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Apple Maps on the web launches in beta
- balderdash 2y agoI can’t wait for Apple Maps to dump yelp. Am I the only one that that thinks yelp reviews are useless?
- JKCalhoun 2y agoApple has nothing to replace it with. It's hard to imagine Apple adding reviews and trying to police that — policing their own App Store reviews seems to give the trouble (but perhaps is not a solvable problem).
- freedomben 2y agoThey could surely negotiate something to get access to Google's reviews. A nice thing about Apple's position is that they have enough money to build or buy whatever they want, depending on how strategic it is. If they buy google's reviews then they get to have access to the best data, and also inject themselves as a middle-man which can allow them to collect their own useful data and know exactly what people are looking at, but also able to claim privacy benefits because they shield people from Google (i.e. stop Google and their evil privacy invading tracking). If content in reviews is objectionable, they can just say "our partner didn't filter as they should, it wasn't us." I think it's actually a pretty good position to be in.
- lmpdev 2y agoI would argue over a certain threshold of human comments/reviews/inputs this is invariably an unsolvable problem People rightfully give FAANG crap for improper policing (as they should) but in their defence I have yet to see a single solution successfully implemented platform wide, ever
- boringg 2y agoYelp was high value in the past - its going to low value in the recent years. It's also regional in its value.
- foolfoolz 2y agoyelps relevancy had already declined by the time it was included in apple maps
- athenot 2y agoThey've added ratings to the Maps app for certain categories of businesses (or maybe it's for businesses not in Yelp, dunno). It looks like they are testing it out. It also supports picture upload.
- dagw 2y agoIs there anything better to replace it with? Even if they could use Google's reviews, I don't feel they are much better. I guess they could do a deal with TripAdvisor, which is the only other site I can think of that has fairly comprehensive coverage of reviews, but is TripAdvisor really a step up from Yelp?
- Larrikin 2y agoA one star place on Yelp is a warning, especially if there are implied health code violations. But anything else between two and five, I look at the pictures of the food and decide for myself. There's gaming going on for years but pictures can tell a lot, even if it's not everything. The anti Yelp restaurants that delist themselves from various sites for whatever reason do not exist to me and will never get my business because I will never even think about them when I am thinking about where to eat.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 2y agoYelp's biggest advantage is that if there are recent reviews, the business probably still exists.
- simonw 2y agoIt's weird that this doesn't work in Mobile Safari - and disappointing that it doesn't work in Firefox.
- shellac 2y agoWorked fine on an iPad, or is that not Mobile Safari?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoProbably they are referring to iOS, which it doesn’t appear to work on either the latest (17.5.1) or 18 beta as of the time of writing this post.
- simonw 2y agoSorry I should have said iPhone Mobile Safari.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoApple launching web apps? And Maps of all things? Suppose that's the logical order. (Should it have been mail first? Or a search engine?) What year is it? What's with the browser restrictions too?
- nurumaik 2y agoMail was always available through icloud.com though
- kalleboo 2y agoIt even predates iCloud, web mail launched with MobileMe.
- superb_dev 2y agoApple Music has had an excellent web app for a while
- porphyra 2y agoI just wish that Apple Music Classical would get a web app. That's the only reason why I'm paying $12 per month. Although I suppose most of the classical pieces are available on regular Apple Music as well...
- dewey 2y agoExcellent is something I haven’t heard anyone say about Music App related things, ever.
- superb_dev 2y agoGenuinely curious, what do most people say about it? I use Apple Music near daily and I’m pretty satisfied
- esskay 2y agoI use it too...but it's a really poor app. Search is incredibly slow and clunky, discovery is nonexistant, they've still got the same shuffle logic bugs they had in iTunes, etc. The most annoying part is they CDN from California for UK/EU users. Start playing something not downloaded, hit skip a couple of times and enjoy 10 seconds of buffering.
- keepamovin 2y agoSo weird! I was just looking for this 2 days ago, and was like, "Huh, I thought they had a web app??" Turns out it was always for devices native only. I had no idea this was coming but 2 days ago was the first time I was looking for a web version! Hahaha! :) edit: Just tested it. Nice! Faster than Google Maps in my estimation. (panning and zooming the map builds and focuses faster). Google, please don't delete my account for criticism! hahaha! :)
- Kelteseth 2y ago> Your current browser isn't supported Supported on your Windows PC: Edge Chrome
- infotainment 2y agoSadly the best feature of Apple Maps, the excellent transit overlay, doesn't seem to be available on this web version yet.
- obnauticus 2y agoI noticed this too and I am afraid they wont ever release this on the web app since they seem to have the best lane and road mapping data.
- throwaway2037 2y agoGoogle Maps also transit overlay. Is it measurably worse that Apple Maps? It seems fine to me.
- simondotau 2y agoTransit data on Google Maps in Sydney Australia has been broken for ages. It's correct (and more clearly illustrated) in Apple Maps. https://x.com/jxeeno/status/1814975093380116783 https://x.com/jxeeno/status/1814975093380116783
- koyote 2y agoWhat's broken with it? Seems to be working fine here. What I have noticed is that the satellite view for Sydney is over 3 years old.
- astrange 2y agoSatellite (actually aerial) images are very expensive to collect and not all that useful. Oddly, until recently Brisbane's satellite maps on Google were over a decade old even though it showed a current year copyright. More up to date on Apple Maps, except it doesn't have Brisbane in 3D, even though it does have Gold Coast.
- squeaky-clean 2y agoApple Maps transit is easier to read when zoomed out IMO.
- ksec 2y agoSeems strange Apple offering this for free for other platform users. This also makes me wonder how much does it cost to run a Map services. I assume the actual server and bandwidth cost are negligible. But the updating and Data would be the most expensive part. But what incentive does Apple have to open this up?
- randomdata 2y ago> But the updating and Data would be the most expensive part. But what incentive does Apple have to open this up? Seems you already figured it out: Access to more data / updates. Hence the "Have a Business on Maps?" being a prominent feature.
- ikawe 2y agoOne probably small thing: Having a cohesive ecosystem where you can share links makes a map app more useful.
- InvisibleToast 2y agoI was also surprised to see that there is no cost for using Apple Maps (maybe because it's a beta?). How will this affect services like Google Maps, Mapbox, and similar providers?
