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Comment by bigyikes | Hacker News Reader

Apple maps has been good for a long time now. Anecdotally, I find the navigation to be more clear and the UX more intuitive.

I only use Google Maps for discovery and reviews. The navigation experience is not very good.

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Yep, and Apple maps doesn't do the most annoying thing that Google/Waze do.. show me an Ad when I'm stopped which prevents me from looking at the map and getting my bearings while I'm stopped and it's actually safe to do so.

Apple used to get some things boneheadedly wrong and it's hard to go back to an App that's done that but it has gotten really good, and the UX has been vastly better than the Google products for a long time. Much more legible at dashboard distance, much more clear, not showing popup POI locations based on advertising that you aren't interested in, voice directions are much better, etc..

It feels like both Waze and Google Maps have stood still for the last 10 years, at least if you're using them on the iPhone.

Ads while navigating?

I've never experienced that.... That would be insane...

I've seen them. The ones I have seen are more like pins on the map for locations that clearly say Ad on them.

I've seen this in search results where there is a promoted top result. I've never seen it while navigating, and I use it daily.

A quick search confirms that they do exist so I wonder if they're not rolled out, or potential non legal, in Europe.

I get audio ones, I haven't seen screen ones.

"Turn right at McDonald's" and such.

(It's possible that that's not an ad, just something they thought was a convenient feature, but it sure sounds like the thing that they'd figure out a way to monetize even if it didn't start that way.)

That's not an audio ad. They've identified recognizable signage using street view and then use that to help guide you, because usually it's easier to see the McDonalds than the small street sign behind it.

Seems like leaving money on the table if they aren't getting paid for that. It's brand advertising gold for the shops.

Anyway, my family doesn't care for them. No thanks for another machine sticking brand names into our lives. Hopefully Apple doesn't adopt the same feature.

Especially since - and this is the part that makes it feel most like an ad - it's really seems only to be for certain big brands. "Street name, street name, street name, WENDY'S, street name..."

Oh c'mon, like jedberg said, fast food chain restaurants and gas stations usually have good signage for driving (hat tip Learning from Las Vegas), so it makes sense to use them as visual milestones.

I love Naomi Klein and all, but sometimes looking for small side street sign while everyone's going at least 45mph on a stroad is nearly impossible.

> No thanks for another machine sticking brand names into our lives. Hopefully Apple doesn't adopt the same feature.

I actually find it super useful. I remember the first time it happened to me, because I was surprised but also super pleased.

I was driving and it said "turn into the driveway after the Good Earth sign". And sure enough, I would have totally missed the nearly hidden driveway right past the Good Earth, but the sign on the restaurant was so big it was impossible to miss, even on the 45mph stroad I was on.

I disagree. I absolutely see it as an ad, using driving directions as the trojan horse to sneak it in.

Well, it's not. And they're not paid for it.

Whether or not it's intended as an ad, and whether or not they're getting paid for it, kinda doesn't really matter. I perceive it as a kind of advertising, probably because it came around when maps was adding all sorts of other advertising as well, and advertising was the final straw that drove me away from Google Maps.

I also find it a much less useful way of indicating directions, but I recognize that's just because my brain works differently. That's not a criticism of doing it that way.

It's literally the only thing that matters to the question of whether or not it's an ad. Imagine telling your grandma 30 years ago you don't appreciate her advertising to you because she used a business as a navigational reference giving directions to her house. Absurd.

Eh, to each his own. My grandma is not Google. Google has earned a high degree of suspicion and mistrust. My grandma has not.

Besides, she wouldn't have done that. She would have been more likely to give me directions in a way that is more useful to me than that, because she knows me.

This is definitely NOT the behavior of Google maps in any android device (always default rom) I ever had, never saw any ad as you describe, and I keep using them daily... don't you have by any chance crapware-infested-from-manufacturer brand like Xiaomi or Huawei?

My Waze app shows me ads when I'm stopped too. On my iPhone.

Google maps doesn't do this and that is what the op was stating.

The original comment referred to Google/Waze doing this, which is why I chimed in.

Google owns Waze, so it is "Google/Waze".

Apple Maps also rarely tells you to make unprotected left turns against traffic, whereas Waze will happily give you nearly impossible but theoretically faster directions.

Agree the quality of Apple Maps has improved to the point of acceptability in my experience. In addition to privacy reasons, I end up using Apple Maps because Google Maps has been having a lot of really terrible bugs for me lately. Probably 10+ times over the last few years it re-routes me down random side streets or back country roads, for no reason: sometimes even when it itself thinks doing so will add a significant amount of time to my travel! But for business search and reviews, Gmaps is still unparalleled, so it stays installed.

