Google is pulling in more data/algorithms from them now. I know lots of people love (loved?) Waze and I used to be one of them, but I eventually just couldn't handle how almost every ride with Waze had become the algorithmic equivalent of your crazy uncle saying "I know a shortcut. Trust me."
I’d hope they’ve improved it since then. I mostly stopped using it because I’d get tons of unprotected left turns on major roads or zig-zag routes through neighborhoods and it just wasn’t worth having to deal with that to save a minute.
With a few notable exceptions it has gotten me where I'm going every time.
The few exceptions are places near me where the address is a bit wonky on Apple Maps and the driving instructions are either completely bonkers (routes around a house through a parking lot instead of directly) or off by one street. The address is correct, but the access road doesn't have a name, so it gets confused.
Google Maps even with VPN (to bypass the censorship) is nearly unusable here by modern map software standards.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
Google Maps will still give you very basic maps in China, but at least in both Beijing and Shanghai the maps are unusable unfortunately.
You're correct that they are blocked by China. The reason they are blocked is because they haven't built a censored version of their search and don't provide China with data from emails, etc. - this is in contrast with Apple's approach. I don't know where it falls on censorship, since Apple isn't in the search business, but my guess is you would notice differences in Siri's behavior (for instance).
But yes I agree with you from my own visit in Shanghai that Google Maps is not worth using in China.
I tried desperately to use it for half a year (in the US), gritting my teeth at the endless frustrations. From the inability to get info on any business or location other than a highly biased Yelp popup, to the voice directions telling me to turn as I'm approaching the turn before it actually wants me to turn, to the flat-out wrong streets. I've found myself being led to random dead-ends that the map said should be a thoroughfare, but obviously never had been and would unlikely be in any near future.
Similarly, I'm astonished at the bad service in their cloud, files, photos, music, and suite of office document programs. Just terrible for such a huge company. I can only conclude that they don't care, since they're making more than enough money on hardware.
The other day when watching a Silicon Valley rerun I couldn't help but laugh because they said "is it Apple maps bad?" and i thought "THAT JOKE HASN'T AGED BECAUSE IT'S STILL TERRIBLE."
This is in Northern England though. In the Big Smoke it might be different.
At least in Northern California and where I worked in both Texas and Oklahoma, Apple has done a magical job of mapping.
Both have been equally bad at keeping directions up to date, though, but I live in a relatively mutable city. If I were living in the burbs, I would probably stick with Apple Maps.
However I generally don’t use any turn by turn instructions until I’m close to a place I haven’t been before.
Haven’t used Google maps since my very first smartphone (probably late 2011) kept trying to send me the wrong way down one way streets in Atlanta.
Then again - even Google Maps have hard time competing with Yandex and 2Gis