7 ms·

Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps: > “When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. I

by btown 6mo ago

Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps: > “When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy,” said Ternus. “But the team had just been over the years just pushing and pushing and pushing. And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. If you have the vision and you're persistent and you keep working at it, you can take something you know that has a rocky start and turn it into something great.” Here's hoping he recognizes that Apple's current generation of software is in the "rocky start" phase, not the "pushing and pushing" phase and definitely not the "absolutely amazing" phase. Time will tell... https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/apples-joz-and-ternus-on-smart-glasses-the-macbook-neo-and-whats-next-for-ai https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/apples-joz-and-ternus-on...

fckgw 6mo ago
Apple Maps is pretty fantastic
- jdalgetty 6mo ago
  I haven't used google maps in years.
- JohnMakin 6mo ago
  it was far inferior to its competitor when it was released
  - mikestew 6mo ago
    That was, what, twelve years ago? Hardly seems relevant.
    - JohnMakin 6mo ago
      it's relevant in the context of this conversation: > Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps: While it is great now, it did flop because it was terrible.
      - mikestew 6mo ago
        Bah, missed that part initially. Thanks.
- xyst 6mo ago
  It’s okay. It’s still subpar and barely keeping pace with Gmaps
- jonhohle 6mo ago
  On macOS there are so many basic things you’d want to do - share itineraries, annotate places, keep lists of things, but there’s not even a document concept. With the exception of guides, anything you do is ephemeral. It’s excellent at planning a route, but doing anything with that route, including getting back to it later is useless.
  - dlahoda 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  - Spooky23 6mo ago
    All true, but you have to measure it against how enshitified Google Maps has become.
    - bravoetch 6mo ago
      I don't agree with that assertion. Just because google maps has become one thing, doesn't excuse Apple maps flaws. They can exist on their merits.
    - cogogo 6mo ago
      I primarily use Apple maps and bounce back to google sometimes because I think the browser experience is so much better and it is faster to just type my terms right into ironically safari. Every time I do I think it is still simpler and snappier. Especially true if I have recently tried to use the MacOS maps app… that never behaves how I would imagine it should if I go beyond a simple location search. There are things about the ios app that make me crazy too. No qualms about the maps themselves these days.
    - trinix912 6mo ago
      Just a week ago I could still create a Google Docs "map" document, add spots, share it with friends who could collaborate from any (incl. non-Apple) device... It's just a pain to do this with Apple Maps compared to how easy and straightforward it is with Google Maps. You can also still import desktop Google Earth bookmark files.
  - 6mo ago
- lotsofpulp 6mo ago
  And they just added ads.
- drob518 6mo ago
  It’s gotten a lot better, but I still find the address database better in Google Maps, which helps when you have only a fragment of an address. I also find that the Apple Maps database has a lot of roads that read the same. For instance, in Texas where I live, we have a lot of “Ranch Roads” that are numbered. Think of them like state highways in other state (which we also have; don’t ask). For whatever reason, most of the Ranch Roads are spoken by Maps as “Ranch Road,” not with the number. So, if you have a spot where multiple Ranch Roads intersect, Maps will just say “turn left on Ranch Road” instead of “turn left on Ranch Road 123.” It’s tremendous annoying. In another state, imagine it saying “turn left on Interstate,” without a number. Anyway, Google Maps does better.
  - projektfu 6mo ago
    Google Maps often picks the non-idiomatic thing. It'll say the road name when no sign uses that, and it's a US highway that you have been following for a while. Or it will tell you the state highway number when it is a major named artery, and nobody knows that it is a state highway at that point or uses the highway number. This makes it hard to know if it is carrying you along on the same route or if it has come up with one of its weird shortcuts to save 1 minute.