- jillesvangurp 2y agoProtomaps makes hosting maps pretty cheap for open streetmap vector tiles. Most of the cost is actually the CDN bandwidth. It's not going to be nothing depending on the number of users but it shouldn't break the bank for Apple and probably is relatively low to other content they distribute (e.g. Apple TV) or OS updates. The way protomaps does this is by serving a single large file with all the map data via bucket storage and then using lambda functions + CDNs to extract tiles from there on demand. So, they don't pre-calculate the tile files and this simplifies the update process to replacing a single file. The CDN caches the extracted tiles so this is relatively cheap and doable even for small startups. So, this minimizes compute and storage. Generating the map tiles requires a bit of compute obviously but it's a constant overhead; and they have to do this anyway for their native apps. Probably the hardest part for them was building a hardware accelerated render engine for the web. Similar to Maplibre, Google Maps, etc. That would explain why it doesn't work on Firefox as well. And obviously Safari is a bit lagging with things like web GPU and WASM that I imagine would be useful for this.
- hiddencost 2y agoUm, I'm confused. I didn't think Apple treated Web as a significant part of their strategy.
- randomdata 2y agoDoes this in some way imply that the web is a significant part of their strategy? The button in the bottom left explains why this exists: It's a gateway to get more information about businesses and other attractions from entities out there in the world that don't live in the Apple ecosystem. Apple Maps ultimately needs a direct line to the real world to be maximally useful, especially against its competitors, and this is their attempt to build that bridge.
- promiseofbeans 2y agoHasn't Kagi been using this for their maps offering for a while now?
- infotainment 2y agoWeb embedding for Apple Maps (via MapKit JS) has been around for a while now, but this standalone product is new.
- Tepix 2y agoI know that DuckduckGo has been using it.
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- vzaliva 2y agoFirefox is not supported. Move along. Nothing to see there.
- drooopy 2y agoPretty much. Even as a disillusioned mac user I wouldn't rely on their maps app but no compatibility with my browser of choice means that I'll never bother using their product under any circumstances.
- r-spaghetti 2y agoHa ha ha Apple still thinks 'the web' is Apple or Microsoft (https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585 https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585) and Firefox is not supported at all. It's time to shake the last rotten apple from the tree.
- porphyra 2y agoEven Chrome on Linux isn't supported.
- benjiweber 2y agoWorks fine on Linux if you set useragent to Chrome on Mac.
- rob74 2y ago...which only underscores how pointless this is: if it works in Chrome on MacOS and Windows (https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585 https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585), it will also work on Linux, so why exclude Linux?!
- oaiey 2y agoChrome on Android is not supported.
- promiseofbeans 2y agoI'm impressed with how well they've enforced that as well. I tried spoofing my UA to be safari (which I fully expected to not work), but it also didn't accept when I set my UA to Chrome. What's especially odd is that Apple acknowledges Firefox's existence in their WWDC videos about web features, when they mention browser compatibility or who they're working with.
- dewey 2y agoTo be fair, it’s a beta version and browser compatibility could be something for the launch. I’m a disappointed Firefox user but I also know what Beta means.
- henryackerman 2y agoWeird. They claim Firefox is not supported, but with some user-agent switcharoo it seems to work fine. Ugh.
- cassianoleal 2y ago"Works through hacking" is not the same as being supported. See Hackintosh.
- KeplerBoy 2y agoWell isn't that exactly what "supported" means? It may or may not work, but since that is a bad user experience, they disable it.
- arghwhat 2y ago"Not supported" on its own does not mean "actively blocked/disabled", which is what this is. "Supported" means that they provide a certain effort for make the configuration operational for their users, by designing said support if needed and providing assistance as required.
- Dudhbbh3343 2y agoThat's a stupid reason to block a user. Just show a warning that your browser is not yet tested.
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- dbg31415 2y agoYeah they are just being lazy and not testing it... so rather than verify it works and fix bugs, they just check your browser agent and redirect you if you aren't using Chrome or Safari. So ghetto! Reeks of the late-90s/early-2000s "Use IE6" messages that companies used to put out when they built a site using Microsoft web components or proprietary APIs. "Hey look, I can save my PowerPoint as a web page! And it even has the animations!" Except it's 2024, and we have standards, and for them to say, "Oh we don't adhere to the standards" is shockingly bad.
- Humphrey 2y ago> Your browser [Firefox] is not supported. See supported browsers Welcome to 2007 I guess!
- ahahahahah 2y agoYeah, I don't think you should expect people to support every niche browser.
- flanked-evergl 2y agoI think you should expect Apple to follow web standards.
- DaSHacka 2y agoIronic, considering that Safari is typically the odd one out that sites choose to ignore.
- reddalo 2y agoNot only Firefox is not supported, but even Chrome on Linux doesn't work. It's embarrassing for a company such as Apple.
- randomdata 2y ago> Not only Firefox is not supported, but even Chrome on Linux doesn't work. Which strongly suggests that it makes use of H.265 content somewhere (the source code corroborates such functionality), likely as a carry over from content created for the iOS/macOS versions of Apple Maps where support is granted. > It's embarrassing for a company such as Apple. To be fair, it is still in beta. There is still plenty of time for them to recreate the content in a format with wider support before release. Much more embarrassing is that we enable this state of affairs. The situation that keeps Firefox and Linux from jumping all over H.265 is not some natural property of the universe, it's just a social construct that we uphold by willing choice.
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- throwaway2037 2y agoI never understood the value proposition of Apple Maps. Can you imagine being the executive, deciding to create Apple Maps? "Ok, how much does it cost to build and maintain? $BIG NUMBER. What? No way. We'll never make it back by selling adverts on the map." And, still, they built it. We have heard many times on HN that Google Maps (virtually) throws money out the window to keep it running so smoothly. Just keeping all the transit info correct for suggesting routes must be a nightmare.
- gnicholas 2y agoI guess it gives them leverage vis a vis Google? I like that it tells me what lane to be in, so it's my main mapping app. Also presumably better privacy than Google Maps.
- jen729w 2y ago> Also presumably better privacy than Google Maps. Yeah you might say that. My Android-owning Irish mate got hammered one night. Had no idea where he’d been. We launched Google Maps and it had a GPS track of his entire night. Like a dotted map with every step he’d taken.
- sofixa 2y agoYeah, it's a feature enabled by default outside of the EU (in the EU it asks you if you want to enable it). Makes for some fun stats/recaps, and is useful for tracing back steps (wait, where was that awesome store/restaurant/park/whatever we went to while on a trip to XYZ?) at the expense of Google knowing a lot about you.
- saagarjha 2y agoiPhone does this too, though the location data doesn’t leave your phone unless you share it with an app that does that.
- nytesky 2y ago
- rockyj 2y agoNo support for any browser on Linux. Yeah, goodbye.
