Engineers’ work on cycling and public transit have transformed the app – but rural directions remain a sticking point

Archived version: https://archive.ph/hguLn

Excerpt (and context):

Apple Maps’ offering might surprise people who remember its disastrous launch in 2012, which the Guardian described as the company’s “first significant failure in years”. Users were more than furious – they were lost, sometimes dangerously so. In Australia, police had to rescue tourists from the huge Murray-Sunset national park, after Maps placed the city of Mildura in the wrong place by more than 40 miles. Some of the motorists located by police had been stranded for 24 hours without food or water. In Ireland, ministers had to complain directly to Apple after a cafe and gardens called “Airfield” was designated by the service as an actual airport.

But mostly the map was just glitchy and unhelpful, its directions always a little off kilter. Users revolted and Apple made a rare retreat, allowing Google Maps to be used as the default on many iPhone apps and apologizing for the product.

  • okiokbar@lemm.ee
    12·
    1 year ago

    Frustratingly, the two are good at different things.

    Apple Maps is mostly better at announcing driving routes. Routing quality is similar - they provide different, but similar-quality routes. Public transport routes are superior because - shockingly - they seem to have more accurate data than Google Maps. Google Maps is still superior in the specific location of a business within a narrow area. Apple Maps has more errors where the marker is on the building, but Google Maps has it at the entrance.

    At the same time, local search is terrible. Their partners’ and their proprietary data is inadequate and it seems businesses don’t know they could/should care and don’t maintain listings. I’ve submitted several changes in my local area and while they are usually accepted, some of them ended up reverted a while later. They seem to be working on this and hopefully they’ll eventually catch up - but I’m not sure how, if businesses don’t maintain their listings!

    • beefcat@beehaw.org
      3·
      1 year ago

      Ironically, my home address is more consistent in Apple Maps than Google Maps. There are multiple accepted spellings of my street name, and which one you use with my house number yields a different location on my street in Google maps. Apple Maps always gives the correct location.

      It’s a problem when I order food to be delivered because sometimes their system will auto correct the address I provide to one of the spellings that Google Maps thinks is way down the street from where I actually live.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        Do we live on the same street? I have the exact same issue with Google vs Apple maps

    • upstream@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      Here in Norway they had a solid regression last year.

      I mean in some areas the maps are about as accurate as your 2004 sat-nav, if you ever had one.

      Roads that where there are missing, outlines are suddenly grossly imprecise.

      Find my shows meaningless address information with a random number at the end.

      Honestly have no idea wtf is going on.

      • abhibeckert@beehaw.org
        1·
        1 year ago

        Probably one of the European mapping companies demanded more money than Apple was willing to pay. Report all the problems, they’ll get fixed one by one. Apple will also detect problems automatically by comparing traffic data collection to their map.

        • upstream@beehaw.org
          2·
          1 year ago

          Have seen zero improvements after the regression, but I think you overestimate people’s willingness to help improve something that has worse data quality than open street map.

          If it’s broken and I have a better alternative I’m not using it.