Then, on top of that, there is value in the data you're able to collect. Traffic data is really valuable. Tracking the movement of vehicles and pedestrians lets you create very accurate maps based on "real world" data, you could use it to figure out really specific things like traffic light timings, diversions, pedestrian crossings, parking space, layout of private roads...
At one point, Apple was working on a car, if you were making a self driving car, all that data would be useful for you, and beacuse of the value of it, competitors may not even sell it to you. So your only option is to generate it yourself.
As for transit data, that is fairly simple, most transit agencies will publish their timetables in GTFS format, there are tools to automatically export this in scheduling software. That will probably get your 90% of the way there, so you might have a few on the groud people in major cities to tweak and make it more accurate, which is nothing for a company on the scale of Apple.
...but then they decided to market themselves as "privacy-focused", so they can't really do that, right? Or are they actually doing it?
> At one point, Apple was working on a car
...but then they killed the car project, so that goes out of the window too.
When Apple built maps, the car project was still alive, so it would have been a factor in deciding on the investment. They could still partner with a car manufacturer and use the data.
I do suspect that my first point was key in green lighting Apple Maps. Google could have asked for more and more money to provide maps for Apple, or they could pull out completely, and force users to use the App Store app, which would have left the product direction of Maps completely out of Apple's hands.
[1] https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/03/13/apple-maps-navigati...
> Additionally, when you use Maps to make a navigation or directions request, details about your route are sent to Apple, including:
> [...]
> A random identifier, which is created when you ask for directions and exists for the duration of your navigation sessionThat’s just because your phone sends it, but your phone also has a list of “significant locations,” around which it could avoid sending data for a mile or less.
Here's the genius behind Apple's marketing: when they say "privacy" they (mostly) don't mean from them! They are mainly talking about third parties. Apple collects a ton of first-party data, and nobody seems to be concerned about that. I also the pond Apple swims in (big tech) is so disgusting and polluted that even their minor effort at cleanliness seems pretty good.
As an example, location data is shared with Apple, but it’s associated with a random unique identifier rather than your account. When your trip ends, your device switches to a new identifier. Traffic information is only shared if a certain threshold of users travel on a route [1].
Other examples include the entirely on-device photo scanning, the same rotating identifier system for transcripts of Siri interactions, etc. and, of course, being the only major cloud provider to offer E2EE on everything.
Not perfect, but a huge difference from their competitors.
[1] https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_P...
On the flip side, I tend to think a company so large would have at least one whistleblower or something on the inside, and/or would be so concerned about legal fallout that they wouldn't risk it.
On the flip side of the flip side, Apple is notoriously secretive (even among insiders) and very tight-fisted around employees sharing/leaking information. They also have some of the best lawyers in the world and a near infinite ability to fund any legal action, so may feel (and in fact, be) untouchable. And should Apple go evil, there aren't really great alternatives anyway for the average person, and they're generally so invested in the walled garden that walking away would entail a major disruption to their life.
I agree though, while not perfect, they are certainly much better than their competitors (not counting small players, e.g. GrapheneOS), and I'm grateful that at least they keep privacy at the forefront of conversation. If they abandoned it, there'd be nobody to pick up the mantle.
Apple then launched Apple maps - which at some point became quite good. Google quickly learned that they can't afford to make Android specific features in their apps or they risk losing large percentage of iOS users if Apple makes a competing product
If Apple didn't respond with making their own maps, then maybe we would see more and more Android specific features, to the point where Android would become the dominating platform
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users
But this is also exactly the same game Apple plays against Android users. It's the same reason why iMessage bubbles are green for Android. Google won the maps round, but such wins are vanishingly rare against Apple.
There are non-Android devices that can send texts as well; they also appear as green. It's probably more accurate to say that encrypted messages are blue and unencrypted are green. Look at the recent AT&T hack to see why the difference matters.
In fact that's NOT the way Apple describes it, either (see the Apple article cited above), because Apple doesn't actually want to enable E2EE -- it only wants to be able to say it offers it.
In practice, ensuring that other users are pressured into choosing iMessage on iPhone is the only thing that matters to Apple.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241443505/green-bubble-shami...
And, this very simple trick works extremely well: at least 87% of teenagers in the U.S. (https://mashable.com/article/apple-messages-green-doj) are pre-programmed to buy an iPhone, even though they have the lowest disposable income of all. Meanwhile, less than a third of the overall global population owns an iPhone.
Is that because iPhones are better? As an owner of both a recent Pro Max and Pixel Pro, I can unequivocally answer, "no", but I do find all of the annoyances between cross-device communication accrue to the point of just wanting to switch to my iPhone full-time, even though it's arguably a worse experience in many ways.
