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Comment by carlosjobim | Hacker News Reader

You can't easily contribute to Apple Maps or add places. That's why Google Maps has much more content. Many people would love to contribute to Apple Maps, but aren't allowed.

On the other hand, these are the two wealthiest companies in all of human history. Why can't they hire people all over the world to improve their maps?

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>You can't easily contribute to Apple Maps or add places

yes you can, you simply select an item on the map and report a problem. also they already hire third party agencies to add data to the map

Apple Maps pulls in OpenStreetMaps data in my area of the country, so submitting information on OSM means an eventual Apple Maps upgrade for me. I edited the 3D shape of some of the houses in my neighborhood and added missing streets on OSM and saw them imported into Apple Maps a few months later.

Here is a map to see where people affiliated with apple are contributing to openstreetmap: https://piebro.github.io/openstreetmap-statistics/#e19b it seems they use OSM data everywhere but in North America and most of Europe.

Apple Maps also credits TomTom as a data source, so could it be OSM > TomTom > Apple in terms of the data flow?

Accorinding to wikipedia they have many different sources (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps#Features):

> The main provider of map data is TomTom, but data is also supplied by Automotive Navigation Data, Getchee, Hexagon AB, IGN, Increment P, Intermap Technologies, LeadDog, MDA Information Systems, OpenStreetMap, and Waze.

Compare that with Google Maps, where anybody can easily add businesses or other places of interest that are missing from the map. How do you go about doing that in Apple Maps? Without an Apple device?

Businesses should have in their best interest to add themselves to Apple Maps (which they can do). If you see something not showing just pop inside and tell the manager. That's what I did one time at a hairdresser's

Business owners spend their time and effort where it pays off. If they don't have spare time to navigate Apple's user-hostile backend for adding or updating their business, they won't. The network effect means customers will rely on Google Maps.

Apple has a web portal for adding businesses to a map. https://support.apple.com/guide/apple-business-connect/intro... Existing businesses can have inaccurate information reported on and corrected by users.

Business Connect is sadly a total joke. I can't correct the name of a business I manage and just get the error "Thoroughfare or fullThoroughfare must not be empty, Thoroughfare or fullThoroughfare must not be empty"

Google Maps is far better for businesses to manage and get their information out. That's why their maps are dominating.

There was mention on HN of people using this feature to add spam.

uhhh street view

Apple does have a "street view" of sorts in areas where they have driven vehicles around the area, but it's limited now to only some cities. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/look-around-places-ip... It is possible to use Google's data through Apple Maps via a third-party app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/streets-street-view-browser/id...

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