- thrdbndndn 2y agoOut of curiosity, I removed "beta." part and see how it goes (using Chrome + Windows). So apparently, any URL with a query parameter (e.g. https://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365132222&spn=0.04999999999999005%2C0.11502863436983546 https://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365... ) will redirect you to ... their competitor, https://www.google.com/maps https://www.google.com/maps . I have no idea why.
- mpweiher 2y agoOn my Mac, that (first) link takes me straight to the Apple Maps app.
- vineyardmike 2y ago> will redirect you to ... their competitor For me, it triggered the opening of the (Apple) Maps.app desktop application. Which makes a lot more sense. On safari and chrome.
- aembleton 2y agoAlso does that on Firefox on macOS
- thunderbong 2y agoI'm guessing that's Chrome going to Google maps site. I recall a setting being there to disable this.
- thrdbndndn 2y agoBased on other comments, it's more likely due to being on Windows.
- ta1243 2y ago$ curl -v "https://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365132222&spn=0.04999999999999005%2C0.11502863436983546 https://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365..." .... < HTTP/2 302 < server: AkamaiGHost < content-length: 0 < location: https://maps.google.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365132222&spn=0.04999999999999005%2C0.11502863436983546 < expires: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:58:00 GMT < cache-control: max-age=0, no-cache, no-store That's on my linux laptop, but I'm in the UK, I suspect geo and akami makes a difference
- Tepix 2y agoFirefox users are being marginalized within a few days by X and now by Apple. A sign of things to come?
- theGeatZhopa 2y agoThe Advent is neigh.
- druskacik 2y agoHow were Firefox users marginalized by X?
- Tepix 2y ago"X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking protection enabled" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41022408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41022408
- machinekob 2y agoFirefox is being marginalised mostly by Mozilla corporation others seem to just don't care much about dying browser, it is weird that it is broken on Safari with iOS for some folks as it is Apple product.
- Tepix 2y agoit's also weird because Apple maps on the web have been available on Duckduckgo for months and it's worked just fine on Firefox.
- jbverschoor 2y agoFirst problem: the searchbox does not get focus upon opening. Looking for a place is the main thing you do. Why does it require mouse handling and handling at all? No keyboard response to Escape. It's basically the maps widget with a user unfriendly, but nice looking, drawer Same with the Contacts app on macos, it's slow, crashes, and I doubt anyone uses it
- albumen 2y agoContacts app: it's fine, doesn't crash for me, and I use it. So there go your assumptions about its entire userbase.
- jbverschoor 2y agoI get multi second(15sec) delays, the ui suddenly cancels edit mode. It’s just one big abomination when they switched ui frameworks
- jbverschoor 2y agoOther example: voice memos. Takes 20 seconds to start recording if you have a long list (30+) of recordings. It needs to find the next available file name. Instead of just listing them, it probably loads every files and tries to read some xml metadata instead.
- slashdave 2y agoWait, what? Do you enter all your email addresses by hand in your mail app? How do you add new addresses?
- megapoliss 2y agoMap looks terribly (like ~5y) outdated.
- s1mon 2y agoYou need to be specific. It's very much location based in terms of data quality and how current it is. It's great in the SF Bay Area, which isn't surprising given where Apple is based.
- joestrong 2y agoIf you put something random after the URL it seems to skip the browser checks: https://beta.maps.apple.com/bleh https://beta.maps.apple.com/bleh
- bambax 2y agoTrue! That's quite funny and shows how utterly pointless browser restrictions are.
- aembleton 2y agoThey seem to have fixed that now. At least on Firefox on Android
- jcrash 2y agoStill working for me - Firefox on Win10
- alistairSH 2y agoNope, still blocks my iPhone/Safari.
- tgott 2y agoIt appears to check viewport width alongside user agent. Shrinking my browser down in responsive mode results in the same "browser unsupported" screen.
- elcombato 2y agoInterestingly, the web version uses newer satellite data than the app version, at least for some areas.
- sgammon 2y agoGood job apple team! Very smooth experience. Fyi you may want to sanitize some of your response headers because one can easily tell Envoy is running at the edge. Upstream service latency looks healthy though :)
- bpbp-mango 2y agoI much prefer Apple maps over google when I'm driving. Nice to see this. Shame I had to use a user-agent switcher though.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoWhy is that? Having Google's ability to navigate with live traffic data isn't a valuable feature to you? Apple's traffic-flow is mostly a joke to me, and I've never seen anyone trust it.
- balderdash 2y agoAnecdotally: I use Apple Maps when I need directions (mostly because it’s native/integrated and not google), for drives over an hour my experience is that the ETA time is +/- 5min even when there is lots of traffic. Except in one edge case where my girlfriend and I were doing a 7 hour drive traveling east late at night on an empty highway and our eta increased by an hour then a little while later another hour, we were so confused and thought we might be driving in the wrong direction! Until we figured out we had crossed a time zone and it was also day light savings!
- saagarjha 2y ago(I live in the Bay Area) It’s been mostly fine for me
- chomp 2y agoIt works fine, and I live in a city with some of the worst traffic in the US.
- swasheck 2y agomy colloquial evidence … apple maps is the most accurate in predicting time to destination and handles network instability in a way i prefer (keeps you on the track and just notifies you’re in offline mode) google maps suggests more alternative routes that may save me time but their predictions are generally less accurate. network instability seems to cause the application to “panic” and it just starts spinning around - especially when walking through downtown areas while google has a sleeker presentation of traffic and shows the “red highlighter of misery and frustration” on my map more precisely, it’s timing is generally wildly incorrect and apple has already routed me around the problem and with more accurate time to destination estimates
- dagmx 2y agoI know people are complaining about lack of Firefox support, but the page also blocks Apple’s own Safari browser on the latest iOS 18 beta. So I think it’s more likely it’s just beta bugs (site not OS) and reducing their support matrix down during that time.
- veunes 2y agoAgree! The current limitations are more related to beta bugs and development constraints rather than deliberate exclusion of specific browsers.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y agoIt’s not just their beta iOS, I tried on 17.5.1 and I also get an unsupported browser error.
- fatfox 2y agoI’d use Apple Maps more frequently, but business data and reviews are just not very helpful compared to Google Maps (at least where I am).
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- fbn79 2y agoGoogle Chrome Linux in English Version 127.0.6533.72 (Official Build) (64-bit) Your current browser isn't supported
- paulmd 2y agoI mean this seems like the same thing that happened to the rest of the market already… the consolidation is just happening within the chrome ecosystem rather than it happening to the alternatives. Almost as if it was a bad idea to kick away the last check against chrome monoculture. Maybe more mono than people anticipated.
