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Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in

Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.

slezyr 6y ago
In Easter Europe even Google Maps are much worse that OpenStreetMaps.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
  Here maps is good too. I'm always amazed how it consistently gets the speed limit right even in sparsely populated areas and small towns, where the speed limit often changes literally every 50 meters.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    If someone is interested in mapping this kind of things in OpenStreetMap (used by mapy.cz outside Czech Republic) - I recommend StreetComplete (max speed quest must be enabled in settings, it is disabled by default)
- salex89 6y ago
  I'm not sure "much worse", maybe worse, but yet comparable and still useful. Apple Maps, on the other hand... sheesh.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y ago
  I live in northern Europe (Sweden) at at least in my specific area OpenStreetMap is a lot better than Google maps.
  - dagw 6y ago
    I also live in Sweden and do a lot of GIS analysis with both OSM data and other providers. OSM is great when it comes to the actual road geometry (esp. bike and pedestrian roads), although it often gets the speed limits wrong. For pedestrian travel analysis I'd say it's the best dateset available, since it includes all those 'unofficial' paths that everybody uses, but are often left off official maps. It is however pretty terrible when it comes to buildings and addresses. You don't have to get many km out from major cities before a lot of buildings are missing, and the numbering of buildings is often either missing or wrong.
    - zero3 6y ago
      > You don't have to get many km out from major cities before a lot of buildings are missing, and the numbering of buildings is often either missing or wrong. I am working on a project where I have noticed the same problem with several providers. What provider do you recommend for geocoding when this stuff needs to be right most of the time? Bing API seems somewhat OK. Google Maps API seems like the best, but comes with insane terms and conditions.
      - dagw 6y ago
        Yea, I agree that the Bing API is pretty OK and Google seems slightly better. However for Sweden I would probably go with Hitta or Eniro, since they specialize in the Swedish market, however neither has a free API. Likewise if I only need data for a handful of countries (and am willing to pay) I would first look if there are companies that specialize in those countries, since that data tends to be better than the places that provide global Geocoding.
dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
Also in central Europe. Maps and navigation in the Croatian countryside is comically broken. Not only are the locations of addresses way off, if you travel to that location, they'll then send you somewhere else and eventually in a circle. Maybe they don't care about poor countries with lower usage, but I'd be embarrassed to have that in my product. Having said that, rich western Europe is in some ways no better. If you create a public transport route, Google maps will send you walking hundreds of meters around non-existent barriers, or sometimes insist that you go one tram stop past and then catch the tram back to the stop you want to go to. Maps, like search seems to be slowly suffering from some sort of corporate rot over at Google.
- bobviolier 6y ago
  Can't speak about Eastern Europe, but here in the Netherlands the public transport with Google Maps is really good. Including live-timing as to when your tram will arrive.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
    I have no problem with that, it works fine for me too, but public transport routing here (the actual mapping functionality) in Den Haag is broken and has been for years. Even when I don't encounter obvious bugs, Google serves up illogical routes.
- achow 6y ago
  Google map is amazing in India (a poor country albeit with higher usage). It is not uncommon to see cab or auto (tuk-tuk) drivers use smartphones to navigate the city roads. Map technology in general has become a great leveller, where it enables outsider to start driving cabs in complex cities roads (which otherwise would be almost impossible without direction from passenger).
samoa42 6y ago
imo for the 95%-task of get-me-to-this-address i find the apple routing actually superior to gmaps (in germany that is)
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  I thought that's because Google stopped doing street view because of German privacy laws. Without the street view cars roaming around there's a lot less street level data to be had.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    I'm not sure how important Streetview is for street level data. I was always under the impression that "paved" (or similar) streets were pretty easy to get right (and can possibly be obtained from a governmental agency?). For smaller footpaths I always assumed that they were using movement data (the same they use for traffic forecasting) to detect where they are. They also resumed Streetview in parts of Germany this year, and I'm not sure they ever fully stopped running them for private data collection.
    - mnky9800n 6y ago
      I figured they had a tracker on the cars that would produce actively captured data that could be compared to phone data to understand what roads are around, etc.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      They do feature extraction; store names, addresses, traffic controls, etc.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      > I'm not sure how important Streetview is for street level data. Streetview imagery is mined for address information from signs/plaques on buildings. Operating hours and names of businesses can be determined via OCR
roenxi 6y ago
