It took 2 years after the first abomination to realize they needed to start over? For a company that has almost a quarter trillion in capital in the bank, yes this is slow and overdue and a bit embarrassing. Maybe navigation directions will appear in the touch bar though. Im being a bit snarky but this isn't a proud moment for Apple.
Is the consensus that Apple Maps _still_ sucks? Sure, the launch was horrible, but it's seen years of progress and nowadays I find it perfectly usable. I use it over Google Maps without hesitation.
Now I'm scared they're gonna break it again by rebuilding it. If it ain't broke (any more), don't fix it.
I dunno- this might be an edge case but I was going hiking and was trying to get to a trailhead a month or so ago using Apple maps, and I ended up quite lost in the fireroads of the buckhorn wilderness. Spooky.
I would never trust Apple or Google maps to get me anywhere more complicated than a local restaurant. If you're wandering out amongst the logging trucks (or anything that isn't paved, for that matter), try something like Gaia GPS. Gaia allows you load whatever maps you want, including USGS Topo maps. On the dirt-road-loving motorcycle, I paid the $50 (or whatever it cost) to get the topo dataset on the Garmin that rides on the dashboard.
EDIT: BTW, if you're on anything that might be labelled "fireroad" you don't want to be depending on a map app that needs a connection to begin with.
I like the usability of Apple Maps a lot, but just this weekend it took me to the wrong part of town. I put the same address into Google Maps and it took me to the correct place.
I also find it perfectly usable. Does it sometimes suggest a longer route than Google Maps does? Sure. That could be partially attributed to the sheer number of drivers Google Maps has, though.
I think search is almost certainly better on Google Maps, but that's no surprise. I think Apple Maps is the better choice for iOS users, though, if only for the tighter integration with the OS itself and reportedly better battery life.
>if only for the tighter integration with the OS itself and reportedly better battery life.
So, gmaps is more accurate and overall better in execution, but you recommend an inferior product because of OS integration and battery usage? Makes no sense to me. The number one priority is getting the best directions to where you want to go.
The google UI paradigm is utterly bewildering and foreign to me. I would probably give Google Maps a chance, but every time I open it, I feel lost. When the maps are good enough, the other stuff matters.
The Google Maps app doesn't follow any of the iOS UI paradigms, so any time I want to do anything beyond what you described (like transit directions, bike directions, etc), I have have a hard time figuring out how to do that.
For one example: I believe this is no longer the case, but for a long time 3rd party mapping apps could not display route information on the iPhone lock screen.
Last time I checked, one of my favorite apps for routing me on back roads, Scenic, still can't use my Watch for routing.
Why would your phone be locked while you're driving and trying to use it for navigation? Surely you're not looking down and locking / unlocking it every time you want to look at it, right? You just have it mounted on your dash and it stays on.
One of the most frustrating things for me with Apple maps is having a view of the city I’m in and searching for something like ramen restaurant and it takes me to another country like Singapore and says there’s a restaurant named “the ramen restaurant “.
I have never experienced this, and I almost exclusively use Maps for this very purpose (never for directions; only for finding places nearby of a specific type).
Makes me wonder how stuff like this makes it past QA. I bet there was a low-paid QA engineer or college intern who pointed this out to their supervisor and they were ignored.
I don't understand the point you're making. Are you saying that we have it all backwards, and that the wrong people get promoted, while the smart prolem-solvers get stuck in low level position and ignored?
Because in that case I have sympathy for your plight, but would still like to ask:
Are you actually trying to make that argument by pointing out how counter-intuitive a story is you just made up?
As to the actual problem: It is both well known and not as easy as some low-level interns think: Fundamentally, Maps only does this when it finds absolutely nothing relevant at the user's location–these are almost always (really bad) typos.
In that case, the only alternative is to completely ignore the far-away match, frustrating users' #1 expectation of how a search engine works. Or to present the user with some dialog "oh but that's far away!"
The latter doesn't help anybody, because the user can return with the back button, just as easily as by declining the notification. Yet the user who actually intended the search gets inconvenienced.
>Are you actually trying to make that argument by pointing out how counter-intuitive a story is you just made up?
No, he is making what is called an "assumption" about what might have transpired.
He's not using the made up story as a chain in some larger argument.
Strangely, it's you who makes up a whole argument that the parent supposedly implied: "Are you saying that we have it all backwards, and that the wrong people get promoted, while the smart prolem-solvers get stuck in low level position and ignored?".
In fact the parent doesn't make any such argument, just asks "how this made it past QA" -- and then makes an guess/assumption about what could have transpired.
>In that case, the only alternative is to completely ignore the far-away match, frustrating users' #1 expectation of how a search engine works. Or to present the user with some dialog "oh but that's far away!"
Assuming a user wanting to find a POI thousands of miles away from where they are is rare, then the latter would be better than wasting their time, and changing their selected area on the map, with an irrelevant result.
Users never care how easy - or not - something is.
They only care if a feature gives them a good experience, or distracts them with nonsense.
This should probably be the Number 1 rule in UX camp. No one cares if you're a wizard. No one cares if you've perfected the ultimate software moonshot, or if your architecture is a twinkling diamond of executable and perfectly maintainable perfection.
They only care that your product works and makes life easy for them.
If it doesn't, it's somewhere on a scale between irritating and crap. They either won't use it, or - if they have no choice - they'll use it and hate it.
I'm just sharing how many times I've heard management dismiss issues raised by subordinates.
Let's hear you explain away Apple maps' 2012 snafu where they f-ed it up so badly that they dropped the NYC subway stops. Was that "not as easy as it sounded" to keep the product features that worked fine in a previous release? Could they just "hit the back button" and use the old maps that, you know, worked ?