Certainly my experience (UK based) is that whilst Apple Maps has got much better, it's still pretty terrible and gives outright wrong lane guidance and motorway exit information quite often... Waze is virtually faultless in all the time I've used it.

I use Apple Maps extensively when I’m in Scotland and have not gotten bad directions even on single-track roads in the Highlands (IIRC, its directions to the Fairy Glen on Skye are impeccable; the directions to the Fairy Pools are only slightly worse, but that’s because the parking lot went through fairly recent construction a few years ago).

My wife (used to) swear by Apple Maps and was driving us to the NEC a few weeks ago - when exiting us off the A14 we would have gone completely the wrong way and up the M6 past Birmingham and northbound if we'd followed it's lane guidance - it also had the exit number completely wrong.

If it wasn't for me being slightly familiar with the route and advising my wife to ignore it that's what would have happened.

I've had similar problems, again mostly with lane guidance on exiting/splitting motorways, in Kent as well so I won't touch it with a barge pole now... I can't recall Waze ever letting me down

I have never tried Waze, forgot there was a third option. Will have to give it a try after reading this thread; maybe it avoids some of the bugs in gmaps I keep running into

I hate to say it, but I feel quality of Google Map's direction actually has gone done in recent years, even though I haven't changed any preferences.

It will put me through some ridiculous routes or lead me to incorrect destination for the same place I've been visiting for many years.

I get the feeling that I'm being used as a Guinea pig.

When I went to Venice, Apple map generally worked better in terms of walking directions.

I've definitely noticed weirdness with Google directions lately. It will routinely send me down streets that are obviously, clearly worse choices - slower, with more lights, and more local streets than the arterial streets that I would normally use.

As well, it insists on naming my cities main streets by their highway #s rather than the actual names of the street - which is extra confusing because the two directions of the "highway" are the two one-way main streets through town.

> ridiculous routes > guinea pig

I agree - I've long suspected that I've been used as a "probe" to check if a road is still accessible, or what speed is typical, etc. by being sent on strange sub-optimal routes.

Google maps is free and you're the product. In this case, your services as a convenient information gathering appendage.

All I really want is cardinal points on the map. So simple, and yet Google doesn't know how to do this.

If I know the orientation of the map, then I can usually figure out what my starting direction is. Otherwise, I stuck with Google Maps fumbling direction until I start moving my vehicle, and by that point, it's already mis-navigated me.

I also hate the way their maps are constantly hiding information, like street names, unless you zoom waaaaaay in.

MapQuest provided so much detail at similar scales vs. Google Maps.

> I get the feeling that I'm being used as a Guinea pig.

I understand that feeling completely. I travel all over the US and rely upon it. Google Maps is my only copilot and it can give some really puzzling suggestions.

My last fun one: I was traveling on an interstate and had ~5 miles to go until my exit onto a highway (which I was then going to travel on for ~50 miles.) Instead of continuing down the interstate, it had me exit at the nearest exit, then get onto a rutted out dirt road (which would have connected with the highway.) All to save a mile I guess? I quickly turned around when I realized where Maps had lead me.

One other time I was leaving a residential neighborhood and it literally had me driving in a loop around the block until I restarted the navigation.

It's pretty much a requirement to look at where Google Maps is actually going to take you before setting off, and that's unfortunate.

I use Apple maps almost exclusively, except when I rent a car on a trip sometimes. There are still some goofy things that Apple does (or doesn't do). Like several times in a certain rural area, I had Apple nav tell me to exit at the Nth roundabout exit, except that it didn't count a farm driveway or agricultural access roads while I did count them, not knowing any better. While the nav of the car I was renting did count those as exits.

I can understand the perspective of not counting non-public roads. The ag access was clearly marked as a road for ag/forestry but it was still a road that had a direct access to the roundabout. On the other hand, the driveway was not marked in any way though you could sort of tell it was a driveway.

But when you are driving, you are not necessarily evaluating whether this roundabout exit is one you can use or one you should or shouldn't count.

It was interesting to me that the Apple nav was harder to follow in those cases than the car nav. Before these incidents happened, I am not sure I could have guessed at which would be better.

"Don't drive on other people's private driveways so don't include private roads" is a reasonable heuristic to follow. But "count every road whether or not you might use it" is also reasonable.

Apple maps UX kinda sucks. Map preferences are under the Settings app and not the app itself (there are at least two clicks to get here from the Maps app, and it's under your Apple ID, wtf?). You cannot configure it to maintain cardinal directions when driving (I want "north" to always be "top"). The 3D view while driving in a city with skyscrapers is downright dangerous, let alone confusing. It does a terrible job of keeping track of your recent queries (search for "food", select one place and see its location, step away and search the name of that place, if its a chain or there are similar things close by good luck finding again!)

