Revamped Apple Maps Rolls Out Across Italy | Hacker News Reader

Revamped Apple Maps Rolls Out Across Italy

macrumors.com

61 pointstosh53 comments

Trying it in Rome. Visually it’s great, but the data quality is way behind Google.

I only checked a handful of places that I know well, but nearly all have some kind of issue. I get:

- A very popular local restaurant with incorrect opening and closing times (closes at 10pm according to Apple, 2am in reality and Google)

- A supermarket with everything correct

- A pet food shop which has no opening hours (unlike Google)

- a pasticceria which doesn’t exist (this is one people queue in the street for)

- a gelateria with incorrect closing times

If the data was reliable I would switch, everything else is better than Google Maps.

I don't think its 100% fair to blame Apple for the business metadata - and I'm sure they're aware of it and working on it.

The opening times data on Google comes from business owners who create an account on Google and then create a Business Profile (in rare cases, Google scrapes it from the website but it needs to be presented in a specific machine readable form[1] which, let's be honest, most websites do not, especially small businesses).

Apple probably just need to spread the word more that they have an equivalent mechanism in place.[2]

[1]https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure... [2] https://register.apple.com/placesonmaps/

Yes, it’s difficult, but they’re not going to successfully compete with Google Maps until they have good business metadata. They need to find a way.

I don’t personally know anyone who uses Apple Maps in Italy, and the low usage is presumably why so many businesses ignore it.

>I don’t personally know anyone who uses Apple Maps in Italy,

tourists?

on edit: with money, because have the expensive phones presumably.

Maybe. I just meant that of the iPhone users I know here, they all using Google Maps.

Google maps opening hours are also frequently wrong, at least have been in pandemic time

I neither go by Apple Maps or Google Maps for restaurant opening times in my area. A lot of them still have their pre-pandemic times posted online and most simply don’t have the staff to stay open from 12p-1am.

That’s my experience as well. Even pre-pandemic.

The same in Canada -- the hours and even phone numbers are wrong frequently enough that it makes them entirely untrustworthy and thus ignored. I just search for the business website to find those sorts of details, and it isn't something I expect from a mapping product.

Google can be wrong too, of course, but it’s usually accurate in my experience while the examples I gave for Apple Maps were not selective. The places I check have the time wrong on Apple Maps in nearly all cases - even the Colosseum is wrong!

If they are taking this data from Yelp and Foursquare then it’s not surprising if it’s low quality (they are linked in reviews and the only places I see with the same incorrect hours). Presumably it’s different in the US, but Google and TripAdvisor are the only services with traction here and therefore the only ones likely to be maintained by the actual business.

Doesn’t Google augment it’s opening hours these days using Duplex?

With Covid, I've noticed Yelp, Google, and Apple all have untrustworthy business hours. In some cases all of them were wrong with different times. They all provide ways to submit new hours; some ask for a picture, others let you type in the hours. I know with Apple I'll get an alert a week or two later when the data is accepted. I've done this in multiple countries. So it's not just a US-centric focus (may be a Euro-centric one, though).

This is the same data quality I face in Singapore. Looks great, but gets simple Things wrong, including wrong routes (doesn’t show several options usually) and business details not up to date.

How forgiving do we have to be? Google maps is just better.

I have a business and want to support apple maps.

Google let's business owners do updates directly to their listing which is nice and claiming a business in google is MUCH easier (no document uploads etc in my case).

I really wish Apple Maps was available on web or Android so there would be a viable alternative to Google Maps. I love and use OSM apps, but they're lacking any up to date local business info, and often can't find my searches, forcing me to switch to Google Maps to find what I'm looking for.

It is. See duckduckgo.com and check out their maps.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=san+francisco&t=h_&ia=web&iaxm=abo...

Well that’s a stretch. It’s there as a JS embed that requires a paid API (with unknown costs past the free tier).

There’s no first party website and the JS embed looks to be mainly just a way to show places on a map, not access most of the place data you’d find in the iOS/macOS apps.

What unknown costs?

It’s covered by your yearly developer costs.

> (with unknown costs past the free tier).

The website directs you to contact them for pricing past the free allotment. Hence "unknown costs" or I suppose more accurately non-public pricing.

Apple Maps uses data from OpenStreetMap, so shouldn't it be as good (or bad) as OSM is? On Android, try OrganicMaps. It's a fork of the Maps.me OSM client by the original devs. It's good, but then again I've made thousands of edits to OSM around my city so that's part of it!

I use OrganicMaps. It's fine for road maps and addresses when I have the number. But there's very little up to date local business information. I use maps apps like people used to use phone books. But OSM data just isn't suitable for that in most places.

You can add the missing data yourself (with OrganicMaps), then everyone can profit from it!

Hmm, I think they are licensing their data from TomTom. Not from OSM.

I'm not super familiar with Apple Maps, but it's common to use a mix of data. OSM may provide the base, but Apple almost certainly has done their own search indexing and may be curating business info from other sources and user reports.