The problem is with arrogant product managers that don't give 2 fucks about the UX. "Oh they don't need the subway stops, I mean come on, we have a release schedule to make or I won't get my bonus!" "Their time is ok to waste, they can just hit the back button!"
Well, for example, I won't use Google Maps for driving directions because of a chrome issue: The voice they use is about the same pitch as the background driving noise in my car, so it can be difficult to understand if I don't really crank the volume.
Apple Maps doesn't always find the fastest route, but at least I can understand what it's saying.
You must mean the UI - although that's debatable, in my experience.
Personally I won't use Apple Maps while driving, for example, because Google Maps lane hints provide a much better experience - although when I was out of the UK recently, I wad disappointed by how poor Google's routing was on some journeys.
But even if it were true - what's the point of a good UI if it displays bad data?
At least in the US when I've used it, Apple's lane guidance is pretty comparable to Google's (i.e., mostly but not always on target).
I suspect "bad data" is both a little subjective and, as I mentioned in another comment, very location dependent. It's quite possible that one of the reasons Apple is starting to build their own location data set is because relying on other providers leads hasn't worked out so well for them outside the US. (Although I suspect they're going to still be dependent on those providers for years to come.)
At some point google maps did that too - it was especially bad if your partial string as you typed something in resolved somewhere else, then you would keep typing and be searching the complete string in some completely different region. I think it was fixed. But if you type fast, or always have a good connection, it might never be seen.
however google maps does this to me all the time too. But is happens in the opposite direction. I have the map opened to a place on the other side of the planet, and cant find the landmark I'm looking for manually, so I punt and search for the name of the land mark and it takes me back to a local map and shows me close (usually not very close) names locally.
My personal feeling is the extents of the map window should be immutable and sacrosanct.
Furthermore, Google insists on using the location of my VPN entrypoint onto the internet instead of my location (despite repeated attempts at telling it where I am). Apple Maps seems to get where I am regardless of the VPN.
I think some video games have this solved quite nicely: for an offscreen point of interest, show an indicator at the edge of the screen. That way someone knows that it's there, and they can click to jump to it (or pan all the way there if they'd like). Definitely, never take away control of the map.
For me Maps is consistently less accurate than Google Maps. However, the Google Maps UI bothers me just the same as everyone else here. I'm hoping that the improvements continue to roll in on Apple's version, because I'd much rather just use theirs.
They still don't have bicycling directions or transit directions in many cities. They still show businesses that were demolished years ago. They don't have indoor maps of anywhere near the number of places that Google has.
I was recently on vacation and Apple Maps provided a poor experience, including but not limited to telling me to take a right where there was no road and into the ocean.
Google Maps to the rescue; it gave me 100% accurate directions 100% of the time.
I find Apple Maps to be more usable in terms of UX, how it gives directions, and how it displays information.
Their data still isn't as good though. For the most part, as long as you're in/near a population center or sticking to major highways it's fine. But it still makes a lot of minor errors when you're out in the hinterland. When I'm going places I'm not familiar with I still default to Google Maps since it's more reliable. This is especially true in countries outside the US.
Google also does a way better job at address verification. Apple Maps tends to take the names I type very literally while Google is pretty uncanny at being able to infer where I'm actually trying to go. For example, if I type the name of a local French restaurant, I can't count the number of times Apple Maps defaulted to showing me a restaurant by that name in Senegal or France or something.
This is especially weird in light of the fact that it's Apple, not Google, who has access to my chat logs and calendar appointment data and I have location services on by default for Apple Maps.
I’ve tried to transition from gmaps to Apple maps a couple times in the last few years. It’s not broken anymore, but it’s still sufficiently inferior that attempting to switch was painful and I ended up going back. This despite wanting google and it’s snoops firmly out of my digital life.
It really depends on where you are. If you're using it for car navigation in the US, it's probably fine. When I need a map on a hike in rural Germany Apple Maps is completely unusable. Google Maps is much better and OpenStreetMap is even more accurate.
It's been mostly fine for me, but their database of places isn't as complete. I recently tried to look up a restaurant that opened two years ago and it was completely missing, had to use Google Maps to find it instead.
If you're looking for walking/hiking trails, Apple Maps has pretty much nothing. Google certainly isn't as good as a dedicated trail map app, but at least they try sometimes.
I always use Apple Maps first, and sanity check what it gives me. In my area most mapping solutions work, but Google Maps will frequently give me difficult (though not wrong) directions. Such as going down three blocks instead of two, skipping an intersection with a light, and instead asking me to turn left across 4 lanes of busy traffic, for no evident reason.
It seems to depend an awful lot on where you are in the world. I've rarely -- not never, but rarely -- had problems with Apple Maps, and I tend to prefer it to the Google Maps iOS application. But, I also live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which almost certainly makes a difference. To be fair, I've also had no problems with it in Portland, Seattle, Kansas City, Lawrence (Kansas), Eugene (Oregon), St. Louis, and around Tampa Bay. But it's not lost on me that all of those are not only in the United States, they're all pretty urban. (I've heard anecdotes of Apple screwing up in urban areas, too, but for me it hasn't behaved any worse than the other mapping apps -- Google has sent me to a few weird places.)
I think on the whole it's good for Apple to be taking control of their mapping back end, although I suspect it would have been better for them if they'd started by, say, buying Here (the former Nokia mapping unit).
Something is showing Apple that it is broken. I am betting it is user rates. Google has taken over iPhones for so much of it and I am sure they don't like the fact that Google Maps are used more then Apple Maps.
On my imperical evidence side, my daughter uses Apple Maps and I can tell you it gives back mapping when we are less then an hour away but more then 20 minutes. For example the way i drive isn't on Apple Maps and it adds 5 minutes to the trip and Google Maps has the trip 5 minutes faster. I don't know if Google is getting that data from my driving or from better algorithms but it has happened for then a few times.