- coldcode 2y agoIt's a early beta. It's not surprising to limit testing to what you know first.
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- bambax 2y agoThere doesn't seem to be any reverse geocoding available. "Current location" puts me over 200 miles from where I am. You can't click anywhere on the map to get directions, you have to either click a location (already identified as such, with a name and icon) or type in an address. It's unclear that said locations are even clickable because the mouse icon doesn't change to a pointer. Directions are in miles only and I couldn't find an option to switch to metric; and they take a couple of seconds to be generated. No bike option. Many browsers aren't supported. (And of course no street view either). It looks more alpha than beta.
- karussell 2y agoCurrent Location has nothing to do with their implementation or reverse geocoding and the browser does the work.
- bambax 2y agoGoogle Maps in incognito says my position couldn't be determined. Apple Maps seems certain I'm where I'm not. Looks like a bug to me.
- zamadatix 2y agoI would sooner attribute the former to "didn't work at all" than "was smart enough to cross check and be confident enough to figure out the location data was inaccurate and hide the result from the user".
- pcdoodle 2y agoGood, this is one of the last reasons I used google as a default search engine. Hope we see it as an alternative in other search engines.
- sebazzz 2y agoInterestingly it is user-agent blocked on Firefox, as noted in sibling comments. But Kagi (the search engine) has been using Apple Maps on their site (kagi.com/maps) for a good while now.
- aembleton 2y agoSo has DuckDuckGo (the search engine) https://duckduckgo.com/?iaxm=maps&q=Manchester https://duckduckgo.com/?iaxm=maps&q=Manchester
- freedomben 2y agoIndeed, I was surprised this was news because I'd been "using" Apple Maps on the web for quite some time through Kagi and DDG. I say "using" because as soon as I realize it is Apple maps I !gm to get to Google Maps instead, but I've gotten deep enough to know that it (at least seemed to) work.
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- janfoeh 2y agoWow, after playing with it for a few minutes, I find it to actually be better than the horrible desktop version in Sonoma, where click-and-drag to move the map around inexplicably _drags place labels_ if you accidentally start the drag on one, and where clicking on a category search like "supermarkets - search nearby" always recenters around your current location instead of honoring your current map view.
- tempodox 2y ago> … is compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, as well as Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs. So Apple forces you into walled gardens and leaves you to be spied upon. So much for their pro-privacy stance. Firefox isn't just not supported, it is being actively blocked: “Your current browser isn't supported”! More evidence that the relationship between a user and a megacorp can only be adversarial (not that this is news).
- sureIy 2y agoApple: Launches beta product Hacker News users: oh ma gad they can't guarantee it works on my Netscape fork
- lifestyleguru 2y agoWith all this front-end elaborate architectural smartassery, supporting Firefox is too difficult. Was it developed in Berlin?
- albertopv 2y agoVery sad Firefox is not supported from day one, even in beta
- thih9 2y agoIn my mobile Safari it doesn’t work either. Edit: looks like iphone is not supported yet, https://support.apple.com/en-gb/120585 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/120585
- agmater 2y agoAgreed, but it was even more disappointing to also see the "unsupported browser" when I tried it in Safari.
- bauble 2y agoThat's downright ironic.
- fernandotakai 2y agoif you go to something like https://beta.maps.apple.com/asd https://beta.maps.apple.com/asd you bypass the browser check. works on firefox, but it's a big sluggish.
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- _7acn 2y agoWhen I see the low level of support that Apple provides for various less popular web browsers, it reminds me of a certain story: A friend of mine once worked a long time ago at an IT company that was building an online store. He wrote a script there that displayed a message whenever someone accessed the site using Netscape "Get lost, jerk, with that Netscape and go straighten bananas on a tree”. The company was quite popular in my country, and that message caused a lot of outrage on Usenet groups.
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- jmyeet 2y agoThe way I see it--and I mean this in a non-pejorative way--Apple as a company has autism. Google has ADHD. Apple Maps launched in 2012. That's 12 years that Apple has been plugging away at this. I think we've seen just how much effort is required to catch up to Google Maps. Google actually does a ton to clean up and integrate data from different sources. It adds up. Apple sticks with things they start for the most part (Ping anyone?). Apple Pay is the poster child for this. Every week there's an announcement where some bank in Estonia has been added. They've slowly built out an ecosystem. That's what I mean by autism. Google OTOH has ADHD. If something doesn't immediately work, they lose interest and it gets cancelled. They've reached a point where doing anything requires commitment. Most of Google's successful products are acquisitions. Android, Maps, Docs, Youtube are obvious examples. Exceptions include search (obviously), Chrome and Gmail. There are areas where it's almost a joke how many variants of a product have existed and been shuttered over the years. Payments and messaging springs to mind. Apparently Apple has decided that Maps is core to their business and they've stuck to it. I don't disagree. Good for them. Still, not supporting Firefox? Hopefully that's temporary.
- WhyNotHugo 2y ago> Your current browser isn't supported From the "Supported Browsers" section, they only seem to support macOS and Windows. Somehow I suspect that this is overzealous User-Agent sniffing.
- dzonga 2y agoassuming apple maps was written in Swift or objective-C. you would think with the resources Apple have - it would have ported majority of their apps to the browser. since the languages they use easily compile to wasm. just like how google earth uses c++ etc.
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- saagarjha 2y agoI haven’t looked at these closely but Apple has some WebAssembly powering some of their iWork on web stuff
- rcarmo 2y agoI'm quite happy to see this, since a long time ago I worked with various mapping providers (back when telcos had their own map and driving apps). One of the folk I worked with went to Apple, and I suspect this is their work :)
- throwingrocks 2y ago[flagged]
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- loudmax 2y agoOn one hand, this is a beta product, so perhaps understandable that they're not supporting all platforms out of the gate. On the other hand, if you're serious about getting your application tested, people running open source browsers and operating systems are going to provide the most thorough testing and detailed problem reports.
- leptons 2y agoEven for a beta this is clunky and practically unusable compared to Google Maps. It's pretty obvious that Apple still has a very long way to go to offer a competitive maps product. Google is just so far ahead of whatever this beta is. For example, I centered the map on my location in Los Angeles, CA and then clicked search for "Gas Stations", and it promptly reposition the map and gave me all the gas stations in San Jose, CA, a city hundreds of miles away. WTF? This is probably one of the most common use cases and they can't get it right. I managed to drop a pin somehow, not sure, and now I can't remove it and the map is stuck focusing on this random pin point. I don't see any UI for removing the dropped pin. I can't move the pin, or do anything to change where the pin is. Ugh.