I was really just pointing out that devices like this:
https://www.hmd.com/en_us/nokia-2780-flip?sku=16WNDL11A01
and services like e.g. SMS text reminders from Internet services do no run on Android. The green is not a signifier of Android, just of non-encrypted. Or non-Apple, if you want to be less precise. (Apple devices where encryption is disabled also appear as green.)
SMS messages are green, no matter if it's sent from an Android phone or an iPhone or an authentication service or a marketing service, etc.
> Android is the dominating platform, except in the U.S.
After the fiasco from their initial app launch, I'm sure they would have preferred not to be a meme in a sitcom if possible on this go round. It is possible to release too early
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps#Initial_release
Becoming independent from Google for such a core feature was an important move.
How many people would still buy an iPhone without Apple or Google maps ?
The iPhone launched with Google Maps. Then Google decided to push feature updates skewed towards android phones, leaving iPhone users behind. Apple saw that a vendor could screw their users over (and potentially cause defectors), and decided to invest to ensure they don't have a dependancy.
The best part is that they can now offer it to App Store developers as a free iOS SDK (and paid API on web). Meanwhile the same developers would have to pay an exorbitant cost to use Google Maps. It's part of the moat that makes iOS the more profitable platform to develop for. You can also see this playbook with the release of free Weather APIs.
Yea Apple/Google maps has to be expensive to build and maintain, but at least for apple, they were able to buy their way to bootstrapping the map. What's impressed me is all the fly-over and custom 3D modeling they've done. It does really feel like they just wanted to make a good map at some point, even beyond what people needed or expected. That said, mapping products probably has good caching and fault tolerance you can design in to reduce cost - maps don't go out of sync that fast (for caching) and you'd never know if their "suggested routes" data was out of date occasionally, because you can never drive both routes at once.
Apple Mapkit is free up to 25K api call a day, after that you have to contact Apple for more (and pay I guess?).
Rather than sell out their users, Apple dropped Google Maps as the backend and launched their own maps, and then let Google write their own Maps app where they could do anything they wanted.
Apple Maps forced Google to improve Google Maps on iOS.
Apple Maps data was definitely substandard when it was released, but it has improved considerably since then. I vastly prefer it to Google Maps, especially for turn by turn directions when I'm driving.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-maps-pop-up-ad-34581...
They ship their operating systems with all the "common" apps pre-installed (e.g.: Email, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Maps, etc). For the maps to work, they need some data source. That's what Apple Maps is.
Apple doesn't make money with the Email app directly, but its existence likely improves how users perceive iOS. This probably translates to return customers and more people recommending it.
I dunno, have you actually used Apple Mail?
I like that it tells me what lane to be in, so it's my main mapping app. Also presumably better privacy than Google Maps.
Yeah you might say that.
My Android-owning Irish mate got hammered one night. Had no idea where he’d been.
We launched Google Maps and it had a GPS track of his entire night. Like a dotted map with every step he’d taken.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps-delet...
Google maps does that too.
The entire reason that Apple Mapd was introduced a year early was that Google held back turn by turn directions on the iOS version of Google maps
1. less reliant on your worst competitor
2. get to give your users something everyone else has to pay for (with money or data)
Not all of it, but it's disingenuous to say Apple doesn't make money from ads.
And in this context, that's why it is not a foolish choice to spend money on something that it's hard to sell ads on as long as it helps sell more iPhones.
Is Mail.app the most powerful client on earth? No; but it is Good Enough, and I don't have to download and pay for a third party app. Is Weather.app the best weather app with all the bells and whistles possible? No; but I don't care about weather apps to download and trial fifteen other ones and It Just Works.
Maps are (orders of magnitude) more complicated; but arguably are also on the baseline level of functionality for a modern mobile OS.
And Maps.app is just so much _nicer_ to use than Google Maps. It has the same problems that all Apple products like it does (search is atrocious, POI db is bad); but it is just a much more pleasant product. It looks nicer, it _feels_ nicer, it has best-in-class transit directions, and doesn't shove ads in front of my face.
[1]: Arguably getting worse and worse at it every year; but still miles ahead of everyone else.
It takes years, even a decade to get maps to a good quality (Apple maps launched in 2012). So I think it's a good thing that Apple started early enough. I'm sure it's crazy expensive to build and maintain. Apple can fund it from iPhone sales, and ensure that their ecosystem has an alternative for Google maps.
I don't think it's meant to turn a profit, I think it's meant as protection of their iPhone revenue.
Like, if McDonalds didn't pony up every year, they drop out of the list for Fast Food searches.