> ...it'll take decades ... I'm very literal. Google maps was released in 2005. The upper limit on how long it would take Apple to build the whole thing from literally nothing is 15 years, if they are investing to improve their service. Let alone with computer vision, satellite imagery, hardware improvements and the ability to lazily copy the interface Google has created which would speed the process up.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y ago
  The fact that it took company X 15 years to do something does not mean that 15 years is upper limit for other companies. Not saying it would take more or less, but just seeing it ad an upper limit makes no sense to me.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Of someone at Apple copied the Google interface they'd be fired for substandard results.
- Cederfjard 6y ago
  > if they are investing to improve their service You’re hinting at the same thing here, but you ignored the key phrase ”at this pace” in the OP’s comment. Even Usain Bolt won’t do an impressive 100 meters run if he’s walking.
Daniel_sk 6y ago
Mapy.cz is far better than Google in case of Slovakia or Czech Republic. They have full coverage of high resolution pictures taken from planes and not satellites. Also these contain all the hiking, cycling and other routes. The native Android and iOS apps work great and support offline maps - you can download the whole map for a country with one click. Google Maps is unusable for sport or hiking because you only see a large green blob instead of the terrain with contour lines with altitude markings, all trails and roads and POI. Yes, Mapy.cz can't compete with car navigation, but everything else is miles better (and navigation on foot is better too).
- morsch 6y ago
  Google Maps just isn't very good for hiking. But it's not just a map, it's got the yellow pages, Yelp, and, depending on where you are, various other things like hotel booking and public transport routing thrown in. My recent favorite feature is the live estimation of how crowded a store is, very useful during the pandemic. Much of this is stuff the software based on OSM isn't even trying, or doing so only very half heartedly, as far as I am aware. On the flipside, OSM is, in many places, peerless in its core competency, a detailed map that everyone can use.
  - Moru 6y ago
    To be fair the crowded functionality in a map is something only Google could pull of since they are tracking all phones and locations. And it still has a bunch of restaurants listed in my neighbourhood that is clearly only containing rental houses and very outdated roads compared to Openstreetmaps.
  - faitswulff 6y ago
    > My recent favorite feature is the live estimation of how crowded a store is, very useful during the pandemic. Unfortunately it's been completely useless in my area. I wish stores just allowed access to the cctv cameras on their parking lots so I could estimate for myself.
    - uptown 6y ago
matkoniecz 6y ago
In Eastern Europe being eaten by OpenStreetMap is plausible. For example, see random part of Poland: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/52.1081/21.1167 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/52.1081/21.1167 Main power of Google is live traffic data.
- julianlam 6y ago
  > Main power of Google is live traffic data. Does Google not rely on Waze for this? Granted, Google now owns Waze, but they may have an API.....
cowsandmilk 6y ago
Google Maps is not that great in places they don’t prioritize. They have no ability to handle tolls and direction of roads that are based on day of the week and hour. Local examples from the DC Area: I-66 is marked as a toll road 100% of the time despite only being tolled at rush hour in one direction; Clara Barton parkway is always marked as two way, but it becomes one way during rush hour, I regularly am routed down it by Google maps when it is one way the opposite direction. I frequently am sent down nonexistent roads in rural Massachusetts, meanwhile there is a paved road in Bristol, NH that Google refuses to route people on; it is used by Apple Maps.
- broknbottle 6y ago
  I'm located in NoVA and I've noticed this as well. It seems like instead of having the option "Avoid Tolls" it needs to be "Avoid Tolls when I have to Pay".
system16 6y ago
A year ago I would have agreed, but I am now more optimistic. They recently launched a huge update for Canada that has made it competitive with Google Maps, and their "Look Around" is a lot more impressive than Street View in my experience with it. Like the article states, the pace of their updates is increasing. While it may still be a while until they support the rest of the world, the fact that somebody there seems to finally understand people use iPhones in places other than the Bay Area is promising.
originalvichy 6y ago
Apple is behind, yes, but you overestimate how dependant many core services are towards Google Maps. Many Nordic services like transit apps and websites among others use either OSM with the country's own Land Survey's map data. As long as Apple and competitors can a) have businesses add their locations easily and b) have public transit companies' timetables in their system, they are already within arm's reach of GMaps.
wtmt 6y ago
Apple seems to want to expand its (primarily) iPhone market in India, and yet Apple Maps is still far behind Google Maps here even in larger cities. There was news a few years ago about investing in maps, but that hasn’t shown as much improvement as one would expect. Google Maps adapts and improves a lot faster (partially thanks to millions of Android devices reporting location data all the time). I don’t think Apple is very serious about Maps. If it is, it’s certainly not investing much into it except for Bay Area and a few major cities in the U.S. Apple Maps is more of a hobby for Apple, like Apple News (which is still only in a handful of countries several years after launch) and some other products (like Apple TV) and services.
presentation 6y ago
Tokyo coverage is also not very good in comparison with Google Maps unfortunately. Considered moving over but the combination of poor search results and the lack of ability to move my places from Google to Apple Maps means it won't be my focus any time soon.

