It's a small population, no doubt. But it's also a population that's willing to spend a substantial amount of money, and if you can get people creating content for your platform ("VPTube" or whatever you'd call it) then it's going to be harder to pull those content creators back to YouTube after that wait and see period. They're dealing with that problem with TikTok right now.
Meta developed the Netflix one in-house for example.
I doubt Apple would offer that.
They have certainly received bad publicity over the App Store.
I certainly remember the period when Apple didn't want to hand over the user IDs for users while they were accessing Google's map data and Google refusing to allow turn by turn driving directions on iOS until they did.
Apple's solution was to spend a fortune to develop their own Map data.
I wouldn't bet against them rolling their own 3D video sharing site.
It might be uneven in different markets, but they’ve been working very hard at improving the content and UX and in a number of markets it’s a viable and very strong competitor to Google Maps.
It will sometimes feel the lack of Google Business Listings, but the driving/walking/biking/transport/streetview experience is uniformly great where they’re released optimised versions of their maps — in my case Australia.
In germany it should be very good.
However I welcomed the change as it was Google which was preventing Siri from working outside of north america ("find restaurant near me"; didn't work in the UK until after Apple Maps)
Today the landscape is different. Google Maps is positively littered with ads which makes it in some cases very annoying to use.
Turn-by-turn navigation, if you have carplay is much superior with apple maps.
They have comparably updated maps data.
So, it's a marginally better usability in some cases and equivalent in most.
Google has two advantages: Reviews and more accurate points of interest (if they are businesses).
Unless someone can prove me wrong, Google probably has four advantages, and the last two are MAJOR ones.
3. Google Maps probably has MUCH better worldwide coverage. Which means that Apple Maps is useless in large parts of the world.
4. Google Maps can be used on any platform (Android, Windows).
OSM has all the mountain trails and caves and hostels, where as gmaps just shows a huge green blob.
Google Maps excels in providing comprehensive information on public transportation routes with much better coverage, but driving routes are equivalent.
4. Eh. We are talking about Apple products so hardly relevant.
Apple successfully displaced Google on its platform with a product that is sometimes better and not particularly worse.
This is factually untrue for most of Australia outside of the cities. I can't validate other countries but its not even close here.
As an example of how messed up it is.
But that is not a major disadvantage for everyone. It’s a disadvantage in those areas only. Same app version might work great for me, but not for someone else. I wonder if they specifically target improved coverage in areas with most iPhone customers?
Yeah, duh.
However from the original experience with Apple Maps, it was very US-centric and especially California-centric at the start.
And I assume even Americans and Californians want to travel to places with bad coverage.
So yes, this is a total blocker for people that live in those (many?) regions and a major issue even for people that don't live there.
Edit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/applemaps/comments/14wo26t/apple_ma...
Apparently it's basically NA, Western Europe, Australia. So that's what, 1 billion people? The remaining 7+ billion people, tough luck.
That's not as obvious and not true for most applications. A game or a note taking app will be great or crappy regardless of the area. Maps is an application where the same version works great in on area and then completely unusable in another geographical area. That's pretty odd if you think about it. So then it leads to endless debate "It works great for me, better than Google maps" and of course there will be someone who says "NO! It's complete crap and never works". And both may be right.
> And I assume even Americans and Californians want to travel to places with bad coverage.
Most people don't travel that much. iPhone and Apple's ecosystem in general was never positioned as affordable to 7+ billion people everywhere. I don't know if Apple is going to bother mapping details of some remote village just become an iPhone carrying American might visit. Maybe eventually, but they'll start with US probably.
> The remaining 7+ billion people, tough luck.
Sure. Apple doesn't run a charity and providing details and accurate navigation and maps everywhere is not something they're in the business for.
Sorry, is your criticism that this free app is only suitable for 1 billion or so people?
That's a failure from your viewpoint?
Apple Maps is accessible through the web.
For instance, if you search for a place on DuckDuckGo and then click the Maps button, you get Apple Maps results.
Uh?
Google maps will never ever send me to a restaurant that is 200m from me. It will rather show one that is 5km away and not show the nearby one.