Really depends where you live. We live North of Boston and still countless times run into issues where the dot is the wrong place, or the location data for the place going is wrong, or Google maps provides extra relevant info like it will be closing before I get there, or when the store has special hours google maps knows and Apple maps doesn't, and countless other differences. I still use Apple maps mostly because the integration with Apple Watch and iOS (getting back to the app) and notably using Siri make it for a better experience and if going somewhere new ( a long drive) I check with Google Maps first to avoid any major issues. If Google Maps on iOS was allowed to be deeply integrated like Apple Maps wouldn't touch maps with a 10 foot poll, but that will never happen. So any improvements to Maps data will be a welcome improvement and while hard to imagine them beating Google Maps they only have to be good enough to beat them in the long run.
I've found Apple Maps caches the maps around my area so I have been able to use it in areas where I have no wireless reception. Not as fully detailed but they seem to cache the main roads and landmarks at least. I recall Google Maps just failing to show anything but that was a long while ago, so it sounds like things have improved.
It's given me completely day ruining, terrible directions within the past month. Like "go to the street outside this complex" rather than "go to building 5" and them i'm stuck on the phone trying to find someone to explain this, when google maps finds it correctly instantly.
The only two google products I still use are Gmail (for work) and Google Maps.
Apple Maps has improved since it launched but its far less accurate for me than Google has been despite that its integration is far tighter including CarPlay.
Your results may vary but I am very happy to hear they are doing a ground up rebuild. I won’t miss what they have today at all.
Google Maps has more accurate and up-to-date data, while Apple Maps has more accurate drive time estimates (Google always underestimates).
However Google Maps has an incredibly obnoxious UI pushing me to enable more data collection. The largest text on the search surface is "You're missing out" (by not signing in). If I do sign in, a search for "Home" pops up a modal dialog "Turn on Web and App Activity to search for home and your other personal places". This occurs despite setting an on-device Home location, which GMaps supports.
Apple Maps doesn't ask for sign-in, and a search for "home" uses the location stored on-device. Privacy is why I prefer Apple Maps.
IME Google is really bad at traffic drive time estimates when there are situations where different lanes have different traffic. E.g. two lanes of the road are moving fine, but the left turn lane is backed up like crazy. Or the fast lane is fine, but the freeway on-ramp and exits you need are horrible.
I think whoever cracks lane-aware positioning, mapping, and routing could make some big improvements.
But mainly I just want a big button that says "don't make me make unprotected turns across multiple lanes of traffic" - Apple Maps seems less aggressive in that regard than Google Maps, which is why I prefer it.
This drives me bananas with Waze. Even with its option to decrease the number of left turns, there seems to be no concept of "prefer left turns onto multi-lane roads at controlled intersections."
I quit using Waze for exactly that reason, after being a happy user for years. I wonder who thought it would be a great idea to have me make an unprotected left turn from a side street onto a major road with no signal at rush hour.
>IME Google is really bad at traffic drive time estimates when there are situations where different lanes have different traffic.
Exactly, that's the one case where Gmaps gives me bad estimates, as there's something like that for me on my drive to work. The rest of the time, its estimates are very good.
If someone is a slower than average driver, they should realize that Google's estimates target average speeds (since they're aggregating data from lots of drivers), and take that into account when looking at Google's estimates.
I guess it'd be nice if Google over time determined if you're a faster or slower driver than average and adjusted accordingly.
Google's estimates seem most accurate for me if I can consistently break the speed limit by about 15 mph. If I get into a bit of congestion and get stuck at the speed limit then it misses the mark.
I haven't bothered to check in detail, but I assume that Apple Maps does a better job at respecting the user's privacy than Google Maps. That's an important point in its favor that doesn't seem echoed in sibling comments. (The article seems to echo my suspicion.)
As of a year or two ago, Apple Maps now consistently performs as well as Google Maps (as measured by its ability to route around bad traffic). At least in my area. So given their equivalence I always opt for Apple Maps these days to help preserve my privacy.
Of course, as other have already said, Google Maps has had a number of UX failings over the years (doesn't Google always?). But what really frustrated me was their handling of toll roads, at least a few years ago. They updated the app and then suddenly the Avoid Toll Roads setting was tucked away, hidden behind layers of obscure and opaque minimalist UI nonsense that Google so loves. As if that wasn't enough the setting would constantly revert.
So there you are scrambling to bring up directions in the car while running late. If you're lucky you recognize that Google is routing you through the toll roads. So you burn precious time trying to remember the arcane recipe of nameless shapes that you have to press to find the setting. And then re-find directions.
If you're not lucky, you forget to check the directions for toll roads, and now you're barreling down the highway, surprised to suddenly see the traffic cleared, only for horror to dawn on you shortly thereafter as you realize you're about to enter the toll road and there's no escape.
Over the years Google has screwed with their handling of toll roads a number of times. Why they have such a penchant for dark patterns surrounding toll roads is beyond me. Maybe some Google employee is on the take with the toll road companies? (mild sarcasm)
I have not experienced these issues with Apple Maps. Another point in its favor.
P.S. It's interesting to have watched this evolution. Apple Maps came out it seems like forever ago. Wikipedia says ~6 years. The growth since then has been incredible, but I don't think any of us have forgotten that Apple Maps was, frankly, a laughing stock. The village idiot of mapping. I'm glad they stuck with it though. It's nice to have alternatives. Whether you're a fan of Google or Apple, I hope it's appreciated that options exist. Because let's be honest, before Apple Maps, was there a real competitor to Google Maps? (Though I'm always silently rooting for OpenStreetMaps.)
I also prefer it over Google Maps when I'm in an area where I know Apple's data is good enough. I simply find the UI simpler, easier to use, far less cluttered, and downright faster. Apple Maps is buttery smooth whereas sometimes Google Maps is pretty choppy (admittedly, its performance on iOS has improved a lot over the last year).
