I do a lot of long drives, and over time, have made the shift to Apple Maps. Apple Maps has made obvious, continuous improvements since its rollout and it serves me well. I made a long trek this weekend and was pleased when Apple Maps weighed in, mid-route, with a suggested alternate route to save me time due to an accident ahead.
Accepting this new guidance took a single tap and the new route got me there faster. How do I know? Because Apple Maps shows me my expected arrival time, and with the new route, that expected arrival time changed. And proved accurate.
Add the Apple Watch to this mix. I love the fact that as I drive, I get steadily updated turn by turn directions on my Apple Watch, with haptic taps on my wrist to remind me of upcoming turns.
Apple Maps does a terrific job of getting me where I need to go.
Is this new version of Google Maps better? Here’s an experiment to try. Go to the announcement page, then scroll down to the video that shows off the interface. Use Apple Maps to head over to Oakland, California, then follow the video as it zooms in to the Rockridge area. Zoom in as the video zooms in, eventually revealing places of interest on College Ave, south of Route 24.
What do you think? Which shows more, Google Maps or Apple Maps? Is one noticeably better than the other? If anything, I’d say that Google Maps is catching up to Apple Maps, where it used to be the other way around.
I’m glad to see these improvements to Google Maps, good to have an alternative. But it was definitely enlightening to see them side by side. As always, give this a try, judge for yourself.
Google Maps remain superior in its database of places, particularly non-US places. It’s frustrating to enter, for example, Hilton Hotels while in London, and the first hits that emerge in Apple Maps are American.
Apple maps is getting better but Google Maps still has a lot of advantages. Cycling directions, transit directions for more than a handful of cities, street view…
I was surprised to find that Apple Maps can do a better job with transit in Boston than Google Maps. Google Maps tells me that I cannot use transit to get to South Station from Newton, while Apple Maps knows that I can take a green line train to Park and transfer to the red line to South Station.
Apple still has room for improvement — mainly on the basic mapping front. In Apple Maps, if you match the zoom shown at the 7 second mark of the Google video, only one road name is shown. This is because their locations are fixed. With Google, the locations of the road names are dynamic and always move in to your view window.
Hilarious!
So my teenage kids starting calling Apple Maps ‘Crapple’ Maps a few years back due to frustrating requests like a Target store leading to the middle of a field. With that said, I use Apple Maps daily here in Minneapolis and when traveling (Chicago, SF ect) I find it to be very useful and rarely see issues any longer.
For the longest time in both Google and Apple maps, if I search for my local Lowe’s hardware store not 5 minutes from my house, both maps zoom out and include locations 50 miles from me. I had to zoom way back in to select the obvious one. Occasionally if I searched for a thai restaurant, I would get the country Thailand. I’m glad both maps have at least fixed this issue.
I normally use Waze because I feel that it does a good job of factoring in traffic when it provides a route. I tried Apple Maps a few weeks ago because Waze couldn’t reach the Waze servers (this happens way too often). Partway to my destination Apple Maps provided me an alternate route, I assume due to bad traffic. Waze does this often enough on the same route. However, Apple sent me through local roads in Washington DC onto Beech Road with about a mile backup (at the end of Beech Road) you have to make a left turn onto a road with very heavy traffic and no traffic light. This resulted in a very long drive. I was traveling with one of my cats who ended up pooping in his cat carrier. I’m not sure when I will trust Apple Maps again.
I use Apple Maps often but there is one thing that they have completely wrong in their interface, and that is font size. I find it absolutely ridiculous that they use such a minuscule font size for the names of roads. And when you zoom in, the font size remains constant. You have to have absolutely perfect vision to read the names when you are close to the phone. Forget trying to read them when the phone is mounted on your dashboard.
This is the same issue I have with the Music app and the font size used for artist/album name. I know they are fixing this in iOS 10 so I’m hoping they will fix the map font size as well.
This is one of those areas where just because your retina display allows you to draw fonts that are tiny, does not mean you should draw them that tiny.
One thing I like in Google Maps better is showing what lane I should be in, it really helps when I am in unfamiliar laces and there are multiple lanes.
All map applications should do this.
I like Waze because it shows the road I am currently on at the bottom of the screen. I also like the fact that it will automatically change the route if there is traffic ahead, no need to tap. The less I have to look away from the road the better.
I’d say I use Waze 95% of the time now.
Reports such as objects in the road, cars stopped on shoulder, police and or construction ahead. Even fog and potholes are reported as well as much more. If they added the lane positioning like I mentioned that Google does above, I’d probably use it 100% of the time.
Quite honestly, Waze is what I thought Apple Maps was GOING to be.
My main complaint about Apple Maps is lack of bike lanes info. A couple of years I understood, but it seems like Apple needs to start paying attention to big cities with bike lanes/bike commuters/citywide bike rentals. I realize Cupertino doesn’t have them, but more of Apple’s customers live in New York, Paris, Milan, Amsterdam etc., etc.
And yes, more work on improving European data.
Sorry to hear about your cat pooping on your journey, although I did have a nice chuckle.. : D
I always try to write my complaints in an amusing manner.
As a Canadian: Apple Maps has a better database of places in my area. Google sometimes has more, but they’re often in the wrong place or permanently closed. Trying to go to to a place found in Google Maps is a huge source of frustration to me. I wish they’d be more careful.
I see many Apple Maps vans in my area. It is no doubt coming soon.
Here in Canada all the Target stores are empty fields! #corporatedadjoke
This is such BS. Don’t have this myopic view where the world rotates around the US. In countries like India and others in Asia, Apple Maps sucks balls and has almost 0 utility. Ever done thorough and explicit research before spewing click-baits?
Another uninformed assumption.
I think it’s a reasonable assumption to make.
I think you mean Zellers. The Fields are still there.
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