Same thing for hotels.
Once, at maximum zoom level, it didn't show the restaurant I was in. So I added it… turns out it was in their database, they just decided to not show it.
I think they're running a mafia racket and if you don't pay for ads, you are basically taken off the map.
However it is very much improved these days, and workable enough. Definitely worth a re-evaluation.
Incidentally, I encounter two intermittent bugs in google maps:
- This past year there's a bug that mirrors the old apple maps problem of sending me somewhere way off from my destination in some rare and particular (barely inhabited) areas, like an AI is trying to snap the point to something normal people would recognize as a destination. But no, my destination really is the side of a field. I find I can get around this by doing a longer hold press when setting the location which seems to force the coordinates. It's always important to double check the destination didn't change on me.
- Sometimes when clicking "Start", the app will get stuck presenting some kind of text only directions with no way to get away from that damned useless white screen until I kill the app and re-enter the destination.
I thought the same thing till I bought my new car recently and started using Maps due to Carplay. It has MASSIVELY improved since launch. In fact, my wife is an Android user and we will compare them regularly on trips and in many case Apple Maps will cover parts of the route that Google Maps will not. An example is gated communities, Google Maps usually ends at the gate, Apple Maps will route to the house.
I think Google Maps has better traffic data (but that’s thanks to buying Waze), but Apple Maps has better routing. Google Maps has more up to date POI data, but Apple Maps is not far behind. Try it again and see, you still may be prefer Google Maps but it’s not the night and day difference between the two it once was.
They most likely just downloaded openstreetmap database and spent nothing. Do you have any source that the logical and easy thing is not what they did?
Yes, openstreetmap's data was WAYYYY better than Apple Maps at launch.
In central London Apple Maps had such bad data that some of the business listings hadn't existed since before Apple Inc was formed as company, which were certainly not problems in openstreetmap.
They've been replacing licensed map data with data they gather themselves for over half a decade now. So far, their own data covers North America, Europe, Australia as well as a few countries elsewhere. 35 countries so far.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/apple-is-rebuilding-maps-f...
https://www.justinobeirne.com/new-apple-maps-expansions-curr...
> The main provider of map data is TomTom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps
> contributed none of that back
OpenStreetMap seems to think that Apple contributes both tools and data.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple
Almost all of the large tech companies with a mapping product contribute data to OpenStreetMap, with Google being the sole exception that I'm aware of.
Like I said, they contributed nothing from the maps they created from scratch back, only corrections to OpenStreetmap while they were using it.
If I was any of those companies I wouldn't bother either.
Can you imagine any hard-charging SV CEO saying "actually it might be a bit buggy or muck up our analytics data, best leave it for now folks, enjoy your weekend, take it easy"
It's left up to Product Managers who very much do care about whether their analytics data is messed up given that it is often used to evaluate their performance.
My sweet summer child, the relationship between Apple and Netflix/Google is entirely determined by their respective platform Bizdev teams + executive relationships. Product happens after the business terms are hashed out.
Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Opera only.
Either Google only built it to use Widevine (which Safari doesn't support) or Safari's limitations on the amount of data that can be stored make it too unreliable to roll out to customers.
Allowing their content on Apple’s platform will create a gap in case they want to compete in the future
I thought people in Apple world desired the walled garden experience where the guardian is so strict to "monitor the quality and safety of apps" that you can't possibly allow for side loading.
Why allow subpart experiences onto a new platform that makers can't afford to make "safe and perfect"?
Because they smell leverage. Vision Pro adoption has to be subsidized by Apple, there’s no demand. To bootstrap demand popular apps with users need to be available. They have no risk of losing customers to a competitor by not shipping this.
So they are building negotiation ammo for a bit for the next round of conversations over platform fees, app review processes, etc.
For whatever reason the VR industry has been a particularly strange stand off ground in this universe because of a certain huge player trying to get mainstream user interest to take off to make their negotiating hand with potential suppliers much stronger, but it has not worked.
Sounds like not so much an explicit opt-out as holding out for apple to make the headset run their existing apps.