slezyr 6y ago

In Easter Europe even Google Maps are much worse that OpenStreetMaps.

dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
Here maps is good too. I'm always amazed how it consistently gets the speed limit right even in sparsely populated areas and small towns, where the speed limit often changes literally every 50 meters.
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  If someone is interested in mapping this kind of things in OpenStreetMap (used by mapy.cz outside Czech Republic) - I recommend StreetComplete (max speed quest must be enabled in settings, it is disabled by default)
salex89 6y ago
I'm not sure "much worse", maybe worse, but yet comparable and still useful. Apple Maps, on the other hand... sheesh.
tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y ago
I live in northern Europe (Sweden) at at least in my specific area OpenStreetMap is a lot better than Google maps.
- dagw 6y ago
  I also live in Sweden and do a lot of GIS analysis with both OSM data and other providers. OSM is great when it comes to the actual road geometry (esp. bike and pedestrian roads), although it often gets the speed limits wrong. For pedestrian travel analysis I'd say it's the best dateset available, since it includes all those 'unofficial' paths that everybody uses, but are often left off official maps. It is however pretty terrible when it comes to buildings and addresses. You don't have to get many km out from major cities before a lot of buildings are missing, and the numbering of buildings is often either missing or wrong.
  - zero3 6y ago
    > You don't have to get many km out from major cities before a lot of buildings are missing, and the numbering of buildings is often either missing or wrong. I am working on a project where I have noticed the same problem with several providers. What provider do you recommend for geocoding when this stuff needs to be right most of the time? Bing API seems somewhat OK. Google Maps API seems like the best, but comes with insane terms and conditions.
    - dagw 6y ago
      Yea, I agree that the Bing API is pretty OK and Google seems slightly better. However for Sweden I would probably go with Hitta or Eniro, since they specialize in the Swedish market, however neither has a free API. Likewise if I only need data for a handful of countries (and am willing to pay) I would first look if there are companies that specialize in those countries, since that data tends to be better than the places that provide global Geocoding.

dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago

Also in central Europe. Maps and navigation in the Croatian countryside is comically broken. Not only are the locations of addresses way off, if you travel to that location, they'll then send you somewhere else and eventually in a circle. Maybe they don't care about poor countries with lower usage, but I'd be embarrassed to have that in my product. Having said that, rich western Europe is in some ways no better. If you create a public transport route, Google maps will send you walking hundreds of meters around non-existent barriers, or sometimes insist that you go one tram stop past and then catch the tram back to the stop you want to go to. Maps, like search seems to be slowly suffering from some sort of corporate rot over at Google.

bobviolier 6y ago
Can't speak about Eastern Europe, but here in the Netherlands the public transport with Google Maps is really good. Including live-timing as to when your tram will arrive.
- dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
  I have no problem with that, it works fine for me too, but public transport routing here (the actual mapping functionality) in Den Haag is broken and has been for years. Even when I don't encounter obvious bugs, Google serves up illogical routes.
achow 6y ago
Google map is amazing in India (a poor country albeit with higher usage). It is not uncommon to see cab or auto (tuk-tuk) drivers use smartphones to navigate the city roads. Map technology in general has become a great leveller, where it enables outsider to start driving cabs in complex cities roads (which otherwise would be almost impossible without direction from passenger).

samoa42 6y ago

imo for the 95%-task of get-me-to-this-address i find the apple routing actually superior to gmaps (in germany that is)

mnky9800n 6y ago
I thought that's because Google stopped doing street view because of German privacy laws. Without the street view cars roaming around there's a lot less street level data to be had.
- hobofan 6y ago
  I'm not sure how important Streetview is for street level data. I was always under the impression that "paved" (or similar) streets were pretty easy to get right (and can possibly be obtained from a governmental agency?). For smaller footpaths I always assumed that they were using movement data (the same they use for traffic forecasting) to detect where they are. They also resumed Streetview in parts of Germany this year, and I'm not sure they ever fully stopped running them for private data collection.
  - mnky9800n 6y ago
    I figured they had a tracker on the cars that would produce actively captured data that could be compared to phone data to understand what roads are around, etc.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    They do feature extraction; store names, addresses, traffic controls, etc.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    > I'm not sure how important Streetview is for street level data. Streetview imagery is mined for address information from signs/plaques on buildings. Operating hours and names of businesses can be determined via OCR

roenxi 6y ago

> ...it'll take decades ... I'm very literal. Google maps was released in 2005. The upper limit on how long it would take Apple to build the whole thing from literally nothing is 15 years, if they are investing to improve their service. Let alone with computer vision, satellite imagery, hardware improvements and the ability to lazily copy the interface Google has created which would speed the process up.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 6y ago
The fact that it took company X 15 years to do something does not mean that 15 years is upper limit for other companies. Not saying it would take more or less, but just seeing it ad an upper limit makes no sense to me.
alisonkisk 6y ago
Of someone at Apple copied the Google interface they'd be fired for substandard results.
Cederfjard 6y ago
> if they are investing to improve their service You’re hinting at the same thing here, but you ignored the key phrase ”at this pace” in the OP’s comment. Even Usain Bolt won’t do an impressive 100 meters run if he’s walking.