- cozzyd 2y agothat's weird, searching for gas stations worked fine for the developers in Cupertino
- dwaite 2y ago> For example, I centered the map on my location in Los Angeles, CA and then clicked search for "Gas Stations", and it promptly reposition the map and gave me all the gas stations in San Jose, CA, a city hundreds of miles away. WTF? I'm not seeing that behavior at all. When I type gas stations in search, it adds a 'nearby'. It will slightly reposition the window if there are matches on the edges, and the search goes into the history with the closest local area (e.g. the suburb I'm centered over). It is an active beta though, so I suppose it could differ browser by browser, day by day.
- weberer 2y ago>For example, I centered the map on my location in Los Angeles, CA and then clicked search for "Gas Stations", and it promptly reposition the map and gave me all the gas stations in San Jose, CA, a city hundreds of miles away. WTF? This is probably one of the most common use cases and they can't get it right. This happens all the time in the official iOS app. If you search for a local restaurant that's not in their database, they send you to the closest sounding one even if its on the other side of the planet.
- MaximilianEmel 2y agoI've sometimes used Apple Maps on a desktop browser, with the URL https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection/map?path=anything https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection/map?path=anything (hold ctrl while scrolling to zoom) I'm quite glad there's now official support.
- coldcode 2y agoRunning Safari on MacOS (latest) I see in the console: [Error] Could not connect to the server. [Error] Fetch API cannot load https://xp-qa.apple.com/report/2/xp_amp_web_perf_log https://xp-qa.apple.com/report/2/xp_amp_web_perf_log due to access control checks. [Error] Failed to load resource: Could not connect to the server. (xp_amp_web_perf_log, line 0) Looks like a beta bug.
- botanical 2y agoI just tried it on Firefox with https://beta.maps.apple.com/abc https://beta.maps.apple.com/abc, and all the POIs are incorrectly placed (at least in South Africa) and the roads are right-angled and un-named. Also, Apple makes an absolute mess when contributing to the OpenStreetMap project. For example, their contributors make any informal / illegal shortcut part of a residential street when it isn't.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- diggan 2y ago> Also, Apple makes an absolute mess when contributing to the OpenStreetMap project. For example, their contributors make any informal / illegal shortcut part of a residential street when it isn't. This would be very bad, where are you getting this from? That their own maps implementation doesn't work outside of Chrome/Safari doesn't sound nearly as bad as if they're damaging an entire ecosystem like that.
- botanical 2y agoI contribute to OSM, and I've seen it in my own local town. It's not so much nefarious as it is negligent. They don't have local knowledge, see a satellite image of what seems like a road and decide it connects to existing residential roads. If you spend time on it, you'll notice it too as it was common enough for me to notice it.
- diggan 2y agoYou have any concrete examples of this happening you could link to?
- gunapologist99 2y agoProbably not without self-doxxing.
- 2y ago
- maroonblazer 2y agoDespite preferring Apple's ecosystem over all others, I've built up quite a robust collection of "Favorites" and "Want to Go" and 'Starred" places in Google Maps, which makes the switching costs to move to Apple Maps high. Is there a way to export that data from Google Maps? Will Apple offer an import feature?
- mittermayr 2y agoOnly through Google Takeout. I am trying to build a tool that allows displaying and sharing them outside of Google Accounts or Maps, but the only reliable way to get them out is unfortunately still Takeout. Some browser extensions offered a loop/extraction but they mostly don’t work anymore I think.
- sofixa 2y agoI have to say, this is pretty bad even for a beta. * the map is downright unreadable on a 34 inch ultrawide screen on Chrome/macOS, in dark mode - it's very dark grey on black, with small text in a weird font * the UI is obviously mobile-style, badly inspired by Google Maps, with a tiny bar to the left; even when clicking on submenus (guides -> one of the guides), it stays miniscule even though there's a massive real estate to work on * there's only by car and by foot, which means it's useless for a lot of the world that uses public transit or biking * for some reason it defaults to the wrong measurement system even though my locale and location should be enough to deduce I don't care about miles
- nerflad 2y agoI love Apple Maps and use it every day in NYC. Hope they will make it require a slightly longer press to drop a pin. I can't be the only user accidentally doing this ~a dozen times a week. Happened just now in the browser, trying to drag the view. Rooting for the product.
- bsimpson 2y agoTheir current browser experience doesn't include transit or cycling, which makes it not terribly useful for NYC.
- standardUser 2y agoIs a map without transit even a map? I still use Google Maps as my default for transit, but Citymapper is considerably more reliable and I've been trying to remember to use it more.
- rolleiflex 2y agoA problem I had with CityMapper is that at the time I last used it, it used the distance units of the city you’re in, with no ability to change it. For example, if you’re in New York, the distances will be in feet, and feet only. Since I already know the public transport of my my own city and that I reach out for CityMapper when I’m travelling, it’s a jarring omission. I was incredulous enough to check with support, and sure enough they confirmed as of last year at least it is indeed the case that the units cannot be changed.
- standardUser 2y agoThat's a pretty big oversight on their part. But when I'm in a tight spot (like train service is ending late at night) I've had CityMapper save my ass a few times when Google was showing me inaccurate information. This has mostly been in NYC and London.
- bsimpson 2y agoThis has always driven me nuts about Google Maps too. Contrary to what some PM apparently believes, nobody taught me kilometers on the plane.
- leumon 2y agoJust give us airtags in icloud.com/find please, so that I can use them while having an android phone. I don't need apple maps in browser.
- nytesky 2y agoWhy not just get a tile?
- deletedie 2y agoSame problem - Tile doesn't have a webapp / site
- nytesky 2y agoOh but does have android app. Sorry didn’t realize you just wanted no app, I definitely sympathize.
- kube-system 2y agoThe Tile network is not great, in my experience.
- neilv 2y agoTrying it with Firefox ESR... > Your current browser isn't supported > See Supported Browsers↗ https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585 https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585 > On your Mac or iPad: Safari, Edge, Chrome > On your Windows PC: Edge, Chrome No platform other than Apple-Microsoft proprietary ones? No browser other than Chrome/Edge plus Safari? Apple should really be more sympathetic to open standards Web. They might be one regulatory decision away from Google Chrome taking over as the popular browser on Apple products as well. One defense is to hold Google-Microsoft and sites to Web open standards, not bless the proprietary Web.