I use Apple maps because my car has Carplay and apple doesn't allow any other map provider. It still has issues finding locations and maps me to the wrong location. In LA, being a mile off can easily result in 1/2 hour delay or more. It also lags on construction closures updates(eg: exit closure) which are common in LA, unlike google products which gets up-to-date data from Waze. Apple maps needs to be perfect all the time to be viable.
Until Apple fixes all their issues, they need to allow other map providers for Carplay.
Google Maps are slightly more detailed, probably since Google is generating the maps automatically from satellite imagery, but for going to one point of the city to another I feel that the two apps are essentially equivalent!
I have to use Apple maps regularly due to the iOS<12 CarPlay restrictions, and it regularly gives me bad instructions. Even though I have “avoid tolls” turned on, it consistently tells me to take the Triboro bridge in NYC (an $8 toll) rather than the Queensboro. It also frequently tries to send me the wrong way down one-way streets in the Bronx.
I've deleted Google Maps and Waze from my phone (moving away from Google products) and now only use Apple Maps. Works pretty well for me but occasionally has some bad data (freeway exits that didn't exist due to construction). I'm in the bay area so I can't speak for other areas.
It might depend on where you live. I've been driving around Copenhagen with a group of colleagues and we had to ask the one with the map to switch to Google maps because Apple maps seemed determined to give us a city tour rather than lead us to our destination.
If a map is correct 95% of the time, then one in twenty leads most people to feel like its "always" broken. Edge cases are so frequent that I think it's impossible to get right without a "team on the ground," which it sounds like Apple had finally accepted.
I even walked into an Apple Store, found an iPad, and submitted a correction request once. That was almost two years ago. For a long time, every time I'd pass that Apple Store, I'd walk in, go to an iPad, and search my house on Apple Maps to see if they accepted my request. They never ever fixed it. I don't think they ever did, though it's been a few months since I gave up checking so who knows.
Until Lyft banned Apple Maps, I'd have to call drivers in advance to make sure they weren't using Apple, and if they said they were, I'd cancel on them (I still do this for Waze users, because Waze can't path to my house).
I used it a year ago and it still sucked. From an stability standpoint it was fine, except it had plenty of terrible ui decisions. Take driving in manhattan for example. A driver would like to glance at the directions and see turns and the directions the road is turning. However, this is not possible. 3d renderings of the new york skyline block the roads on the map so you cannot see in the app any further than you can outside your front window.
I resisted for a long time, but when I got my newest car it came with CarPlay and so I started using Apple Maps because I had no alternative. Now I see that iOS 12 is going to relax that restriction ... and I am going to stay with Apple Maps. Works fine for me, and nice to know Apple is not tracking my every move.
Meh, I usually look at my route ahead of time with both google maps and apple maps. Sometimes one is better, sometimes the other is better. Apple Maps is good enough for what I use it for, and it does integration with iOS better.
I tried using Apple Maps on my iPhone to navigate to WeWork in San Francisco last week and it sent me three blocks off target with the exact street address entered. I switched to Google maps to find it correctly with the same street address. YMMV, single data point and all that.
I've also used Google directions going through Los Angeles (from San Diego to San Jose) and it told me to exit the freeway for some reason in Los Angeles and get back on, which I followed blindly but wasn't too bad a diversion.
I loved it even when it launched and everyone was complaining about data and it was hyped up. A brand new app had data problems but the user experience was, in comparison to its peers, quite excellent. I still find it my preferred map especially on iOS/MacOS, even though nobody beats Google in certain aspects (functionality for one)
Something that drives me nuts about Google Maps is how much of it leads you to non-spatial lists of data. We are spatial beings asking spatial questions. Don't make me do the work of linking a list of restaurants to dots on the map. This is a significant cartographic challenge but I think it's key to making map software a joy to use.
I don't have an iOS device so I can't comment on current state, but I hope this gets first class attention.
That is a very jarring experience. I'd much rather get the pins and have to click to see what they are rather than losing half my screen to the list.
Another problem is that it loves to move your viewport -- sometimes just a small zoom out or something, but sometimes moving you entirely, or searching around your current location instead of in the selected map area. I would prefer it if every viewport move had a prompt saying "Hey, I'm going to move your map to some other area" and give me a chance to complain, or have some sort of seamless "save this view" thing that goes into a stack in the corner so I can go back to the view that I was looking at.
Yup. If the app was map-centric you wouldn't have to ask. Just start showing more markers.
If each query was a layer, you would also have a basic GIS. You could allow the user to start asking spatial questions, such as, "Show me where all the Chinese food restaurants (layer 1) Best Buys (layer 2) are.
"Hmm. I need to go to Best Buy but I'm flexible about food. Let's tap X on the Chinese food layer and search for Poutine restaurants instead."
Yes, but it doesn't show up until after you've done a search, which means the damage may have already been done.
Suppose you want to find things that match X near some landmark Y. As far as I know, you have two options. One is to search for the string "X near Y" and hope Google parses it correctly. The other is to search for Y, memorize its location on the map, search for X (which has a good chance of moving the map view to some random location), pan and zoom back to Y from memory, and click "search this area". It's a huge pain.
Critically, that option only appears after Maps hijacks your view to wherever it pleases. The same applies to other filters too, such as "open now."
I'm stil amazed how hard Maps makes it to view a street name. I can fill my screen with a street and nothing else, and I still won't see its name. I feel like they actually do it on purpose to breed dependence on Maps for navigation references.
> I'm stil amazed how hard Maps makes it to view a street name.
This is one of the reasons I prefer Apple Maps to Google's -- because IMO they do a slightly better job of that. Still wish it would be better, it's a daily nuisance for me.