Daniel_sk 6y ago

Mapy.cz is far better than Google in case of Slovakia or Czech Republic. They have full coverage of high resolution pictures taken from planes and not satellites. Also these contain all the hiking, cycling and other routes. The native Android and iOS apps work great and support offline maps - you can download the whole map for a country with one click. Google Maps is unusable for sport or hiking because you only see a large green blob instead of the terrain with contour lines with altitude markings, all trails and roads and POI. Yes, Mapy.cz can't compete with car navigation, but everything else is miles better (and navigation on foot is better too).

morsch 6y ago
Google Maps just isn't very good for hiking. But it's not just a map, it's got the yellow pages, Yelp, and, depending on where you are, various other things like hotel booking and public transport routing thrown in. My recent favorite feature is the live estimation of how crowded a store is, very useful during the pandemic. Much of this is stuff the software based on OSM isn't even trying, or doing so only very half heartedly, as far as I am aware. On the flipside, OSM is, in many places, peerless in its core competency, a detailed map that everyone can use.
- Moru 6y ago
  To be fair the crowded functionality in a map is something only Google could pull of since they are tracking all phones and locations. And it still has a bunch of restaurants listed in my neighbourhood that is clearly only containing rental houses and very outdated roads compared to Openstreetmaps.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  > My recent favorite feature is the live estimation of how crowded a store is, very useful during the pandemic. Unfortunately it's been completely useless in my area. I wish stores just allowed access to the cctv cameras on their parking lots so I could estimate for myself.
  - uptown 6y ago

matkoniecz 6y ago

In Eastern Europe being eaten by OpenStreetMap is plausible. For example, see random part of Poland: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/52.1081/21.1167 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/52.1081/21.1167 Main power of Google is live traffic data.

julianlam 6y ago
> Main power of Google is live traffic data. Does Google not rely on Waze for this? Granted, Google now owns Waze, but they may have an API.....

cowsandmilk 6y ago

Google Maps is not that great in places they don’t prioritize. They have no ability to handle tolls and direction of roads that are based on day of the week and hour. Local examples from the DC Area: I-66 is marked as a toll road 100% of the time despite only being tolled at rush hour in one direction; Clara Barton parkway is always marked as two way, but it becomes one way during rush hour, I regularly am routed down it by Google maps when it is one way the opposite direction. I frequently am sent down nonexistent roads in rural Massachusetts, meanwhile there is a paved road in Bristol, NH that Google refuses to route people on; it is used by Apple Maps.

broknbottle 6y ago
I'm located in NoVA and I've noticed this as well. It seems like instead of having the option "Avoid Tolls" it needs to be "Avoid Tolls when I have to Pay".

system16 6y ago

A year ago I would have agreed, but I am now more optimistic. They recently launched a huge update for Canada that has made it competitive with Google Maps, and their "Look Around" is a lot more impressive than Street View in my experience with it. Like the article states, the pace of their updates is increasing. While it may still be a while until they support the rest of the world, the fact that somebody there seems to finally understand people use iPhones in places other than the Bay Area is promising.

originalvichy 6y ago

Apple is behind, yes, but you overestimate how dependant many core services are towards Google Maps. Many Nordic services like transit apps and websites among others use either OSM with the country's own Land Survey's map data. As long as Apple and competitors can a) have businesses add their locations easily and b) have public transit companies' timetables in their system, they are already within arm's reach of GMaps.

wtmt 6y ago

Apple seems to want to expand its (primarily) iPhone market in India, and yet Apple Maps is still far behind Google Maps here even in larger cities. There was news a few years ago about investing in maps, but that hasn’t shown as much improvement as one would expect. Google Maps adapts and improves a lot faster (partially thanks to millions of Android devices reporting location data all the time). I don’t think Apple is very serious about Maps. If it is, it’s certainly not investing much into it except for Bay Area and a few major cities in the U.S. Apple Maps is more of a hobby for Apple, like Apple News (which is still only in a handful of countries several years after launch) and some other products (like Apple TV) and services.

presentation 6y ago

Tokyo coverage is also not very good in comparison with Google Maps unfortunately. Considered moving over but the combination of poor search results and the lack of ability to move my places from Google to Apple Maps means it won't be my focus any time soon.