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Comment by jkelleyrtp | Hacker News Reader

Apple Maps is so close to being a fantastic app, but is sorely missing “search along route” that Google has. Right now, you can press the “coffee” or “gas” button but there’s no way to say, search for a CVS on the way back home from work. I really wish Apple added this instead of just suggesting searches that might be useful.

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And not funneling me out to install the awful Yelp app just to read restaurant ratings. :|

Agreed. Aside from my general distaste for Yelp and their business practices, it is also an objectively bad user experience.

Makes me wonder if Apple made some exclusive Yelp agreement before Apple Maps launched, so they'd have good ratings data, and we have to wait for the agreement to expire before Apple can move on.

To me it would make good market sense for Apple to fully compete with Google Maps and offer Apple Maps on the web. It would give them more data to feed back into their review/ratings/business info database to further improve the mobile experience.

Apple Maps’ ratings were announced last year and seem to be rolling out now:

https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/23/apple-maps-native-ratings-and...

I just installed iOS 15 an hour ago. So I checked to see if the new Apple Maps' ratings was in there. There is now a "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" button that allows you approve or disapprove of a restaurants Food & Drink, Customer Service, Atmosphere, and Overall experience. It also uses your on device location data to suggest photos that you took while at the restaurant, to include in your review. So it looks like it's finally live! (At least for some people)

Interestingly enough, it still has Yelp reviews beneath it. Hopefully that just gets removed completely once Apple has collected enough of their own reviews.

In iOS 15 it does look like you can browse more photos directly on a restaurant page before confronted with the Yelp button. So that’s an improvement I’d say.

I don’t see these buttons in Germany unfortunately.

> offer Apple Maps on the web

If they wanted to, they could easily do that. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mapkitjs:

“Use this JavaScript API to embed interactive maps directly into your webpages or apps across different platforms and operating systems, including iOS and Android. Like MapKit for native apps, you can also add annotations and overlays to the map to call out points of interest or user destinations.”

However, would that really give them more data? I would guess it would get a tiny fraction of the traffic that mapping apps would generate.

Agreed. I refuse to use Yelp and hate that Apple doesn’t host their own photos of sites.

Agree on this and multi-stop routes. I've been using Apple Maps with CarPlay for the last few years and I can confidently say it is better than google maps by a wide margin. The voice, UI, traffic and routing, map design won me over. The aerial and street view quality, while not the most important, are second to none.

Agreed. I don't know if Apple is handicapping Google maps on iOS (ie locking system APIs) but Apple maps is smoother, cleaner, and exactly what I want out of a helpful navigation assistant. Apple Maps give instructions in the way I as a navigator would. Things like "take a right turn after the next light" are way better than Google/Waze. Apple Maps just struggles in discovering an area and planning a journey - both of which Google excels in.

> I don't know if Apple is handicapping Google maps on iOS (ie locking system APIs)

It isn't

Sadly, you can't enable CarPlay unless you enable Siri, and you can't enable/use Siri without uploading your phone's contacts to Apple.

Agreed! I live in NYC and don't drive too often. I just got back from a two-week trip with a car rental and was really surprised at how great Apple Maps was. The map design is nice and clean and it works well with CarPlay. I also felt like the audio instructions were very clear and easy to follow. E.g., "pass this light and turn right at the next one." I also liked the "Share your ETA" feature which I used a few times. Really nice job Apple!

I'm sorry, CarPlay is awful. I'm forced to use it and the UX is TERRIBLE. I'm actually somewhat surprised that they've left it in the state it's in.

What don’t you like about it? I like it so much that I’d never buy a car without it again.

Just an FYI, you can definitely do this when using CarPlay and Apple Maps. There is a set list of categories you can search while currently navigating. I wish you could make an arbitrary on route search, but you can't.

Adding onto this. You can actually ask Siri specifically the added stop and append "along the way", so something like, "Starbuck on the way". It has always found my requests on the route I was already on as well as the added time it will take away from me.

I default to Apple Maps, but Google Maps

* is more accurate * has way better local search and reviews (Yelp is garbage)

I have consistently found the apple maps experience to be subpar when compared to competing navigation apps, most lately with laggardly updates to road closure status due to wildfires here in California. Other apps updated the roads in a fairly timely manner, but apple showed roads closed for several days after they were reopened by authorities.

No directions for people on bikes in Madison, WI makes this app still utterly useless for me.

That and reporting accidents and items like that (unless those are in the release - haven't dove into it much).

You can do that already since 14.5. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212226

But only in the US and mainland China for some bizarre reason.

Reporting accidents, hazards, and speed traps has been in there since iOS 14.

Gotcha - wow I guess I have really not been using Apple Maps (or any maps application) for some time then if I didn't notice that...

Thanks

I’d also really like multi-stop navigation planning like Google Maps has. I’m planning on a cross-country road trip to see family for the holidays and I’d love if Apple could improve upon the multi-stop planning experience that Google threw together. It’s nice, but it’s also cumbersome.

At least on CarPlay, there is that option, but you have to use voice for anything that isn't gas and a couple of other categories.

does it support offline maps/offline navigation? why don't they support offline maps? it's not like they have to pay royalty fees to support it when they own it end to end.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/maps-ios-ipados.html

Posting on HN is probably more valuable when your feedback is requesting new featureful changes and not just bugs. There are likely quite a few Apple engineers that browse this subreddit which might be able to make an internal push for these changes (eventually).

Agreed! But it can also be helpful to submit the requests through the usual channels. Engineers on HN can then point PMs and management to this data versus "someone on HN asked, create the story."

This has been my experience and is also why I push to get a feature request submitted, and then ask for some link to it. Also as a customer, sometimes when I’m writing out my request I realize an existing way to get what I want without needing to wait for them.

Said engineers also push heavily for people to send in a FB. It’s something on paper they can show their management to show an interest exists.

> [...] that browse this subreddit [...]

Freudian slip here, I guess.

I'd still report them through the normal channels. I wouldn't bet on any given Apple employee of the right team to happen to read a specific comment on HN.

Nor do they necessarily have the ability to do discretionary prioritization of certain bugs or features, even if they did see it.

In NYC, Apple Maps this last weekend suggested I go way out of my way on one subway line and then backtrack on another to get to my destination. It also suggested none of the other direct routes that Citymapper was able to discern. Not sure what happened in the 3+ years that I’ve stopped using Apple Maps but I used it the whole way there and the experience was awful. I will continue not using it.

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