Agreed, the amount of times it defaults to finding something a thousand miles away is significantly more infuriating than the rarer case when I want to specifically do that.
If its a fairly fresh app launch, default to around me
Every time I try to search for Asian, I get sent to Asia while my location is in the US. I have no idea how anyone would find that sort of "typo" correction and redirection halfway around the world useful.
1. I'm perfectly fine with "Asia" redirecting me to the continent, which is generally expected behavior. I don't understand why a word that clearly means something distinct needs to redirect there as well.
2. The lack of consistency is especially annoying. "Italian" redirects to Italian restaurants in my area, and the same goes for "Chinese", etc.
I'm amazed at how long this particular behavior has persisted...how often does someone search for a local business 5000+ miles away without being explicit about it (ie moving the map to that far off area, or putting it in the search query itself).
I was in NYC 2 weeks ago (live in Miami). If I search for "Walgreens" the first 2 autocomplete suggestions are still locations in Brooklyn, and the third is the general text search for "walgreens". Options 4, 5 and etc onwards are local stores, but also not sorted by distance.
I think it should be "Yes | No (auto selects in X seconds)".
I think changing from your current plan unless you panicedly (and in my jurisdiction, illegally) press a button to stay the course is just generally bad UI.
Part of this is I just don't trust Google Maps' new route to actually be faster. It seems Google Maps doesn't properly weigh the cost of these items, which leads to it's suggested route usually being slower:
* Crossing bridges during rush hour.
* Making a left turn without a light across 3 lanes of traffic.
* Going down small residential streets that are too narrow to safely drive the speed limit.
* Routes that require turning onto a busy road without a light and the corner having really poor visibility.
This was a constant source of frustration when I did a trip to another country last year. Adjusting the viewport when the user doesn't have data is a bad idea because you can't load assets for the new view. Yet, Google Maps did this all the time.
It's a mix. I like having a list I can very quickly scroll through and filter. Clicking places one by one when there's 20 isn't that fun. You can also slide down the list and click on the map once the results appear though.
Oh yes. I've been a designer for a (locally) competing maps service, and I failed miserably at convincing the PM and devs that we should do quite a lot of work (changes to already established behavior) to make sure we aren't ever moving a map viewport user has set up, and that violating this rule makes people angry.
Apple has the luxury of not needing to shove ads in their mapping application. Google needs to show you a list so they can put ads there or shuffle the priority for a high value advertiser.
Apple Maps also heavily relies on lists because lists work really well on mobile devices (infinite scroll!). And as spatially aware as a few here on here, the majority of people do much better with a list of nearby spots.
Yes. I'd much rather get a list of restaurants within a certain radius -- assuming the list shows me some basic summary information like price, rating, the distance, and whether it's open -- than get a map with a dozen mystery pins I have to tap on one by one:
[tap] Oh, sushi. Not in the mood for that.
[tap] Oh, that's closed.
[tap] Oh, that's too close to the one I already tapped, let me zoom in...
[pinch] [tap] Oh, sushi again.
I'm genuinely surprised at how many people here apparently consider that a better user experience.
> I'm genuinely surprised at how many people here apparently consider that a better user experience.
Or that Google (of all companies!) hasn't rigorously tested this and found that lists work better. They convey so much more information and the whole reason you're using a map is because you don't know where stuff is, so you're going to need all that information.
I'd assume it depends a lot on what you're searching for, and also what mode of transportation you're using.
If you search for something like "McDonalds", you care about which McDonalds is easiest to get to, and you don't really care about anything else.
Even if I'm looking for something more vague like "restaurants", I still usually prefer to see everything laid out on the map, but that's because I usually walk places, so location matters a lot to me.
It doesn’t make perfect sense, though, and (possibly because of that) doesn’t quite act as it now.
With a mouse, the 3 actions
- hover
- click
- double click
form a sequence where each action is an extension of the previous one.
Ideally, the actions triggered by them are extensions of the previous one, too. With the mouse, we have that:
- hover = tell me more, but don’t really do anything
- click = tell me more and select this item
- double click = look, select, and open this item
A big advantage of that is that it allows the interface to be faster. A GUI can react to a click by selecting an item without having to wait whether it will be part of a double-click, for example.
⇒ if we can’t get a real hover, in an ideal world, a softer or shorter finger tap, not a long one would mean “tell me about this”. I doubt we can shoe-horn that into the UI this late in the game, though.
The Blackberry Storm (and Storm 2) made clicking in the screen the "tap" action and tapping (but not clicking) the screen the "hover"-equivalent action.
I really liked the idea (and thought the hardware was pretty good on the Storm 2), but was too unusual on too-unpopular a phone to do much of anything.
I worked on BB Storm. It was created by request from 'the major carrier that didn't get the iPhone contract' as an 'iPhone killer'. It was done with haste, and with specific, ugly requests from 'up on high' and was rolled out too early.
BB never really understood how to do 'experience' - except in things at their core like battery length and keyboards. As nuanced and insightful as they were there ... it's like they considered everything else a joke, or didn't want to go deep.
The whole screen on Storm moved - neat idea - should have never made it out of the lab. Or at least, not in the manner it was. It was possibly ahead of it's time as I could feasibly see Apple doing something like this - the new MacPro trackpads are very, very nice. So subtle.
I'm a person without disabilities, rather slender fingers and quite some savvy w/ computers and I have difficult time not tapping stuff by mistake, not sloppily fat-thumbing stuff when I didn't even mean tapping anything or accurately tapping smallish things from among many others. I'd rather not deal with trying to not hover random stuff on top of that.
Something that drives me nuts with maps is when zooming in/out the map often jumps - very quickly - to a region off screen. Seems like an easy fix. Does anyone else experience this?
