It clearly states that it's for Chrome/Edge/Safari only, and not for mobile. But it also says at the bottom:
> Support for additional languages, browsers, and platforms will be expanded over time.
I think it's totally fair that a beta has support for limited browsers, in order to get it out faster. Just like it's only in English for now as well, although that will obviously expand too.
If it's not available for Firefox or Android when it leaves beta, then yes it's a problem. But an English-only beta with limited compatibility is one of the things betas are for. It's an appropriate setting of expectations.
Having said that, what other beta products Apple had released in the past? I don’t recall too many.
At least that one works in Firefox though.
Just because people in this thread have found workarounds to get it to launch in Firefox doesn't mean there aren't still a bunch of bugs there, that Apple is aware of but doesn't want marring the user experience yet.
From first-hand experience, I've seen it happen in SaaS orgs with (diplomatically speaking) "unsophisticated-but-confident" userbases seeking to reduce support-costs. The kind of SaaS where the paying customer is a business - and where the users' eyes glaze-over any warning banner or message but eagerly call the SaaS support number for entirely unrelated issues with Outlook; so outright blocking unsupported browsers/clients reduces the support burden.
(I'm not defending this practice; I'm strongly opposed to it)
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Another (also, unfortunately, from first-hand experience) reason is a (very) non-technical project leader will write up a (semi-reasonable) brief Jira ticket like "Our SaaS product doesn't work in Firefox; until we invest in supporting Firefox we'll just direct users to use a supported browser" - but the ticket gets assigned to a particular kind of remote contractor SWE who never challenges higher-ups or says "this is a bad idea" - who'll interpret the part about "we'll direct users to use a supported browser" as "block unsupported browsers".
Regardless of what you think of iMessage, Maps is beta and it works on Windows in Edge and in Chrome.
So this is clearly not being restricted to Apple devices or to Apple browsers.
Also, what is with the fanboy defense of the richest corporation in the world? If they want to defend their shitty sales tactics they can afford to pay for it.
Also:
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.
this is my favorite
mapquest has existed since 1996 XD
seriously tho i think it's fine that it's a limited beta.
The imagery looks clean but the minimum altitude is much higher than what Google offers, so it's hard to evaluate. (Helpful tip to mapping providers: you don't need more resolution, just let me zoom in on your existing imagery! There is no reason whatsoever to stop at 1:1.)
No street-view functionality appears to be present. Not sure if it's supposed to be, but it's certainly a dealbreaker if not.
And then, yes, there's the matter of failing to support commonly-used browsers, even though it works fine in those browsers when appending a bogus subdirectory name as someone else pointed out.
Bottom line, if there's any reason to use this over Google Maps I'm not seeing it.
This is just stupid: https://i.imgur.com/VpEvREN.png Some of the most significant streets have no labels, and good luck reading the ones that are there.
Feels a little like they rushed it to meet some Q3 launch timeline?
> Support for additional languages, browsers, and platforms will be expanded over time.
A beta that is kinda embarrassingly less cooked than multiple commercial and open source offerings which, mysteriously, provided both desktop and mobile web versions without fuss on effectively day one.
It screams that Apple has under invested in this solution.
This is more of an alpha released to the public. If they consider lack of mobile browser support feature complete (the industry standard state before beta), they are in deep shit.
What is it about Apple that brings out the most shrill and uninformed opinions, even on a website that skews toward software developers?
This is a third party front end to Apple’s search engine
Apple isn’t exactly trying to make a competitor to Google.
If you try to access Apple Maps on an unsupported browser, you get a hard "Your current browser isn't supported" block, presumably implemented with UA detection.
https://beta.maps.apple.com/asd as an example.
Their devs are probably trying to make sure it runs in Firefox but they haven't added it to the official QA process, just like they haven't added languages other than English either. And they don't want Firefox users complaining about bugs that might be there yet.
If this were a full release then sure I'd complain too. But this is just a beta. Maybe releasing betas before they have full compatibility and internationalization is good, rather than "miserable"?
Blocking untested combinations seems contrary to that goal.
Or I guess it's another example of how the word "Beta" has become marketing speak for "New!", with a side of "No Support!"
There are phases of internal and more limited testing that need to precede the broader beta phase.
If you haven't finished those phases yet on other browsers, there's no point in jumping ahead to a public beta for them.
You wouldn’t have given this a second of extra thought if it wasn’t done by a company you’ve obviously long-since decided that you hate for cultural reasons.
And there are plenty of apologists ready to explain how it's your fault.
The classification of "beta", in many release cycles, indicates pre-release software or software that should not be considered a finished product.
Often, this is used to gauge interest, determine usability issues, and plan a methodology for scaling a product.
Denigrating a userbase across your multiple comments in this thread does not help the point you are wishing to make.