Or they may be using OSM in some places and other sources in other places.

The new revamped maps being rolled out are made by Apple. I guess the older one was as good as OpenStreetMap and TomTom.

Uses, doesn’t mean use exclusively.

All map providers use osm as a data source.

Except Google.

When I worked at HERE, until late 2018, it was company policy not to use any OSM data at all.

HERE, along Apple, Google and TomTom, is one of the four companies in the world that create original digital map data, from scratch, on a planet spanning scale.

Note that OpenStreetMap project also collects data on a global scale (and actually better than HERE in most aspects).

And technically it is company (in UK law sense, not in "a commercial project" sense)

Check out MapKit JS: https://developer.apple.com/maps/web/

HERE WeGo

https://wego.here.com/

But i agree, Google was smart to have all the POIs

Interestingly the Android app just got a complete redesign. I assume a redesign of the website will be coming too.

Here maps is a great alternative to Google and Apple maps - even allows you to download the map data for offline use.

Here WeGo - https://wego.here.com/

Looks like they're sort-of working on it. For example, this link to Buena Park works on the web:

https://maps.apple.com/place?address=Buena%20Park,%20CA,%20U...

Or Houston: https://maps.apple.com/place?address=Houston,%20TX,%20USA

If I don't have any iOS device, or an Apple account, can I still send an Apple maps link somehow to friends or family?

In particular, some of my elderly relatives use Apple maps and last time I tried I couldn't figure out a way to send them a maps link to the place I wanted to meet them.

Yes.

https://maps.apple.com/?address=Florence,%20Italy&auid=12516...

You've done the opposite! You've shared a place with me, but I can't select a location to share with my family that use iOS.

If I remove your ?address component, I can't find your to browse around or "open maps" to find and generate a link.

Did you generate that link on a non Apple device by just filling in the address and hoping Apple knows what it is?

Apple doesn't want you to use their map unless you fully buy into their silo.

But for what it's worth, it looks like you can just pass coordinates in the URL, so use OpenStreetMap to grab the coordinates (these are in the URL too), and change a / to a ,:

  https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/43.7697/11.2584

  https://maps.apple.com/place?ll=43.7697,11.2584

No idea how you're supposed to share a specific POI. Even DuckDuckGo (which weirdly enough uses Apple Maps instead of something more suitable) hides the search parameters from the URL.

The share button works fine on any sort on location in Apple Maps, including POIs.

https://maps.apple.com/?address=1-2,%20Oshiage%201-Ch%C5%8Dm...

That's the opposite of what hiisukun is asking. They want to send a link to someone who owns an Apple device. Without an Apple device, maps.apple.com doesn't have a share button as far as I can tell. There is only a big blue 'directions' button which sends you to Google Maps.

It’s been at least a year since cycling directions were announced yet I can’t navigate between Boston and Cambridge. Apple Maps has a nice interface, and I use it often for driving, but it’s a half-assed product for every other navigation category.

To be fair, navigating (by any means) in Boston/Cambridge is pretty tricky.

A friend joked that you could uniquely determine a street in Cambridge by comparing its orientation to a compass.

Does anyone know if there’s any reason why Italy is next?

Meanwhile in Russia: still no buildings, only streets.

It seems that Russia views counting, classifying and categorizing internal infrastructure as hostile, and expressly forbids it; similarly with aerial and satellite imaging.

Personally, I understand this bargaining position, but I think the built environment (roads,buildings) ought to be fair-use, ala Openstreetmap.

I believe modern Apple Inc. is an egregious example of corporate abuse of commons data, so the right answer for the built infrastructure is to build Openstreetmap worldwide.

Oddly, I was quite startled to see libre-search somewhere using Apple map tiles last year, which indicated to me that Apple is using low-cost-to-themselves arrangements to further the total viewership, while conveniently overlooking the aims and goals of FOSS participants.

Apple uses data from Tomtom and OSM: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/maps/legal-en....

It's not that long ago that they launched this in Spain right?

I've started trying Maps as a substitute for Google on my iPhone. Its map looks simpler while driving, though I've had a few glitches. Meanwhile I use search.brave.com instead of Google search. It seems just as good for almost everything. Is Google falling behind in its key products?

I like apple maps for navigating around but Google maps main advantage is the search. I can put the name of a clients business or a landmark into Google maps and then hit start. Apple maps search just doesn’t find things.

I started with an Apple IIc. It's beyond me why anyone would own an iPhone today.

> I started with an Apple IIc. It's beyond me why anyone would own an iPhone today.

I started on an Apple ][. As a hacker, I find any business strategy that locks down hardware appaling. But I understand why uninformed consumers would buy this type of hardware.

Probably because they don’t care. They just want something that is low maintenance and consistently works. I don’t think it has too much to do with being uninformed. I know plenty of informed users that feel the same way.

They’re not even uniformed. The device perfectly matches what they need and when it doesn’t they have every resource to see what other device does. HM grievances are not reflected of what the general consumer wants.

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