I've only experienced this on the iPhone X, after iOS 11. It happens in many apps, not just Google Maps, and constantly. For example, pinch-to-zoom in Adobe Lightroom often has it jump to a random place in the image. Since nobody seems to be talking about it (and my friends haven't encountered it) I've suspected it to be some kind of physical fault with the touch screen, or perhaps an interference issue with my screen protector, not necessarily a bug in iOS. But who knows.
You're right about the incentive, but it's an insult to their users from a company that claims to care about UX so much. They should just be ashamed of it and try to get something better out as soon as they can.
Sorry for ranting so much about iTunes in this thread, and from some other comments maybe I don't need to use it as much as I thought I'd have to. But then again, why do I have to use third-party apps for e.g. podcast client and music player. Those are such a central appliances that they should really be served well by Apple, who even include things like iMovie and Garage Band with their OS.
Spotify and Google Music comes to mind, but I guess it depends on what you use itunes for - which is also probably the issues with iTunes.. it does too much too poorly.
Yes. I don't get why Apple is often praised for getting UI "right", when iTunes, one of the central components of their system, is clearly a design gone bad.
iTunes was pretty essential to interacting with the iPhone in the past. Backups and such. I am not sure this is the case in the present with the reliance on iCloud.
Honest question, how do you use iTunes match without iTunes? I thought you'd have to add music to your library first in order for it to be matched and available on mobile?
My original comment was about iTunes on desktop, although the mobile version is also confusing and counter-intuitive, but much less buggy.
True. My hatred for iTunes involves syncing with iOS devices. I don't mind iTunes for music management. You still can't create smart playlists and do some of the advanced music management stuff on the iPhone but you can sync playlists etc. without connecting your phone with it.
I never knew exactly what type of catastrophe would happen to my iPhone when it "synced" with iTunes.
iTunes was great up through the iPod. Adding the iTMS wasn’t bad.
Movies was not a good idea. Apps was too far. Music (the subscription service) was stupid. Then they forced UI changes on the old/working stuff because of the new garbage.
I really hope the low level rumors that a rewrite/breakup is happening are true.
The most blatant annoyance is that UI-wise, it consistently makes the wrong, unexpected choice in response to user interaction. And it behaves likes a blocking single threaded app that cannot download something and handle user interaction at the same time.
In addition, it's terribly buggy. Some things just go wrong from time to time with no apparent reason, and without non-cumbersome ways to recover from. There's lots of issues in the Apple support forums where the answer is just 'yeah, this sometimes happens, you'll have to delete this or that and re-add it'.
I used to use iTunes extensively, but have since switched to Vudu (Walmart), Amazon Digital, and Play/YT for my digital rentals because I'd prefer to watch them in a browser or on a Roku, neither of which are possible in the iTunes/Apple ecosystem.
One big reason why is that browser video streaming is extremely reliable on a reasonable connection, but iTunes' rental buffering was a huge headache last I tried to use it (and the data usage significantly higher than browser video for some reason, even at the same resolution).
It's like the shabby gate to Apple's walled garden paradise. You need it to get data into and out from your iPhone, iPod, iPad, to access Apple Music, and probably other things related to iCloud services.
I have been using Michelin maps for traveling in Europe and while the app fails in many regards it's really so much better in terms of useful data visible on the map and the maps are so nice looking.
We really took a big step backwards with Google Maps and the maps that are trying to be Google Maps. The maps are garish and have no useful details. I have to scroll and zoom around until the name of the street I'm currently in decides to appear.
And then those huge swathes of nothing. Random stores being indicated. But you always get an incomplete set of data. Not every store on the block or nothing.
> zoom around until the name of the street I'm currently in decides to appear.
This is especially bad if you're on a bus and want to see where the stops are, so you know when to ring the bell. GMaps makes you zoom so far in that you're constantly scrolling the map to keep up with the bus.
This is a road through a forest [0]. Good luck seeing anything while using your phone outside in the sun. I use other maps when walking or biking, Google maps are almost never the best option.
This is something that completely baffles me. Why the hell does Google Maps completely hide vegetation when zoomed in? It's incredibly confusing that forests look exactly like urban areas.
Labeling in general is incredibly problematic in Google Maps. It's amazing to me that I can do a search for restaurants, hover over a shopping strip that I know has 5 restaurants, and only one of them shows up no matter how far I zoom in. I'll wonder if Google just doesn't have data for the other four, do a direct search for one of them, and then find that it actually has loads of data, 100+ reviews, links to the menu, photos, etc.
Of equal annoyance, I've discovered searching for food on Google maps doesn't include the best and closest local pizzas joint, it'll only show if you search specifically for pizza
You've made me curious. I'll download it next time I go someplace.
This is totally off topic... Michelin have the same old school European thing for travellers that Guinness have for drinkers, a cause for those with a cause. I like the idea they pulled off an app that's good. I bet the Guinness app is shite.
Also check out Mapy.cz (for iOS, Android, web). I find it much better than Google Maps for the hiking / walking use cases. It sucks for the "looking for a nearby restaurant" use case though.
I honestly think this is a hidden gem that more people should know about.
I would like them to rebuild the Macbook Pro from the ground up. It's a much more critical element in my life. If they keep producing inferior notebook hardware, I'll change platforms. If I change platforms, I'm less tied to macOS and iOS, if i'm less tied to iOS I'm more likely to change to some other platform. If I change to some other platform, it won't matter if they made Maps useful or not, they'll have lost me because of a more important element in the ecosystem failed me.
I wonder how many Apple engineers read HN--like is it rare or fairly often. Pretty much every Apple related thread has comments about the MacBook line suffering. Heck, I've been one of those complainers. I think the MacBook Pro was the best circa late 2012-2013. If my current MacBook Pro dies, my replacement won't be another Mac like it has been. I'll sadly have to jump ship for a while.
