Apple Maps' Acceleration (2020)
justinobeirne.com
justinobeirne.com
The alternative would not have been Google Maps. It would have been MapBox.
Google Maps will give app developers like me severe sticker shock. I watched a friend of mine get it in the shorts (forcing him to switch to MapBox). After watching that, I decided that I will never depend on Google services as a linchpin technology. In fact, it simply hardened my resolve to avoid third-party dependence, wherever possible.
When I started the project I’m working on now, Apple Maps had already grown to cover all of the US, albeit not as well as Google Maps. I’ve been seeing Apple Maps cars driving around here, for at least a couple of years.
I’m pretty confident that relying on Apple Maps was not a mistake.
I'd need to see it in use a bit more, before relying on it for my users. Most of what I do is free, or low-cost work, aimed at folks in need. In some cases, lives depend on my work, and there's little money or glory.
That Google "squeal piggy!" thing I witnessed was quite sobering.
People seem to be quite sanguine about putting all their eggs into one basket. I guess that's kind of necessary, these days, but we need to be careful about choosing baskets.
I'm kind of a crusty, scarred ol' bastard. Takes more than a pretty Web site to get me on board, and I don't bring buckets of money with me, so I'm just not that attractive.
Makes sense. I encountered here.com once in a corporate setting, and was surprised that it was actually decent (at the time), but no further experience with it either. It doesn't seem to have a strong brand outside big corp.
It's easy to make a theoretical stance like this, but Apple Maps and Google Maps are free in an iOS app, but MapBox is not. If you were forced to switch off Apple Maps for some reason, it seems likely the free option would win out.
> it simply hardened my resolve to avoid third-party dependence, wherever possible
all of these libraries are third-party dependencies...
> Google Maps will give app developers like me severe sticker shock
If we're talking just about the javascript API, in my experience if you're using more than just a very local map, people always have very wishful thinking about MapBox pricing and it usually ends up almost the same as Google Maps pricing. This isn't an accident, they need to be a better priced alternative but they also need to pay the bills. The pull to switch at that point would be if you need better address lookup or something.
If you are doing a very local map (like the equivalent of a few tiles for your average user), you're often better off just rolling your own tile server. People are often surprised how easy it is.
Google API is not free. It would be at least a 4-digit cost per month. I think that my friend was hit with a $1,500/mo nut. Google changed terms (back when they started demanding that all users of the API give credit card numbers). His app is fairly popular, and he'd need to pay them for the SDK.
> all of these libraries are third-party dependencies...
I've been relying on Apple's toolkits since 1986. They've pulled a couple of stunts (OpenDoc, anyone?), but they have been a reliable partner, for the most part.
> If we're talking just about the javascript API
I don't do JS. I do native Swift. It would require embedding their API. My friend did that, and it was far more cost-effective. Lot less than Google (he sells his app for $0.99, and it's not popular enough to do much more than pay for itself). MapBox is quite nice. His app is native ObjC. He's had it out for quite a while. He originally started with Google's API, as that was the only one that offered the particular services he needed.
Most of the stuff I write is free, open-source. I could probably get Google to let us use it for free (we're a 501(c)(3)), but I've already seen them turn the screws once, and I'm in no mind to set myself up for something like them deciding that we could give them a tithe.
Also, I have had some ... issues ... with third-party libraries. I'm quite particular about the Quality of my work, and I find that not too many others share my passion.
On iOS and Android, google maps are free: https://developers.google.com/maps/billing/gmp-billing#mobil...
Maybe your friend was doing something that the native SDKs couldn't do but the web API could?
He told me that his use case was definitely NOT free.
I also know that Apple Maps could not give him the specializations he was looking for. He is an experienced, rational engineer, and would not have acted in an alarmist manner. He really liked the Google API. Google has done a wonderful job with their map product, but I also know that it's a "gateway drug."
I won't link to his app, because it can get crazy, with all the anti-Apple stuff. I won't drag him into the fray.
You can generate OSM-derived vector tiles for the whole world for €15, using tilemaker running on Scaleway bare metal. It'd cost more like ~€100 to run it on AWS but still very doable.
That gives you a big sqlite database file (.mbtiles) to host wherever you want. Use Maplibre, the open-source fork of Mapbox GL, in your app or site.
Whenever I use Google Maps, it constantly harasses me about how there's a slowdown ahead, puts a little tray across the bottom of the screen hiding the information I care about, with no way to get rid of it except tapping and other nonsense. I searched throughout the settings and can't find anyway to turn off all these annoying pop ups it has. Someone needs to write an ad blocker for it.
Apple Maps not only doesn't constantly harass me with meaningless notifications I can't dismiss without taking my hands off the wheel, it also shows traffic lights, and the voice over instructions include them as well. With Google I often turn too early or too late because it isn't very clear exactly when to turn. With Apple Maps that happens a lot less because Siri will flat out tell you, turn at this light, turn at the next light, etc..
The free labor I've provided them is probably enough to cover an entire neighbourhood already :)
You often get an instruction like "use the left 2 lanes". But where you are when the instruction is given, the leftmost lane might be a forced early left turn. If you're unfamiliar with the location, this requires a lot of extra cognitive load, vs simply not giving that specificity at all.
