Hacker News Reader

Comment by bjohnson225 | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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/

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com