A decade after a disastrous launch, is Apple Maps finally good?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨soyagi@yiffit.net⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/aug/09/apple-maps-cycling-transport-google

Excerpt:

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.

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Comments

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nikt@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The other day I used Apple Maps in my car for the first time in a few years. I gotta say something about it felt nice.

Maybe it’s the aesthetic? The names of towns and geographic features are in big letters and flow across the map nicely — the name of the peninsula I was driving across was stretched along the length peninsula itself — and it felt a bit like I was traversing an old timey map, maybe like in an old Indiana Jones movie.

If I need to find some obscure business, I’ll still use Google Maps, and if I’m on a well known commute I’ll still use Waze, but for just general ambient map display, I think Apple Maps might be it now.

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- Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Apple Maps started showing speed traps and stuff outta nowhere. It’s sooo much better than it used to be.
  
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qooqie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It’s been good for awhile, the launch made people sour for so damn long they forget how fast technology goes. I’ve used both Apple and Google maps for the past 4ish years now and Apple consistently has better features way before google. The route planning isn’t much different either, I don’t notice differences between routes unless I’m trying to find a restaurant that opened the day prior.

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- emogu@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’ve been using it almost exclusively for the past 4 years or so ever since Google Maps missed multiple exits on the way home from Newark airport. The next time, I tried Apple Maps and it didn’t miss the exits and I haven’t really had to look back since I made the switch.
  
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  - weedazz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Does Apple maps have live traffic info? That’s the main thing I like about Google
    
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spunkycomics@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The new Futurama season dropped an Apple Maps punchline in the last episode that felt painfully out of date even for our timeline.

I thought the writing had been decent up to that point, which made me realize how bad public perception still must be (on a product that works great now, imo)

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- RamSwamson@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Every few months I give Apple Maps another shot, most recently being two months ago, it still tried to drive me into a lake. Don’t get me wrong, aesthetically it has improved greatly! But direction wise, I wouldn’t trust my life with it.
  
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- Bo7a@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  You must not spend a lot of time outside of cities. Or maybe it just sucks in Canada? But as soon as you leave a city here it is a toss-up whether apple will get you where you are going, or to some random place ten miles away in an area with no cell coverage :p
  
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  - HollandJim@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I’ve found Apple really responsive to map updates if you include a photo of the issue in the report.
    
    Also the next version will let you download all the map data for a trip ahead of time. Looking forward to that!
    
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Bo7a@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
If you want to head into a lake about 5 miles from my house, apple maps is your go-to. Every other map source gets you straight to my door in about 5 minutes from the nearest town, but apple maps takes you for a 90-minute tour around a mountain and then drops you in a lake.

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Dum@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I can’t get over how hard the author deep throats Tim Apple. When reading I stopped to check if it was marked as advertisement. This is 100% pure advertisement, not journalism. If you like apple maps, fine, this article just feels way overboard.

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- HollandJim@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Wow - your hatred of Apple is super obvious. Are we becoming Reddit now?
  
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autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:

But with one earbud in and Siri activated, you can have a friendly voice guide you through a foreign city, drifting you towards cycle lanes and safer routes and navigating often complex one-way systems.

In my hometown of London, where a lot of cycling routes are pathways in woods or through reservoirs, it has a habit of sending you down these dark and sometimes dangerous paths at night when the streets are much quicker and mostly empty.

In the post-apocalyptic, post-internet world in HBO’s The Last Of Us, there’s a scene in which the main character Joel, having spent weeks traversing an icy wasteland, happens upon a small cottage inhabited by an old couple.

As Cue himself recognises, “there are really only two mapmakers left in the world, in ourselves and Google” – and that monopoly of information, says Clancy Wilmott, a professor specialising in digital cartographies at Berkley, has consequences.

For their part, the Apple Maps engineers I spoke with acknowledged that they were more reliant on AI, aerial photography and existing data in rural settings and were focusing on expanding to more cities.

I’d say: ‘Once you’re on Ascension and you see the brick column, that driveway right after is mine.’ We’ve been working hard on that as well,” Cue says, adding that the future might be Siri telling you to “make a left at the yellow house”.

I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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ytsedude@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
No.

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- pedro@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  OpenStreetMap ftw!
  
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glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Apple Maps was shitty for a few years at most, but I’ve been using it for a long time and I can’t complain.

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stopthatgirl7@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Thanks to living in a walkable city, I walk places a lot, and Apple Maps has been far superior to Google Maps for that. It’s got nice little touches, too, like covered roads being a slightly different color than regular roads.

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richie510@centennialstate.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I know I’m a fanboy, but I have been using apple maps since iOS 5 beta and it has been great for me. Maybe I just happened to be in parts of the world where it just worked better. Often when I would find an issue, I would check google, and google had the same issue.

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HollandJim@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m not in the US so I’d use either use Apple Maps, Google Maps and Waze, but until the past 4-5 years none were that great. G-Maps would take me down roads that didn’t exist, or it would Waze occasionally send me to parts of Germany by way of England. We were not amused. Forget using either for actual live navigation, especially in Germany or France - really slow at predicting turns or which lane to be in when they split. They ALL occasionally want to send you to the service dock in the back alley, instead of the front door (a result of getting initial data from delivery companies, I’d bet).

Apple Maps, about 3-4 years ago, just started getting WAY better for navigation: far better turn prediction, lane bifurcation guidence on top and really nice CarPlay integration with my VW ID.3.

Another thing to mention - report issues. The more you report, with proof (pictures, especially) the faster the map data gets updated. I’m assuming it’s tied to your iCloud account - I’ve had maps changes happen in 2-3 days, but I’ve been submitting data changes for years now.

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- soyagi@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  As you’ve been very diligent reporting errors and suggesting changes to map data, have you ever considered contributing to OpenStreetMap? You might like helping by using the app Every Door on iOS, for example.
  
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  - HollandJim@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    While I appreciate OSM, I tend to fix what I use - the old cowboy adage: “You gotta dance with them what brung you”. My dance card is full with Apple Maps.
    
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