As well, traffic conditions change rapidly and the lane by lane doesn't account for that.
In some easier situations, it's great, but it's a negative in more complex situations.
It was only about 200 yards up the road, but it brought me to someone's house, and had me turn in the wrong direction.
So, I was even later...
At least in the UK I can hear "at the roundabout, take the Xth exit" echoing in my head right now. Can't remember about traffic lights.
It does mention road names though which is kinda silly... If I knew the roads well enough to know what they are called I'd not need directions!
I really don't understand the way they blend forests and fields together. It used to be that forests and grasslands were marked green and agricultural land was white, so you could easily tell the difference. Now they are the same, or nearly the same, color while the difference in landscape is massive. To actually tell the difference now you have to switch to the satellite map.
I don't see how this is adding more detail. If anything it's providing less information.
[1]: https://www.gislounge.com/openstreetmap-one-of-the-worlds-la...
"© OpenStreetMap and other data providers"
Just incase someone has hidden something extremely offensive within the dataset, and deliberately mutilated the maps to create funny images etc
Google had a few very public cases of people using their open contribution process to embed images of Android, penises and hate symbols into their maps. All this created a huge about of negative PR, and eventually resulted in the contributions system being shutdown.
> All this created a huge about of negative PR
Probably not that huge though, given I've never heard of it before :).
Oh and I suppose OP, so 66%.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/google-temporarily-s...
Facebook does the same with OpenStreetMap data. With a combination of automated tools and team of manual reviewers they were months behind with updates to allow error detection.
"Some of these contributions may have intentional and unintentional edits that are incompatible with our use cases. Our mapping teams work to scrub these contributions for consistency and quality. In the course of this work, we also build additional tools and technologies on top of OSM to increase mapping speed, and more importantly, drive a higher level of detail, quality and accuracy on the map." https://daylightmap.org/
Example: 37.475,-121.753
Both Google Maps and Apple Maps will cheerfully give you directions to this location which is less than 15 miles from their respective headquarters. You can't get there.
In areas where they haven't converted to their own data, they still rely on map data from others, like TomTom and OSM.
<-- typing this from a Mac, while learning how to use iPad's opaque gestures...
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.858832,19.3550722,13.71z
[2]: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/728419973#map=13/41.8835/...
The differences between OSM and the rest are staggering!
https://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/#14/41.8650/19.3868&num=4&mt0=...
Neither can Google.
>From Pakistan, Kashmir appears disputed while from India, it appears as a part of India, the Post report said, adding that "Google Maps changes disputed borders based on what country you search from".
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/google-maps-redraws-d...
I’ve been impressed by Apple’s pace and wish there was more I could read about their engineering and product journey for the maps product.
(This depends, obviously, on what you want from a map. I'm not a motorist.)
In practice, there are still some annoying wrinkles. It often assumes I boarded a bus when I'm not quite to the bus stop. So I have to tap and swipe a few times to go back, find out which platform or when the next bus arrives. If you have a moderate walk to or from the bus stop, the walking directions are frankly bad. I often quit and redo that part as only walking to get turn by turn. I know the watch has a much more limited screen, but I end up having to pull out my phone for some of those specific details like the platform or when the next bus is scheduled.
Why would they need to know where the bus is, when they already know where you are?
Maybe they are using GPS and silently failing in all other situations? My point is that it's nice when it works but could use some improvement on whatever method they're using.
I find I prefer to use Apple Maps for driving because it's just a nicer experience (though that's largely due to having hooks in iOS that Google Maps is not allowed), but I still don't really trust it when walking around a city. I'm in the UK so I'm not sure if it's better in the US, but it's not there yet over here.
Apple and Yelp seem to make it really easy to give them new hours. You can either write them in or just take a photo of the hours and they'll do it. For Apple, you get an alert in about a week that the changes were posted.
Years ago, I noticed Yelp wasn't used much internationally. The well rated-places were often touristy. With Apple, I have noticed "food" won't have many good results in some countries. I feel like the same applies to Google, but since I don't primarily use it I'm not sure its fair to say that.
I can submit a correction for a misplaced business or wrong opening hours, and it's live on the map within hours, but more often minutes. Recently I had to submit a correction to a typo in a business name to Apple Maps and it took over a week.
In India, Apple Maps has compensated for this - they have purchased this data from JustDial.com ... However, Apple Maps still remains inferior to both Google Maps and HERE Maps due to lack of data. It's a Catch-22 for Apple as even if people want to use Apple Maps its poor user experience forces users back to its better competitor and without the users using it, it cannot improve itself. Google Maps is nearly unbeatable in India due to the sheer amount of data it collects every single day from Android Phones and "crowdsourcing" from its users has made it really good at routing - for e.g. in Bangalore's insane traffic, its algorithm is quite good in considering both shortest popular routes + traffic to suggest routes that will take the shortest time to reach a destination. HERE maps is quite good too and is quite popular in India because it allows its maps to be downloaded for offline use. (Google was forced to add this feature too. Apple Maps in India still doesn't have this feature).