    - Affric 6mo ago
      Here in Australia Apple Maps names everywhere by local council, which isn’t used at all, we use localities. I have reported this as a bug repeatedly but they just keep at it. It just means nothing here except who you pay to collect the bins.
    - drob518 6mo ago
      Yep, that’s sometimes true as well.
    - paradox460 6mo ago
      Salt Lake City roads are amusing "Turn right on East one hundred and twenty three thousand South"
- ncruces 6mo ago
  Maybe elsewhere it is. Here, it's terrible. In general, for all it benefits from globalization, Apple disappoints on global markets.
- pityJuke 6mo ago
  90% of my usage of it is because it actually displays the map on my Watch, whereas Google Maps & Citymapper only show directions. If it weren't for that, I'd use Citymapper for practically everything.
- cageface 6mo ago
  In the US. In many other countries it's borderline useless.
JKCalhoun 6mo ago
“When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy…” And I know many engineers within Apple that had been testing Maps before it shipped and they were filing bugs about it. It shipped anyway.
- dpark 6mo ago
  > It shipped anyway. “Real artists ship” No product worth using is bug free.
  - jakeydus 6mo ago
    No product is bug free. Are all products worth using?
    - mort96 6mo ago
      "No product worth using is bug free" is not the same statement as "all bug free products are worth using". Come on man, this is basic logic.
      - jakeydus 6mo ago
        You’re right. But your statement was that no product worth using is bug free. I said that no software exists that is without bugs. Your statement uses the presence of bugs to indicate a product is worth using. But since all software has bugs, that applies to every product ever made. It doesn’t have any discriminating power. So it’s not fallacious on its face but it’s not useful either, and that’s what I was trying to point out.
        jachee 6mo ago
        That “pointing out” is, itself, “not useful either.”
        jakeydus 6mo ago
krackers 6mo ago
There's some irony there in that the whole maps fiasco lead to firing of Forstall which allowed Ive to become head of design, which basically led to the current state of macOS design. I do wish that some day someone will tell the story of what happened during that time. Maps was bad at launch yes, but it also wouldn't get better without people contributing more data, and the fact that it took a decade to slowly improve implies that there's nothing anyone could have done to get it right "off the bat". It still feels to me Forstall was set up as the fall guy, especially considering no one was fired for antennagate.
- latexr 6mo ago
  Reportedly, Forstall wasn’t liked by the other senior execs but was kept “safe” as Jobs’ protégé, they thought alike and shared the love for skeuomorphism design. Ive in particular disliked Forstall, and Tim Cook made a choice. https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-minimalist-ive-assumes-jobss-role-setting-design-vision-2012-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-minimalist-ive-assume...
  - walterbell 6mo ago
    Could Forstall potentially return under new Apple leadership?
    - UqWBcuFx6NV4r 6mo ago
      What? No. Why would he even want to?
      - UltraSane 6mo ago
        Enormous amounts of money?
        bitmasher9 6mo ago
        He’s already escaped the permanent underclass.
hedora 6mo ago
What is he smoking?!? Apple Maps was fine a few years ago, but these days it routes me to the wrong place about as often as organic maps, and siri is completely broken. It renders a blue dot showing where I am, and responds “I do not know where you are”. Also, the UI for it keeps getting more cluttered, and they announced that in-map ads are coming Q2-3 2026.
dewey 6mo ago
I’m sure it’s amazing in California or the US. So often I think how much better products would be if the people responsible would have to use them for a week outside of the happy path. Example: Taking the airport train instead of a private driver and realizing there’s no luggage racks, staying in a regular hotel room and realizing there’s no light in front of the mirror, only behind you. So many examples like that on a daily basis.