I imagine many apple software engineers read hacker news. I don't think hacker news is as popular with the computer engineering crowd though, but I would wager there is a decent amount of them that still reads it. But the apple designers, product owners, and other people that have a lot more say on the direction of a product probably don't read it at all.
This & please replace the keyboard, touchpad (bottom half) with full retina touchscreen, dual graphics, bezeless, fanless, and add in apple pencil with a laser, microphone, and twisting/push in eraser (for presentations).
The hardware could not be updated for years and I would still use the Mac because OS X is just so damn useful for me. The SSDs alone are so fast and the design is amazing. The keyboard is shit and ram could be improved but the OS is awesome, well only because of brew
Oh, you think Apple only has 30 engineers and that they have to choose between the MacBook Pro and Maps? They don't. Apple is trying ver very hard, and very intelligently, to build both platforms optimally.
Please consider the quality of your comment before you post it, plus its relevance to the topic.
I, like many, rely on HN for high-quality news and high-quality perspectives on those topics. I'm frankly more and more dissuaded by low-quality, hardly-on-topic comments like yours. You appear to enjoy co-opting the topic to gripe about the MacBook Pro. Please do that somewhere else.
Well that's just like... your opinion man. I, like many apparently (judging from the activity on the thread), feel like the commentary around communication involving commitment to different technologies feels misaligned, and this seems like an example of one. I felt like this perspective was fair game for the discussion. I can empathize with your desire to have explicitly defined and targeted discussions that meet your individual needs, I get how that would be a wonderful thing, but I politely decline your request to take my thoughts elsewhere. You can certainly get more engaged with the community and earn enough Karma to downvote discussions that lack value in your eyes, that's completely reasonable.
While I think there is a 0% chance we will see a Macbook Pro redesign similar to the 2013-2015 15" rMBP that is so coveted by a lot of devs, I would certainly love it if Apple released a proper mobile workstation (which will not happen).
If Apple released a mobile workstation with the same (or similar) form factor as the 2015 15" rMBP with the same keyboard (and obviously get rid of the touch bar), same 99.5 Wh battery, same port selection (except replace TB2 ports with TB3), same Magsafe charging port, updated internals with non-proprietary, non-soldered RAM, SSD, and wireless card, I would pay whatever the hell they would want. It won't happen, but a man can dream.
I just want to second your comment because I can't stress enough how badly I want anyone who hasn't read it yet to read it. The week he published it, I must've shared it with every single person who I felt might even remotely care for it. It's a phenomenal piece.
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If you compare the article, the main takeaway is that Apple seems to be starting to use some of the improvements that Google has been adding to their map program the last several years.
-Satellite imagery to generate build footprints.
-Lots of human intervention
-Land based car imagery
Which is both a good and a bad sign. It's good that apple is doing these things, but not encouraging that a year after a blog post highlights some of the more interesting things google is doing, apple starts doing them. Apple maps isn't catching up, they're just barely keeping up with Google maps. And their PR people are doing a big push to brag about it.
TFA clearly states that these changes have been 4 years in the making. You can’t roll stuff like this out a year after reading some article on Hacker News.
i dunno; their “street view” vans are purportedly far more advanced than the google cars, and their privacy features seem pretty damn excellent.
the article mentions being able to create a 3d, textured world and do some pretty interesting localisation (street signs that look like local signs, fonts that match local fonts etc) that shortens the gap between the real world and the map.
id say that from a UX perspective (even if their core data isn’t quite as good, which we really can’t comment on yet) they’re doing a lot of interesting things that google isn’t doing.
that’s not even to mention that they’re doing it all while respecting their users’ privacy... something that google will likely never do any more than obligatory hand waving toward.
it think they’re doing quite a lot better than google maps, but it’s just not data related.
A point that I often see missing is that Niantic (Ingress then Pokemon Go) historically is strongly bound to Google.
The get people’s real world movements for long periods of time, it’s even included in the game mechanics where you see path with consequent flow of people. Coupled with all the user submitted and user validated “places of interest”.
Overall it’s a tremedous amount of data of pretty decent quality.
The one thing they would have to add to get me to change is adding an option to cycle. Living in a city with reasonable bike facilities makes it particularly grating that the default is suggesting that I want to drive everywhere. I know it’s US focused and you guys are car centric but come on, it’s been years!
I think bicycling directions might be the hardest thing. Google has it but it's pretty bad. It often tries to send me up routes that are shorter but MUCH too steep [1], or up an off-road trail on which bicycles are forbidden [2]. They should combine their data with Strava global heatmap to work out which routes are actually used by practicing cyclists. You can see from Strava[3] that all three of the routes in [1] are ignored by all cyclists, who choose another route that isn't presented. The routes given by Google are very difficult for even strong athletes to climb.
Anyway, it's possible that Apple sees it as just beyond their capabilities at this time.
Interesting. Your routes are much worse :-/ From downtown Berkeley to Grizzly Peak it routes me up Marin Avenue, a 30-degree slope that nobody would willingly bicycle up.
Honestly, I think Apple is wasting resources at competing with other companies by providing mediocre solutions.
For example competing with Google at big data and AI with Maps and Siri, or competing with Microsoft with iWorks. Keynote is great, but I'd rather use Google Docs or Open Office than Pages and Numbers.
In contrast, today Logic and FCPX are very competitive in their market.
>> Honestly, I think Apple is wasting resources at competing with other companies by providing mediocre solutions.
The fact that Apple Maps exists forces Google to dedicate resources towards keeping Google Maps decent on Apple's platform. Competition is good, even if you don't use the competing product.
I think it's too easy to see the way things are today as the way they will he forever. I've made this mistake too often myself, so I find it generally useful to overcorrect and assume that over long periods of time technologies/companies/people can get far better than you expect.