Both Apple and Google rely heavily on the business owners to self-report their hours.
In my company, we have one of our social media people assigned to this task. Each week he has to check all of our locations on both platforms to make sure the hours being displayed are correct.
Usually they are. Sometimes people will report a location closed because they're just mad about customer service, and he has to change it back. Sometimes our hours will change, and after he's changed them on Apple or Google, the hours will mysteriously revert to the old hours a week later.
The problem you encountered is a mindshare problem. Small businesses like cafes, and even some very large businesses, think Google=Internet. So they only update their information on Google.
COVID made this a lot worse because business owners closing their stores either temporarily or permanently don't really care that much about notifying Google or Apple. They have much more important things to worry about.
They are amazing compared what crap we got back in 2012 or so when apple maps replaced google maps.
Once the road labels were so frustratingly small that I took a screenshot and opened it in Photoshop just to see how small it was. One label was 4px. Another was 6px. How is anyone supposed to read a six pixel tall word?
Here's an example of Apple Maps using a FIVE PIXEL TALL font: https://twitter.com/Reaperducer/status/1277319668194148352
Seriously?
I was in Tel Aviv in 2017 in a rental car at Ben Gurion airport, trying to find the rental car return. The signs all pointed me one way, and Google Maps agreed. I followed them, and got to a place where Google said "your destination is on the left."
I cursed "no, it f&cking isn't!" After much driving around and stopping to ask people, I finally found it. The rental car company had given me a sheet of paper saying where it really was, which I had neglected to look at (never having had a problem before).
I never checked to see if Waze had it right.
In North America.
Google maps is accurate down to minute details in African countries.
I believe Australia is the next addition.
https://www.justinobeirne.com/new-apple-maps-expansion-12
You can access the Apple Maps web interface through DuckDuckGo.
Apple = design company, who's getting better at being a data company
As an aside, I really love reading these yearly posts from Justin. I always drop what I'm doing when I see one of these posts from him.
They don't let you repair devices, install your own software, or run your business unfettered. They spy on your files. They coddle and report to authoritarian governments.
This monopoly is lauded and praised as it continues to get bigger and encompass everything one does.
I don't understand it.
It hurts to watch this.
Apple makes (mostly, with some fairly large asterisks attached) reliable devices, with all the software most people want to run. Most people do not sell apps and therefore are not familiar with the bullshit that is App Store policy. And many of their customers are based in the west, where their stance on privacy at least _seems_ substantially better than their big tech alternatives. For those based in China, coddling with an authoritarian government is just business as usual.
The most important factor to most people, myself included for the most part, is that they make devices people enjoy using.
It's why you can detect so much anger and pain in anti apple threads, because people's personalities are wrapped up with the brand.
A consumer doesn't just get one apple device, or just use one apple app, they buy the watch, phone, desktop, laptop, subscriptions, walled garden store, etc, and it works. It's a family which is hard to leave because you like it there.
It sucks.
Yes, and these companies will use open solutions whenever it suits them. Some of these companies were even initially built on open solutions.
It's an asymmetric battle.
tl;dr - the stuff you're worried about is probably moot to the average consumer, which is why Apple continues to make sales.
That's a very poor argument, it is easy to sell something toxic to the average consumer.
This applies to all areas where product is complex, banks can literally ruin their life with one financial product.
Known loansharks and drug dealers never have shortage of customers, they neber seem to learn.
Never underestimate the power of good branding.
I’m not an Apple fanboi, but I don’t regret choosing it as my main development platform.
As to many of your other points, they are just wrong. I do repair my own devices, I do install my own software and I do run my business unfettered. I can't speak for others, but your assertion is not consistent with my own experience.
Which files do they "spy" on? They do offer on-device services like automatic photo tagging, rule based email filtering, etc. I can use those or not. I can grep and search my files, so I guess Apple (the OS) is "looking" at my files. Is that different than any OS? Basically any OS vendor has access to your files. You either trust it or you don't. Apple's business model is not built on selling my data to advertisers so I choose to trust them. You are welcome to make another choice.
As far as coddling to authoritarian governments, yes they follow the laws of the countries they operate in. So do any other companies that operate in those countries. That stinks, but that is the reality. Companies can either abandon markets or follow local laws. Which of these is the long term good? Lots of valid arguments both ways, but there can be no argument on one point. Operating in country X requires following the laws of country X.
Look, they are no saints, I get that. But they build great devices that do everything I want them to do. Of course there are people that have bad experiences, but overall Apple's customer satisfaction numbers are extremely high and people keep buying their devices. That's not an opinion.
To your central point, yes, as Apple offers more services that I find useful they do accrue more power. Which large companies that offer useful services do not accrue associated power? I choose to align with the company whose business model is not built upon selling me and my data to third parties. Eyes wide open. There are other good choices and I am happy for other people to make different choices. I don't feel pain for them.
> They coddle and report to authoritarian governments.
There's an interesting tension here. One strand of complaint is "Apple is too powerful", and the other is "Apple isn't ignoring laws".
If you're worried about the accrual of power to megacorporations, maybe you'd not like for them to be picking and choosing what laws they'll obey based on their own whims?