- gmac 6mo ago
  Staying in a holiday rental and there are no hooks on the walls!
  - notpushkin 6mo ago
    I’ve started buying cheap self-adhesive hooks on AliExpress and placing them myself. Not sure if they last long but hopefully owners get the message.
- pjerem 6mo ago
  Another huge exemple : in most big cities in Europe you have special parking lots around big public transit hubs outside of the city where you can park for free as long as you continue your journey by public transit. In a lot of cities, that’s either the fastest or the most comfortable way to go somewhere in the city when you come from the outside. Not any single navigation app support this (tbf, the few European ones don’t support it either)
  - spockz 6mo ago
    Yes. Unfortunately transit between public transit is always walking. No options to take a first part by bike or car, or folding bikes for intermediate hops.
    - londons_explore 6mo ago
      The long tail of user desires is loooong. For example "I want to take transit, but please exclude transit options where I cannot take my non-folding bicycle". Or "I don't have a raincoat, suggest only bus stops with a roof, oh and by the way I don't like the uncomfortable seats on the purple line but will take it if there is no other way". I think LLM's with access to lots of personal data and the ability to scout the web might solve all these use cases in one fell swoop, rather than trying to design a user interface with buttons, algorithms and data sources for every obscure use case.
Mindwipe 6mo ago
That's worrying, because Apple Mpas is still a borderline useless hot mess.
71bw 6mo ago
>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.
- hobofan 6mo ago
  This may just be my bubble, but even among my iPhone-owning friends, I haven't seen a single person use Apple Maps in Europe, so I wouldn't be surprised if the efforts to improve the map data have been more focused on the US.
  - artk42 6mo ago
    The reason is that Google are highly commercialized first on thier maps, while Apple focused on major markets. E.g. I can remember the times like 2017, when Apple maps was as rocky as possible, but they were working fine in Shenzhen with matching chines to transcriptions, while Google maps sucked at scale there.
  - louthy 6mo ago
    I’m in Europe. I use it as part of Apple CarPlay for all my navigation and I think it’s much better than Google Maps (for car navigation, at least)
    - madaxe_again 6mo ago
      Really depends on where you are in Europe. Out here in the boonies of Portugal, it’s excellent if you’re driving a 4x4 pickup truck, which is the only vehicle of mine I use it with, as it picks very direct routes, which often involve ridiculously steep muddy dirt tracks, very narrow bridges, and generally just very underused farm tracks. I tried using it in Bosnia, once, and it decided to use an abandoned airfield landing strip as a shortcut. Wild stuff.
      - 6mo ago
SanjayMehta 6mo ago
Apple Maps is definitely not amazing in India. All it's good for is "Find My." Only Google is accurate and has good traffic data.
- kkarakk 6mo ago
  Apple software is unusable in india, no one uses it coz it has terrible data and thus the data never gets changed coz no one uses it. i have gotten wrong timings for gyms, wrong routes, it won't detect my home address from my contacts etc etc always find it funny when americans say "it's good now", no brother they fixed all the glitches in states it's still launch apple maps trash in india
AbrahamParangi 6mo ago
Oh I remember this quote. I thought it was quite a good one because he’s right. At least in the US, apple maps is better than google maps for most purposes.
LoveMortuus 6mo ago
>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. That has not been my experience, I've got a Honda CB125F which uses Apple Maps for their on screen navigation. I live in Lisbon and I wanted to Almada which is directly South from Lisbon. For reasons beyond me, Apple Maps kept telling me to go North and North and North, I tried restarting the navigation multiple times, but in the end I had to switch to Google Maps which did mean that I didn't have on screen navigation, only the audio ones, but at least it immediately told me to go South. In my eyes, this is a critical failure.

