Apple's horrible maps, part 3 | Hacker News Reader

Apple's horrible maps, part 3

rachelbythebay.com

16 pointskryptiskt13 comments

I've travelled cross-country with Apple maps without issue. I didn't even have Google maps or printed maps as a backup. I must be nuts. Got any more cute little anecdotes for us?

Horrible in comparison to what; Google, another competitor or what you imagine they should be like? Most people think Google's maps and data are better but would you say Apple's are horrible by comparison?

None of the examples seem "horrible" to me. It looks like they're just wrong. Maybe it's because I remember using paper maps but Apple's, Google's etc. seem pretty amazing to me.

In comparison to Google, of course. It's considered the gold standard in mapping. And it's what iPhone users used to have before Apple did the switch to control their own maps.

Google has had years to perfect their technology and update their maps from all kinds of sources. Apple, even with the data it bought, is nowhere near that level of accuracy. They are, quite literally, years behind. Whether it takes them years to catch up, though, is another story.

Apple maps had many problems but its been a while since I saw one. Looks like they have improved it to a good enough level. I have no doubt there are still problems but at this point the game is more about vertical integration as well.

YMMV.

Apple maps may have improved where you are, but they're still really bad where I am.

Some of this is bad data, which presumably can be addressed through their attempts at crowd-sourcing, and some of it is just out-of-date/substandard map data (e.g. low-res satellite views), which can be addressed by throwing money, but some of it seems to be deeper, e.g. their assumption that cars are the only form of transport that matters.

Anyway, for me, Apple maps is still basically unusable (though it is very pretty!), which is a shame, because I have an ipad, and Google maps isn't available on the ipad yet... :(

Apple Maps may be terrible, but I've had some really bad times with Google Maps as well... it has many a time sent me to a location that doesn't exist anymore, or was wrong.

Ditto...nearly missed an exam cos Google Maps led me to the wrong place. Even so I still trust Google Maps more than Apple Maps app. Not that I gave it much of a chance to be honest, I was put-off from the start because of all the bad press

Google, on several occasions tried to send me the wrong way down a one way street

yup google maps once led me to a cemetary instead of he airport.

If you were Apple, how would you fix this?

They could start relying more on OpenStreetMaps which seems to be somewhat better or they could at least fix the things people report. I have reported dozens of issues (starting from the first developer beta of iOS 6) and not one of them have been fixed. Meanwhile on Google Maps: places that change location or name are updated within a week.

Figure out how much money bad map data costs the company, then figure out how much money it takes to license good map data (clearly this exists somewhere). If licensing costs hurt more than bad maps, then continue with the current product and make slow improvements. Otherwise get out the checkbook.

OpenStreetMap

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