- eddieroger 2y agoMaybe they will by the time they come out of beta? It only just launched. The page you reference even acknowledges this: >Availability varies depending on region. To start, Maps on the web is available only in English. Maps on the web will be available for additional browsers, platforms, and languages soon.
- scblock 2y agoYes this is a huge miss. It's IE all over again.
- yohannparis 2y agoThat is why it is named beta.
- hypeatei 2y agoPresumably if it's a beta then you'd want as much feedback from users as possible. How is blocking Firefox in a beta going to help get this in a production ready state?
- throwitaway1123 2y agoUnfortunately, many users will gather from this experience the following sentiment: "if I want to access the latest cutting edge betas, then I should be using something other than Firefox". The net result of this is less browser diversity.
- can16358p 2y agoNice. With the current trajectory Apple Maps will be a serious competitor to Google Maps. When it first came out we all made fun of it and it deserved that fun to be made. It was absolutely terrible. Fast-forward to today: I live in Turkey, Google Maps' satellite view is extremely blurry at an unusable level, and Apple Maps displays satellite view perfectly at a nice resolution. There has been a change in street numbers about three years ago here. Apple Maps displays the current new street number while Google Maps still displays the old street number. And before you say Apple is only good at first-world metropolitans: I live in a small town in Turkey, barely more populated than a village in winter. The only reason I keep Google Maps is compatibility especially when sending location etc to others with Android devices, otherwise I'd have long deleted it. With this upgrade I might actually indeed delete Google Maps which has one of the worst UX I've seen (well, it's a Google product so that's expected) and very bad data, at least for all my practical purposes.
- jader201 2y agoI’ve been using Google Maps forever. When Apple Maps came out, I experimented with it a bit, even tried using it as a default, and it was terrible. Several locations it couldn’t find, or just was in the completely wrong location. Even businesses were missing. Every now and then I try it out, and it will seem improved a bit over the previous time, but it won’t take long before I run into an address that is again missing or incorrect. After a while, I gave up on it altogether. But sometimes on CarPlay, I will accidentally end up on Apple Maps, and will realize it after it either has me going in the wrong direction, or it can’t find the place I’m going. Even my last trip a couple weeks ago this happened. I’m surprised it has the usage it does, because still to this day, I — admittedly anecdotally — still have issues with the data. I think maybe in larger cities it functions better. But outside of large cities, I think the data is still quite a bit behind Google Maps.
- ladberg 2y agoYour last line is right, it's definitely a location thing. I've been using Apple Maps for years in the various big cities I've lived and I strongly prefer it over Google Maps, but whenever I'm on vacation I'll switch to Google.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoI switched to Apple Maps a couple of years ago. I live in Seattle and haven't had any problems with it. Also, if you didn't know, you can delete Apple Maps entirely if you dislike it. iOS definitely tries hard to enforce those default apps.
- zonkerdonker 2y agoHow does it do with traffic? I was driving with a friend who was using apple maps recently, and I was able to save us from a ~20 minute traffic jam on i5 by just taking an early exit
- shepherdjerred 2y agoI'm not really sure -- I don't drive during peak hours very often. Maybe you could try running both for a short while and compare the ETAs?
- butz 2y agoDon't know what I was expecting, but Apple Maps seems to be as noisy as Google Maps, maybe event more. So many businesses listed, some with long names taking 5 lines. Good thing this is "not supported" on Firefox, I might've found even more issues.
- diceduckmonk 2y agoFor all of these companies lipservice to A.I., mapping still requires a high degree of human involvement to normalize.
- quantumwannabe 2y agoThat’s the best feature of Apple Maps. Google hides a ton of businesses, even at max zoom.
- H12 2y agoI would really love to see a "maps" app that focuses specifically on local discovery for businesses and other points of interest. Or, one that at least makes a real attempt to deliniate between getting you to a known place, and finding you new places to go. Most mapping apps seem to blend navigation & discovery into a single experience that winds up being worse at both.
- balozi 2y agoHeaven knows Apple would never give me anything for free. So, Apple will have to PAY ME to try their beta product. The era of free work is over.
- dadoum 2y agoIt has no public transit support? or did I miss a button? I mean it's one of the only use I have for a desktop map, plan your route ahead, see where to go, and how to go there.
- MaximilianEmel 2y agoIs there a way to use light mode?
- usaphp 2y agothe only thing I like in Google maps more than Apple Maps is reviews. Yelp integration in Apple is annoying as it asks me to open an app to view photos from a place.
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoThe more time moves on the more Apple's "App First/App Only" approach seems to feel like a mistake. While yeah there has been a handful of benefits to it on iOS specifically, the move of real work to iPads never materialzed so real work still gets done on Macbooks and therefore searches for locations, calendars, documents, etc all end up in Google infrastructure instead of Apple.
- dbg31415 2y agoDoesn't work with Firefox?! Are we back to this shit where all the companies want us to use IE6? Come on, this is so janky. Especially for a company like Apple. https://i.imgur.com/SQl7YUh.png https://i.imgur.com/SQl7YUh.png
- rambambram 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AJRF 2y agoType "double bedroom" in to search. Is that booking.com spam?
- qingcharles 2y agoWeird results. Looks like bad data fed in.
- jcrash 2y agoI just wish Apple Maps would drop Yelp .. I hate Yelp
- toephu2 2y agoWhat alternative do they have? Google Maps reviews?
- byproxy 2y agoA version, or two, ago they've introduced their own rating system where you can thumb's up/down certain criteria (which elude me, right now. but, of the "ambiance", "food quality", "service", etc. variety). So, I imagine they're looking to ween off of Yelp for their rating's system.
- memcg 2y agoDoesn't duckduckgo already use Apple maps and work on Firefox? https://duckduckgo.com/?iaxm=maps&q=washington+dc&bbox=-77.21777108479215%2C39.12015574427304%2C-77.09018491520784%2C39.053619157364814 https://duckduckgo.com/?iaxm=maps&q=washington+dc&bbox=-77.2...
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- betaby 2y ago"Your current browser isn't supported" Okay.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bparsons 2y ago- A lot of retail businesses listed in my neighborhood that don't exist. I am guessing they are pulling from corporate registries to find these? - The directions feature is about 14 years behind Google/OSM. No transit, no cycling, and no traffic visualization.
