Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaysea | Hacker News Reader

This article is from last year but the latest iOS 15 updates show how mature Apple maps has become (see https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-15-maps/). It’s not just at parity but actually better than Google maps. It has beautiful rendering and easy readability, and I haven’t encountered odd routing issues for a couple years now. The added privacy is a welcome bonus. The only thing missing is a way to report police presence like on Waze.

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.

View on HN

While the maps themselves are excellent, it's a shame you lose out on Google's frankly ridiculous business data. I've had Apple Maps route me to a café that was temporarily closed, while Google Maps knew it was closed, for example.

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.

In my experience, Covid has screwed up everybody's data. Apple seems to pull from Foursquare or Yelp or something, but I've seen Google, Apple, Foursquare and Yelp all of the different, incorrect hours. I think some of them have added flags/fields for temporary hours because of it.

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 think Google's correction workflow helps massively with keeping the data up to date.

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.

> it's a shame you lose out on Google's frankly ridiculous business data

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).

I've had Apple Maps route me to a café that was temporarily closed, while Google Maps knew it was closed, for example

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.

Can’t speak for elsewhere in the world, but I find Apple’s navigation quality to be at least on par with Google’s here in Canada. Its biggest deficiency for me now is its relatively poor point-of-interest data

This is might be true but only if you live the US. In the UK, Apple Maps is not par with Google Maps unfortunately.

But then, if you live in the UK, Google Maps is not par with Ordnance Survey, or in many places, OpenStreetMap.

(This depends, obviously, on what you want from a map. I'm not a motorist.)

This might be true if you're walking up a hill but its not true if you're trying to go to a specific place (restaurant/shop etc) with opening times via any mode of transport.

It's not the UK, but in Hong Kong on iOS 15, Apple Maps now automatically taps you on the wrist (apple watch) right before it's time to get off the public bus at your stop. It is freakishly accurate.

It's a very nice feature. I'm not quite sure of what metric they're using. Some busses can show real-time locations, others they obviously dont have that info. Sometimes it will ping me a stop early (if the stops are close together?). I do wish there was a way to either stop directions on the phone, or put it in low power mode. It seems to eat my battery on long bus trips if its just sitting in my pocket. On car trips with directions I'm often charging the phone. On the bus or when walking I'm often not.

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.

> I'm not quite sure of what metric they're using. Some busses can show real-time locations, others they obviously dont have that info

Why would they need to know where the bus is, when they already know where you are?

That might work for a bus out in the open, but GPS doesn't work well with a lot of nearby tall buildings, or for subways underground.

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.

Apple Maps really look nice. But depending where you are the information can be shocking barren. Especially in Japan. They look really great but there is no labels, or anything. And if they are not as well double labeled (english and japanese).

They are amazing compared what crap we got back in 2012 or so when apple maps replaced google maps.

Speaking of Waze (which is originally an Israeli company, if you didn't know):

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.

Nowhere close to how accurate Google is in India

“Easy readability” on this point I find myself wishing there was a way to make street names and fonts in general bigger in Apple Maps. Also green font on green backgrounds, why ? In terms of planning there is still no way to add multiple routes along the way which would be a nice addition.

A lot of Apple products have bad font issues, and Apple Maps is among the worst. There's simply no way anyone at Apple has checked contrast or font size for accessibility in Apple 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?

_If_ you can live with having larger text in other apps, too, you can do that in the accessibility settings.

That helps at the expense of everything else now borked, but I wonder what is so hard about having a per app font setting ?

I'd love to use Apple maps for driving directions, but I just can't get used to its mostly-overhead navigation view. I regularly take wrong turnings when following Apple Maps, which almost never happens with Google Maps or TomTom.