It's surprising to me that Apple has 3D building data from Flyover already, but doesn't use it. They have reasonably good 3D scans of cities, with textures, and

It's surprising to me that Apple has 3D building data from Flyover already, but doesn't use it. They have reasonably good 3D scans of cities, with textures, and it doesn't seem that much of a stretch for them to differentiate between trees, cars etc. and turn that into building shapes - even if it requires human sorting, Apple does have billions of dollars. They could end up with more detailed buildings on their 2D view than Google. That being said, they probably simply don't care. Maps is a means to an end for Apple, and likely not itself a direct money maker. People use it because Apple has a captive audience - you can't set your default Maps app on the iPhone to anything else. I don't get the feeling anybody actually likes it, altho I do enjoy using Flyover to see those 3d scans from time to time. Minor criticism of this great article: a side-by-side view of the images would be better for comparison and more comfortable to the user than an automatically changing gif.