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Comment by sircastor | Hacker News Reader

I don't know that they've made the effort (or would want to) but Apple has an opportunity here I think to make next-generation video site that favors material that works well for VisionPro and whatever follows it. If YouTube isn't willing to encourage content for the platform, and someone else is, they risk ending up as an also-ran.

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.

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> Apple has an opportunity here I think to make next-generation video site that favors material that works well for VisionPro and whatever follows it

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.

They did a press release yesterday that they are doing this and have like 8 launch titles in their proprietary vr format.

Apple maps is ... pretty bad though.

It’s not, though.

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.

I live in Germany. After dual-using Google Maps and Apple Maps for a year, I've finally uninstalled Google Maps and now use only Apple Maps.

Try osmand, it's based over the openstreetmaps data and you can download the map, so it works also with no internet.

In germany it should be very good.

Maybe, it’s better than Google maps though and that is what matters here

Apple maps was worse at launch than Google Maps was at the time.

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).

> 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).

Where I live, OSM is quite ok. It doesn't generally have the opening hours of the venues… but the opening hours in google are generally made up so that's ok.

OSM has all the mountain trails and caves and hostels, where as gmaps just shows a huge green blob.

There is StreetComplete which makes it really easy to contribute such data. In Osmand it's a bit more work, but still not difficult

3. Apple has global coverage for its maps (or at least equal to Google). Apple maps is formerly Tomtom after all.

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.

> 3. Apple has global coverage for its maps (or at least equal to Google). Apple maps is formerly Tomtom after all.

This is factually untrue for most of Australia outside of the cities. I can't validate other countries but its not even close here.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-23/apple-maps-error-cost...

As an example of how messed up it is.

> Google Maps probably has MUCH better worldwide coverage. Which means that Apple Maps is useless in large parts of the world.

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?

> But that is not a major disadvantage for everyone. It’s a disadvantage in those areas only.

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.

> Yeah, duh.

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.

> Apparently it's basically NA, Western Europe, Australia. So that's what, 1 billion people? The remaining 7+ billion people, tough luck.

Sorry, is your criticism that this free app is only suitable for 1 billion or so people?

That's a failure from your viewpoint?

> Google Maps can be used on any platform (Android, Windows).

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.

Do you get navigation through the web? Or other advanced features?

> Reviews and more accurate points of interest (if they are businesses).

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.

It was certainly horrific for a while, I work in agriculture across a large area and we "banned" a coworker from using it because all of the pins they would send us would end up a mile away somehow, whereas they didn't have that problem with google maps.

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.

It used to be but these days there is no real difference. I prefer Apple Maps mostly because it has no ads and works better with Apple Watch.

It’s gotten really good, I prefer it to maps with directions

It’s good enough for me to use it by default. It probably location dependent?

I find it pretty acceptable these days. And has some advantages over Google maps due to native integration, like showing directly navigation screen when you take your phone out of your pocket without a need to unlock your phone or touch the screen.

In my experience, it’s good now.

> Apple maps is ... pretty bad though.

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.

> Apple's solution was to spend a fortune to develop their own Map data.

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?

I’ve seen an Apple mapping vehicle in my rural UK village so I assume they are spending real money on maps.

> 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.

Apple initially licensed data primarily from TomTom and also from others.

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...

No. GP is right. Apple Maps was originally created from a dump of Openstreetmap data. Apple then collected its own data to build its own maps from scratch and contributed none of that back. It used, and still uses, TomTom for traffic incident data. https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html

Nope. They may also use TomTom for traffic incident data, but their primary data source for map data at release was TomTom.

> 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.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google

> OpenStreetMap seems to think that Apple contributes both tools and data.

Like I said, they contributed nothing from the maps they created from scratch back, only corrections to OpenStreetmap while they were using it.

The math makes no sense, ~70,000 devices (best case) and $30 CPM (high) is like $2100 with every device watching your content.

Apple and YT would miss-out on advertising to a captive, targeted demo of UHNWIs, corporate types, and those with expensive toys. Second to being a UBS or Tesla customer list or list of people with ASW accounts, it's a target-rich environment of that particular demo. Of course, marketing to that demo is very precarious and must be done deftly because it could easily backfire.

these people already bought YouTube premium, there's no advertising from YouTube

I highly doubt VR is going to replace a phone for users. People will still sit in bed and stare at their phone. vr is more of a hobby than it is an everyday computing device

I think the fact that apps are available for Meta's products show that (at the time) there was confidence into a potential growth category. And (currently) there is no confidence that Apple's product makes any commercial sense (in the near future). This is even emphasized by Apple clearly launching this in small quantities with excessive margins.

Meta funded some of those apps.

Meta developed the Netflix one in-house for example.

I doubt Apple would offer that.

The opportunity is to launch on the Vision Pro developer/early adopter device and get your app ready for the mass market version.

Apple doesn't really have experience with building a platform for user generated content. Sure, they have the technological might, but content moderation, recommendation fairness, ad monetization, etc. are different beasts and usually come with awful publicity risks that might just not be worth the effort for the world's richest company.

Isn't the App Store basically user generated content with moderation?

They have certainly received bad publicity over the App Store.

Good point. Although I'd also say that the barrier to entry for content producers is somewhat higher for App Store. You'd likely need some level of computer science education and their review process also takes longer and is controversial at times.

They are like 99% there tho. You can start group chat in iMessage and share iCloud videos there. There's some moderation built in iCloud imagine scanning.

They ended up never rolling out the CSAM scanning implementation due to the backlash they received from it.

That was to let governments know they are willing to write software to find files the government doesn't want people to have. Child porn is just the icing smeared on that turd.

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