Like Maps is fine but it's like using an off-brand google maps from 10 years ago with a pretty display. Unfortunately I don't really care how pretty the display is, I care about being able to find things and get there.

> Map preferences are under the Settings app

That’s the case for most Apple apps, and some non Apple apps too

Other apps having bad UX doesn't negate this app's bad UX

Main complaints are lack of offline maps (finally coming in iOS 17) and that it pulls business photos from Yelp and then tries to install their app if you want to enlarge an image.

One more complaint: they've had survey vehicles with cameras and LiDAR on the road since at least 2015 [1] but their Street View competitor still only covers 19 cities in the US [2].

It was quite good both times I was within the coverage area, and I was guessing it might roll out much more widely as a feature of their VR headset (since the data is more 3D than street view's), but no.

There's a big list of places where they're mapping this year [3] but who knows when that data will make it to the actual service.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Around_(Apple)#/media/Fil...

[2] https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#maps-look-ar...

[3] https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection/

As one who uses Apple Maps almost exclusively, it’s way too often that I say to myself, “Google has Street View down the Dalton Highway all the way to the Arctic friggin’ Ocean in Deadhorse, Alaska, and Apple can’t show me a street 20 miles outside Seattle?”

Plenty of large cities missing entirely too. San Antonio (1.47 million), Dallas (1.3 million), Austin (974k), Jacksonville (971k), etc.

They've got 4 cities done in California, which leaves 15 for the other 49 states.

I'm in Knoxville which isn't covered, only Nashville here with Memphis presumably next in line. We're the 131st largest city in the US with about 200k people, similar to Salt Lake City or Columbus. Could be a long time before they get the rest of us.

Apple Maps tells you "after this light, turn right" which is great while I am on my motorcycle and can't quickly read the street signs.

It means my phone can stay in my pocket and I can still get directions to where I am going without needing to look down at the screen to figure out that I need to pass this next traffic light then turn right at "Something st" when I can't even see the sign for "Something st" and looking for that sign would take my focus off the road/other drivers.

I live in London and use public transport all the time. Apple Maps has always had a feature where if you leave a large tube/train station with multiple exits, it’ll tell you which to use, or which signs to follow inside. For some reason Google still doesn’t have this so I pretty much always use Apple Maps at least for new journeys.

Apple Maps was a pleasure to use when I last visited Tokyo, for the same reason.

This was in 2019 and I was using google as my default application, and I was blown away how much better Apple handled the trains. The part I remember most was how it denoted each train with proper colors, while showing their live positions. That made it easy to navigate the otherwise intimidating quantity of trains and complexity of the stations.

The experience got me to try Apple Maps in the USA again, where I found the quality had substantially improved and good enough for my use cases. It's only improved since then.

The trains should be about the same in either one since they come from a vendor (Jorudan), but the station info and walking times inside the station come from the maps companies.

Though I haven't used Google Maps there in a while, maybe they stopped using Jorudan.

Yes, I didn't mean to imply they have different information about the trains, rather that how they present the information in the UI was (is) markedly different.

As a Westerner who doesn’t live in Japan, Apple Maps is infinitely better there (2023).

In the US, I use Google Maps / Waze / Apple Maps about 50/20/30% of the time (Google by default / Waze if I care about shaving minutes or police / Apple if I am using Siri or just going somewhere I know and the Map is easily shown)

Interesting. Google Maps showed me which exit to use at stations in Japan, recently.

I can’t speak for London, but I live in NYC and Google Maps definitely does this here: (“Exit via…”) and (“Follow signs for…”)

Isn't it Apple Maps that Duckduckgo uses? I've used DDG exclusively for search for at least ten years now, but I always end up out of the maps tab and into maps.google.co.uk. 'm' in address bar autosuggests it. I think that speaks for itself.

Apple Maps doesn't even offer (maybe it does on iOS?) public transport directions at all.

As a U.S. user of Apple Maps on iOS, I can say that they do indeed offer directions with a public transportation option.

Apple Maps is much better for discovery. Search for “pizza” on Google maps and it shows you the nearest pizza places which advertise with them - for me that misses the two closest pizza places to my house. I have to zoom right into where I know they are to see them.

+1 I switched from Google to Apple maps a few years back, I think it's easily the better product now.

> Apple maps has been good for a long time now

It's good, but I find it offputtingly cartoonish.

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