by btown 6mo ago

fckgw 6mo ago

Apple Maps is pretty fantastic

jdalgetty 6mo ago
I haven't used google maps in years.
JohnMakin 6mo ago
it was far inferior to its competitor when it was released
- mikestew 6mo ago
  That was, what, twelve years ago? Hardly seems relevant.
  - JohnMakin 6mo ago
    it's relevant in the context of this conversation: > Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps: While it is great now, it did flop because it was terrible.
    - mikestew 6mo ago
      Bah, missed that part initially. Thanks.
xyst 6mo ago
It’s okay. It’s still subpar and barely keeping pace with Gmaps
jonhohle 6mo ago
On macOS there are so many basic things you’d want to do - share itineraries, annotate places, keep lists of things, but there’s not even a document concept. With the exception of guides, anything you do is ephemeral. It’s excellent at planning a route, but doing anything with that route, including getting back to it later is useless.
- dlahoda 6mo ago
  [flagged]
- Spooky23 6mo ago
  All true, but you have to measure it against how enshitified Google Maps has become.
  - bravoetch 6mo ago
    I don't agree with that assertion. Just because google maps has become one thing, doesn't excuse Apple maps flaws. They can exist on their merits.
  - cogogo 6mo ago
    I primarily use Apple maps and bounce back to google sometimes because I think the browser experience is so much better and it is faster to just type my terms right into ironically safari. Every time I do I think it is still simpler and snappier. Especially true if I have recently tried to use the MacOS maps app… that never behaves how I would imagine it should if I go beyond a simple location search. There are things about the ios app that make me crazy too. No qualms about the maps themselves these days.
  - trinix912 6mo ago
    Just a week ago I could still create a Google Docs "map" document, add spots, share it with friends who could collaborate from any (incl. non-Apple) device... It's just a pain to do this with Apple Maps compared to how easy and straightforward it is with Google Maps. You can also still import desktop Google Earth bookmark files.
- 6mo ago
lotsofpulp 6mo ago
And they just added ads.
drob518 6mo ago
It’s gotten a lot better, but I still find the address database better in Google Maps, which helps when you have only a fragment of an address. I also find that the Apple Maps database has a lot of roads that read the same. For instance, in Texas where I live, we have a lot of “Ranch Roads” that are numbered. Think of them like state highways in other state (which we also have; don’t ask). For whatever reason, most of the Ranch Roads are spoken by Maps as “Ranch Road,” not with the number. So, if you have a spot where multiple Ranch Roads intersect, Maps will just say “turn left on Ranch Road” instead of “turn left on Ranch Road 123.” It’s tremendous annoying. In another state, imagine it saying “turn left on Interstate,” without a number. Anyway, Google Maps does better.
- projektfu 6mo ago
  Google Maps often picks the non-idiomatic thing. It'll say the road name when no sign uses that, and it's a US highway that you have been following for a while. Or it will tell you the state highway number when it is a major named artery, and nobody knows that it is a state highway at that point or uses the highway number. This makes it hard to know if it is carrying you along on the same route or if it has come up with one of its weird shortcuts to save 1 minute.
  - Affric 6mo ago
    Here in Australia Apple Maps names everywhere by local council, which isn’t used at all, we use localities. I have reported this as a bug repeatedly but they just keep at it. It just means nothing here except who you pay to collect the bins.
  - drob518 6mo ago
    Yep, that’s sometimes true as well.
  - paradox460 6mo ago
    Salt Lake City roads are amusing "Turn right on East one hundred and twenty three thousand South"
ncruces 6mo ago
Maybe elsewhere it is. Here, it's terrible. In general, for all it benefits from globalization, Apple disappoints on global markets.
pityJuke 6mo ago
90% of my usage of it is because it actually displays the map on my Watch, whereas Google Maps & Citymapper only show directions. If it weren't for that, I'd use Citymapper for practically everything.
cageface 6mo ago
In the US. In many other countries it's borderline useless.

JKCalhoun 6mo ago

“When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy…” And I know many engineers within Apple that had been testing Maps before it shipped and they were filing bugs about it. It shipped anyway.

dpark 6mo ago
> It shipped anyway. “Real artists ship” No product worth using is bug free.
- jakeydus 6mo ago
  No product is bug free. Are all products worth using?
  - mort96 6mo ago
    "No product worth using is bug free" is not the same statement as "all bug free products are worth using". Come on man, this is basic logic.
    - jakeydus 6mo ago
      You’re right. But your statement was that no product worth using is bug free. I said that no software exists that is without bugs. Your statement uses the presence of bugs to indicate a product is worth using. But since all software has bugs, that applies to every product ever made. It doesn’t have any discriminating power. So it’s not fallacious on its face but it’s not useful either, and that’s what I was trying to point out.
      - jachee 6mo ago
        That “pointing out” is, itself, “not useful either.”
        jakeydus 6mo ago

krackers 6mo ago

There's some irony there in that the whole maps fiasco lead to firing of Forstall which allowed Ive to become head of design, which basically led to the current state of macOS design. I do wish that some day someone will tell the story of what happened during that time. Maps was bad at launch yes, but it also wouldn't get better without people contributing more data, and the fact that it took a decade to slowly improve implies that there's nothing anyone could have done to get it right "off the bat". It still feels to me Forstall was set up as the fall guy, especially considering no one was fired for antennagate.

latexr 6mo ago
Reportedly, Forstall wasn’t liked by the other senior execs but was kept “safe” as Jobs’ protégé, they thought alike and shared the love for skeuomorphism design. Ive in particular disliked Forstall, and Tim Cook made a choice. https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-minimalist-ive-assumes-jobss-role-setting-design-vision-2012-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-minimalist-ive-assume...
- walterbell 6mo ago
  Could Forstall potentially return under new Apple leadership?
  - UqWBcuFx6NV4r 6mo ago
    What? No. Why would he even want to?
    - UltraSane 6mo ago
      Enormous amounts of money?
      - bitmasher9 6mo ago
        He’s already escaped the permanent underclass.

