Apple maps is ... pretty bad though.
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).
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?
OSM has all the mountain trails and caves and hostels, where as gmaps just shows a huge green blob.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.