- diceduckmonk 2y agoWhy are mapping services so stingy with custom lists of pinned location? This announcement from Apple made me excited because Google Map's saved list has become unusable for me. I have 8,000+ favorites (used to mark places I've visited) on Google Maps and behavior above 500 is undefined. On Mobile, Google Maps loads an arbitrary list of 3,000 pins. Unfortunately, Apple is even worst with a limit of 100 [2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1cfqk52/did_i_just_learn_the_limit_to_saved_places_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1cfqk52/did_i_j... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/103188 https://support.apple.com/en-us/103188
- thefourthchime 2y agoYou can put items in guides, i'm not sure the limit of items you can put in a guide or how many guides though
- diceduckmonk 2y ago"Total number of places across all Guides: 300" These limits wouldn't be an issue if Google Maps API actually allowed fetching saved list features.
- kridsdale1 2y agoAFAIK the API doesn’t even let you log in as your Google user account.
- Delphiki 2y agoI have over 2,000 places saved in Guides in the Apple Maps app. Not sure what that 300 place limit is referring to, but I haven't had any issues.
- diceduckmonk 2y agoFor Google Maps, They have an “official” limit of 500 where anything beyond that is not guaranteed. In practice, the current limit is 3,000. I’m wondering if Apple Maps is doing something similar where they set a low official limit that they can walk back on / to in the future, as to avoid legal responsibility
- sroussey 2y agoSafari on iOS is not supported?
- cptskippy 2y agoWhere do they source their data? I've contributed a lot of hyperspecific information to OpenStreetMap about my location that Google gets very wrong. It looks like Apple took some of it, slightly tweaked some stuff, and completed ignored other bits.
- habi 2y agoApple mentions OpenStreetMap quite prominently: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/maps/legal-en.html https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/maps/legal-en.... Also, the "Legal" link on https://beta.maps.apple.com/ https://beta.maps.apple.com/ goes to https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html which lists OpenStreetMap on the first line.
- asymmetric 2y agoWhat’s an easy way to update OSM data on the go on a mobile device?
- cptskippy 2y agoI like SteetComplete but it's very basic, it just asks basic questions about the area you are in based on existing data. I will usually set out to document something on my bike and just take lots of pictures, particularly of intersections. I then use the OSM website to update things at home. The more meta data you feed into OSM, the more pointed questions StreetComplete asks. It can ask about simple things like road composition, street markings, and crossings. Often it's easier and faster to answer questions in App than using the OSM website. For people who want to contribute but don't feel like traveling around, there's plenty to do at home using aerial or street view data. Many house numbers are wrong or misaligned with home locations. Many neighborhoods use a hand full of footprints for homes and will mirror them or slap on a different facade. So I like to use aerial photography to trace out the foot prints of a few homes and then copy paste those onto all the like model homes. Then I use street view photography to get accurate house numbers and update maps as well. The house numbers and locations vary wildly but for condos and townhomes they're usually pretty bad. Simply putting accurate house numbers on foot prints makes a world of difference. Companies like Lyft and Amazon use OSM data for pickups and deliveries. Road information is also often out dated, especially for new construction. We had a lot of people in our neighborhood complaining about Lyft pickups not being able to navigate to their location. I fixed our neighborhood, tagged Lyft on Twitter and they updated their maps within a week.
- graeme 2y agoI want to use Apple Maps. In a few areas I find they beat google. Airport Maps, Transit. But Google has deep integrations with a lot of things that just make it nice to use. For example, Apple Maps has bike directions. Google maps has bike directions that integration directly with the local bikeshare. So you can an ETA that includes walking time to/from the bikeshare stations for picking up and dropping off bikes. Right now Google Maps is at the "It just works" phase and Apple is not there, though they are improving quite a bit.
- swozey 2y agoI live downtown in a busy neighborhood and Google has a "How busy is it right now?" thing, as inaccurate as it potentially is, is super helpful so I don't walk over to a bar/restaurant and find out its packed to the brim with people singing Titanic over karaeoke.
- graeme 2y agoPrecisely. For Macs Apple made a Pro Workflows team that looked at a bunch of specific tasks done by photographers, videographers, programmers etc and worked to make macs, ipad and iphones better for those specific things. They need a team like that for Maps. Run someone through "I want to go to a bar tonight" on Google Maps, have them try it on Apple Maps, spec out what is needed to actually make it work, and repeat for a couple dozen use cases. They really have been able to do this for a few areas within maps. If they broaden this out they'll be a serious contender for Google Maps. They already have them beat on privacy, speed, ios integration etc
- IncRnd 2y agoApple maps requires js to work. Google maps and Mapquest don't require js. While most people use js by default, this requirement indicates that Apple requires a greater footprint to run maps than Google or Mapquest.
- randerson 2y agoWhy should they optimize for the <0.1% of people who don't have JS enabled?
- IncRnd 2y ago> Why should they optimize for the <0.1% of people who don't have JS enabled? Because their competitors do that. Most counts place non-js users (which is not always their choice) between 1% and 4%. That means that for every 10,000 users, there will be between 100 and 400 that don't have js enabled. It's been estimated that buzzfeed, which we use as a traffic example, gets over 10 million requests that don't support js per month.
- ngrilly 2y agoWhat is the strategic rationale for offering Apple Maps on the web?
- bobthepanda 2y agoI would imagine that people who need Google Maps on the web are more likely to stick to that one platform everywhere. Offering Apple Maps on web makes needing to stick to Google Maps less necessary. It’s the same reasoning as iTunes on Windows.
- ngrilly 2y agoAgreed. But historically, Apple pushed users really hard towards their native apps. I’d be personally happy using a better web version of for example Apple Notes when I’m forced to use Windows.
- bobthepanda 2y agothe thing is that Maps is a much stickier platform for cross-platform solutions than most other kinds of native apps, and so Apple is starting with the disadvantage here. Technically you can access notes via iCloud.com. Maps has just been totally inaccessible to Windows users until today.
- alexwilliams 2y agoApple? The Web? What?
- vstollen 2y agoWhat I miss the most from Apple Maps is their lack of user content (at least in Germany). While I can find many pictures and reviews of every tiny store on Google Maps, Apple usually only has a handful of reviews and almost no photos submitted.
- bnchrch 2y agoI live in a city in Canada, every 6 months I tend to give Apple Maps a try. Inside of this year there have been multiple times where the Apple Maps route is 3x longer. 15 min vs 45 min 55 min vs 1 hr 25 min I want to use Apple Maps, but don't let these comments from NYC, LA, etc make you think its close to par with Google Maps. Because its not.
- hellcow 2y agoIs this due to it having inaccurate traffic estimates, or is it just picking bad routes independently of traffic?
- bnchrch 2y agoVery bad routes. In the 45 min example: Instead of taking the wide open freeway beside us it put us through downtown, to the other side of town, to a different freeway. But it didnt get us on the freeway itself, just residential roads beside it. It was comically insane.