hedora 6mo ago

What is he smoking?!? Apple Maps was fine a few years ago, but these days it routes me to the wrong place about as often as organic maps, and siri is completely broken. It renders a blue dot showing where I am, and responds “I do not know where you are”. Also, the UI for it keeps getting more cluttered, and they announced that in-map ads are coming Q2-3 2026.

dewey 6mo ago

I’m sure it’s amazing in California or the US. So often I think how much better products would be if the people responsible would have to use them for a week outside of the happy path. Example: Taking the airport train instead of a private driver and realizing there’s no luggage racks, staying in a regular hotel room and realizing there’s no light in front of the mirror, only behind you. So many examples like that on a daily basis.

gmac 6mo ago
Staying in a holiday rental and there are no hooks on the walls!
- notpushkin 6mo ago
  I’ve started buying cheap self-adhesive hooks on AliExpress and placing them myself. Not sure if they last long but hopefully owners get the message.
pjerem 6mo ago
Another huge exemple : in most big cities in Europe you have special parking lots around big public transit hubs outside of the city where you can park for free as long as you continue your journey by public transit. In a lot of cities, that’s either the fastest or the most comfortable way to go somewhere in the city when you come from the outside. Not any single navigation app support this (tbf, the few European ones don’t support it either)
- spockz 6mo ago
  Yes. Unfortunately transit between public transit is always walking. No options to take a first part by bike or car, or folding bikes for intermediate hops.
  - londons_explore 6mo ago
    The long tail of user desires is loooong. For example "I want to take transit, but please exclude transit options where I cannot take my non-folding bicycle". Or "I don't have a raincoat, suggest only bus stops with a roof, oh and by the way I don't like the uncomfortable seats on the purple line but will take it if there is no other way". I think LLM's with access to lots of personal data and the ability to scout the web might solve all these use cases in one fell swoop, rather than trying to design a user interface with buttons, algorithms and data sources for every obscure use case.

Mindwipe 6mo ago

That's worrying, because Apple Mpas is still a borderline useless hot mess.

71bw 6mo ago

>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.

hobofan 6mo ago
This may just be my bubble, but even among my iPhone-owning friends, I haven't seen a single person use Apple Maps in Europe, so I wouldn't be surprised if the efforts to improve the map data have been more focused on the US.
- artk42 6mo ago
  The reason is that Google are highly commercialized first on thier maps, while Apple focused on major markets. E.g. I can remember the times like 2017, when Apple maps was as rocky as possible, but they were working fine in Shenzhen with matching chines to transcriptions, while Google maps sucked at scale there.
- louthy 6mo ago
  I’m in Europe. I use it as part of Apple CarPlay for all my navigation and I think it’s much better than Google Maps (for car navigation, at least)
  - madaxe_again 6mo ago
    Really depends on where you are in Europe. Out here in the boonies of Portugal, it’s excellent if you’re driving a 4x4 pickup truck, which is the only vehicle of mine I use it with, as it picks very direct routes, which often involve ridiculously steep muddy dirt tracks, very narrow bridges, and generally just very underused farm tracks. I tried using it in Bosnia, once, and it decided to use an abandoned airfield landing strip as a shortcut. Wild stuff.
    - 6mo ago

SanjayMehta 6mo ago

Apple Maps is definitely not amazing in India. All it's good for is "Find My." Only Google is accurate and has good traffic data.

kkarakk 6mo ago
Apple software is unusable in india, no one uses it coz it has terrible data and thus the data never gets changed coz no one uses it. i have gotten wrong timings for gyms, wrong routes, it won't detect my home address from my contacts etc etc always find it funny when americans say "it's good now", no brother they fixed all the glitches in states it's still launch apple maps trash in india

AbrahamParangi 6mo ago

Oh I remember this quote. I thought it was quite a good one because he’s right. At least in the US, apple maps is better than google maps for most purposes.

LoveMortuus 6mo ago

>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. That has not been my experience, I've got a Honda CB125F which uses Apple Maps for their on screen navigation. I live in Lisbon and I wanted to Almada which is directly South from Lisbon. For reasons beyond me, Apple Maps kept telling me to go North and North and North, I tried restarting the navigation multiple times, but in the end I had to switch to Google Maps which did mean that I didn't have on screen navigation, only the audio ones, but at least it immediately told me to go South. In my eyes, this is a critical failure.