Yesterday I went to the beer store( that is what it's called in Ontario). Being at a new house I used apple maps on my phone.
The first 3 results it showed had no beer store there. I finally found it using google maps.
>ComScore's data suggests though that comparatively few iPhone owners actually take the trouble to use Google's maps
It's pretty much worthless for determining how effective the app is at finding locations. My hyperbolic statement can't be justified by the data provided. Perhaps apple users spend their time looking up hundreds of locations and google users are only able to find one.
There's an obvious selection bias, and i don't know what the effect is. I'd claim smartphone users aren't all that different, they just want to look stuff up, and they'd look it up at comparable rates. If that's true, it takes apple maps users longer to find stuff.
For example, living in Paris, if I want to go to the CNIT (a shopping centre located at La Defense), Apple Maps itself refuses to give me the address. But if I ask the Yelp app, it points me straight to it, and from there I click on a link and I have my itinerary in Maps.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the remaining flaws in Apple Maps are so easy to route around now that they just aren't much of an issue.
Hell, let's try this right now. I'm sitting at work in Brooklyn. I just typed in "20 Jay St", the address of my building. Apple Maps has my location, this should be a piece of CAKE.
... And now I'm at "20 Main Tavern" near Plattsburg, NY, by the Canadian border.
I also just searched for my home address, which is a 5 minute subway ride away in Manhattan. I ended up at "3rd St & Baker Springs Rd" in Wickes, AK.
Or searching for "161 Canal" takes me to "161 Canal Lane" in Jackson, NJ, as opposed to the much more obvious "161 Canal Street" in Manhattan.
Apple Maps is full of nonsense, either searching via POI or via address, or via intersection. It's practically useless. At this point I'm pretty sure I need to memorize Lat/Long just to use this thing, or be absurdly specific every time I use it. "Empire State Building, the one in Manahttan, if you please"
If I type that same query out, I get "Directions Not Found." I don't get it.
My typical use case is: (1) look up an address. (2) see how long it would take to get there via subway/bus, (3) if that takes "too long", compare with how long it would take if I flagged a cab instead.
Using Apple Maps to get transit directions, I have to pick which transit app to use EVERY TIME - even though I always use the same one, there's no way to specify just use that one - which means extra clicks. Then if the available routes I get aren't great there's no way to jump back and check driving or walking directions instead for the same address, because to "jump back" would mean re-launching a different application that I just left and finding the address again.
I did a comparison of about 30 sample lookups when it was brand new, and Google correctly responded to about 27 of them; Apple got two. I repeated the test about six months ago, and the only thing that had changed was that Google got one more right.