- ricardobayes 2y agoPretty interesting how many things are clickable, but don't appear so. The cursor doesn't turn to "cursor: pointer".
- standardUser 2y agoLaunching a web app that doesn't work on the web? I guess that's what we should expect from a company that makes a messaging app that magically only works on one piece of hardware. Apple has a knack for finding restrictions where they would otherwise never exist.
- wewtyflakes 2y ago+1; does not load for me using Firefox on MacOS.
- Tagbert 2y agoYes, this beta explicitly is not yet running on Firefox or on mobile browsers
- ricardobayes 2y agoFirefox is basically extinct now, it took me a long time to accept that. But it's time to move on. Usage is at 1-2% levels. https://browsersl.ist/#q=%3E+0.2%25+and+not+dead https://browsersl.ist/#q=%3E+0.2%25+and+not+dead
- NBJack 2y agoHN only gets about 5M unique users out of the 5.44B on the internet. Usage of the site is < .1%. It's hard for me to accept that, but by your logic it is basically extinct now. It's time to move on. /s
- janderland 2y agoI’ve been using it as a daily driver for the past year due to web app bugs which only appear in Chrome. It’s been working fine for me.
- bonestamp2 2y agoIt seems to work for me. Can you elaborate on the problem you're seeing?
- bityard 2y agoGuides -> Latest -> "The Sexiest Hotels in Rome" Hokay, then
- ctchocula 2y agoThe worst part of Apple Maps is it doesn't have "always point north" mode. That makes it unuseable for those of us that can't use non-North turn-by-turn maps. It's been a feature request for many years now and Apple hasn't done anything about it.
- barumrho 2y agoCurious why you need the map to always point to north?
- imp0cat 2y agoIt's been discussed here before, some people (myself included) find it easier to navigate when the map is always rotated north up. In other words, it's easier to figure out which way you're going and keep your "internal" navi in sync with the app.
- recursive 2y agoIt's a preference, not a need.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- petarb 2y agoDoesn’t work on safari mobile
- alistairSH 2y agoDoesn’t work on iPhones, not sure I understand the point? And doesn’t DDG use Apple Maps already? At least it appears to do so on my iPhone.
- renjimen 2y agoHilarious that it is 2024 and Apple are only now releasing a browser version of their maps. Reminds me of how god-awfully outdated Safari and iMessage are, but Apple pursues their walled garden policy regardless.
- enjoyyourlife 2y agoIt has already been available on https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=maps&iaxm=maps https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=maps&iaxm=maps
- hnburnsy 2y agoApple Maps on the Web Works via DDG >DuckDuckGo Taps Apple Maps to Power Private Search Results >Try it out with one of the many different ways you can search for places on DuckDuckGo: Search for an address Search for a geographical place Search for a local business Search for a type of business Search for places nearby >At DuckDuckGo, we believe getting the privacy you deserve online should be as simple as closing the blinds. Naturally, our strict privacy policy of not collecting or sharing any personal information extends to this integration. We do not send any personally identifiable information such as IP address to Apple or other third parties. For local searches, where your approximate location information is sent by your browser to us, we discard it immediately after use. You are still anonymous when you perform map and address-related searches on DuckDuckGo. You can read more about our anonymous localized results here. >https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-apple-mapkit-js/ https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-apple-mapkit-js/
- russelg 2y agoKago also uses Apple Maps, in much the same manner.
- bastawhiz 2y agoFirefox isn't a supported browser. Android isn't supported at all. I'm not even sure how you manage to find yourself in a situation where that can even happen.
- khazhoux 2y agoAre you genuinely confused that Apple didn’t prioritize support on Android and on #3 (4?) browser? Or are you just disappointed, but expressing it as bewildernent?
- michaelmrose 2y agoCompetent web development has usually been associated with standards compliant sites that work everywhere. In 2024 its weird that someone who isn't a moron manages to break the web. One would assume this is deliberate to retain some competitive edge. If so why bother a map product that doesn't work where I need it 99% of the time is completely useless. They might as well have retained more advantage yet by making it mac safari only.
- scarface_74 2y agoYes because I’m sure that Apple is really worried about competition from Firefox. No serious web developer thinks that you don’t have to test and special case for different browsers. It also blocks Apple’s own unsupported browsers
- michaelmrose 2y agoCompetition from Android adding value to the Android platform is not ideal.
- scarface_74 2y agoIs realistic to think that Apple executives are concerned with iOS users switching to Android because Apple Maps is available on the web?
- sgerenser 2y agoI’ve been a Mac and iOS user since practically day 1, and I’m not a fan of Google’s privacy policies (or rather lack thereof). But frankly, Apple maps just sucks. A map app that doesn’t have trustworthy POIs is useless. My wife’s retail store moved locations about 5 months ago and its still showing the old location on Apple Maps. She was able to update the location on Google on the day they moved, but Apple just refuses to move it. She submitted multiple times to get it moved via Apple’s business owner portal, I submitted with the “report incorrect information” link multiple times over the course of months, and it still shows up wrong. The worst part is, you actually get a response that says they looked at your report and took action, yet they do absolutely nothing. If you google for this, there’s tons of reports on Reddit and Apple’s discussion forums with the same complaints. Apple apparently doesn’t care.
- astrange 2y agoEmail maps_escalations@apple.com. (Like emailing the CEO, this is the kind of thing that works only as long as most people don't try to do it.)
- minikomi 2y agoNo public transport directions within Tokyo. That's a pass. Also, the animations are so PERKY and QUICK .. feels off.
- 3836293648 2y agoBut Apple Maps has been on the web for ages? It's been DuckDuckGo's map service for as long as I've accidentally used it instead of just going to google maps manually
- byyoung3 2y agonow we can use a suboptimal map application in the browser! Great!!!!!!!!!
- anotheryou 2y agoHehe, rough. For routing you have to click a POI, can't pick just any place on the map. Impossible to route POI to POI without typing out the name of at least on of them.
- ornornor 2y agoConsidering how bad Apple Maps is, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t spend resources improving that before making a web version that absolutely no one will use because it will suck as much as the app (if not more)
- Saris 2y agoThe color scheme and styling they're using is one of the worst I've ever seen, even zoomed in a lot it's very hard to see roads clearly. And zoomed out enough to see 2 nearby towns all the roads aren't even shown, only a major highway.
- smugma 2y agoIt doesn't support iOS Safari.
- Andi 2y agoThis isn't even alpha: Vector simplifications look cruel, especially on vector tile edges, and my Macbook Pro 2012's fan starts spinning.