Yeah, I think it's important to remember this. Remember when MySpace dominated social networking, and MapQuest dominated online mapping? Google Maps kinda came out of nowhere and blew MapQuest away.
I think my claim is a little different. I've seen quite a few comanites/technologies/people that I basically wrote off initially become fairly impressive over time as they continue improving while I'm not looking.
What choice do they have? Maps, location data, and the services they enable are critical to mobile devices today, and will only get more so with AR and devices without screens.
“Everybody but Google” isn’t good enough judging by the current state of affairs, and Google doesn’t play by the same privacy rules as Apple, so they seem to have few options.
The article said they’re using computer vision for that stuff. Between how good CV has gotten, the other data sets they’re comparing to, and having human editors hopefully they’ll be able to do a pretty good job.
> It’s doing this by using first-party data gathered by iPhones with a privacy-first methodology
Does this seem contradictory to anybody else? Kind of like "anonymized data collection" that turns out to be not-so-anobymous when it invariably leaks?
No. If you read the article they explain that they send segments of your trips, and never the start or end segment.
So even if they could find all the segments from YOUR trip (which they can’t, according to what they’ve said) they couldn’t even reconstruct what you were doing, only a few small stretches of road you were on.
That is not new. And it's still not enough, because it's not impossible to reconstruct someone's route if they drive in areas where they are the only ones (or among the few) to send segment data.
That's why you need to do more work, as in two of Google's patents:
No, it doesn't seem contradictory, and it sounds like Apple is doing this the right way. If identifiable information never actually leaves my device then where's it going to leak from?
By anonymized, I would take it that they mean no user or device-specific details are linked to the data when it's persisted. So when it's leaked, it's not as though someone can say "this iPhone was at this place at this time".
I wish they'd just sign a deal with Google and be done with it. The problem is less with the maps app and more with their source of data. OSM is neat, yay competition, etc etc, but the quality is just not there.
Did you read the article? They’re not going to be using OSM or TomTom anymore, they’re taking it all in house preciselynso they can fix those kind of issues.
Yes, I read it, and that would be strictly worse. Apple does not have the reach, or infrastructure, or anything to be handling that degree of data on their own.
its a bit vague. they are not using it as a base map any more, but they might still be scraping certain details off of it. they would be stupid not to since osm is more up to date in some areas than even google.
Not really the same thing here, this is the about the underlying data and control. Since Apple now own the data, it can make changes quickly and don't have to rely on a 3rd party to do it for them.
I'm not sure if Apple Maps rewrites "code from the scratch". From the article, it seems they are building "Maps from the scratch" with some code reuse.
Ironic that Apple introduce improvements to Maps just as they open up Car Play to Google Maps and Waze. Maybe it's because they think they're on par now (or will be) and don't need to block everything else.
Our car has Car Play so I've been using Maps exclusively up to now and whilst I think I still prefer Waze overall, Maps is perfectly fine and I've gotten used to its rough edges.
I don't accept the thesis that Apple locks third-parties out of things like CarPlay out of a desire to lock their users into more of Apple's services. I think it has more to do with wanting to do things right and ensure a consistent user experience.
(I'll admit that it's sometimes hard to square this viewpoint with the level of brokenness they ship)
Like most I prefer Google Maps, but having a car with CarPlay, I either want Google Maps to have access to it (you can jailbreak, but it just puts the app on the screen; it doesn't provide the CarPlay specific functionality) or get Apple Maps to "good enough".
I'm very ready to move off of Google Maps, but as of yet, I can't emulate the biggest feature it has for me elsewhere: a spacial bookmarking system. My primary use of Google Maps is to remember places that I've been recommended by other people, and then when I go "I'm traveling to Portland, what places should I go?" I can check Google maps for everywhere I've tagged before.
If Apple Maps gives me that, especially if it syncs from a webapp to my phone, I'm in.
If you click on a pin and scroll down the card, there is a “Favorite” button. Clicking it will add it to your Favorites list which can be accessed at the bottom of the search results list. The list syncs to your Mac Maps app too.
The interface is not the most intuitive but it’s there.
ive been moving away from google the last few months as well and i was surprised how good osmAnd is considering its open source. i think the bookmarking in osmAnd should do what you need. it also has a wikipedia and wikivoyage layer which you might find useful when travelling.
there isnt any web version of osmAnd though but you can sync the osmAnd folder to a pc and open the bookmarks in any gps app. ive never tried editing them there and syncing back to the phone so youll have to experiment yourself on that one
I'd love it if any of the map makers had a button for "I am on a bus", which then i) sent a ton of data to them to improve their maps and ii) provided a more useful map version.
one common comment is how the traffic data for google maps (and waze) trumps the quality of other map alternatives because it has the most users and therefore the most data for real-time traffic.
could anyone with map/traffic experience please comment on when data scale overshoots functional requirements? that is, what is the user threshold (e.g., 1,000 users in the same 5 mile radius) above which traffic accuracy stops improving?
Google Maps is definitely better in terms of completeness and updatedness for iOS, in all regards: what places there are, what roads there are (esp. in rural areas), and the arrival time estimator is just better-informed.
But for me, that is not all there is. I want an app that feels light and responsive, when I'm on say a bike, or in traffic. It needs to be reliable and not get forced to shutdown due to memory constraints. It also should not sell my data to the devil. All of these are ways in which Apple Maps is better.
The one view that both Apple and Google seem to promote is the 3D geometric view of buildings and other large fixed objects like trees. While the technical achievement of generating these views impressive, I don't find them useful, and frequently find that it makes viewing the satellite view more-difficult to perceive. Google still provides the "flat" satellite view, but it's somewhat buried in the menus. Bing Maps used to provide very high-resolution 45 degree shot photographed from airplanes, but this is no longer available.
>Bing Maps used to provide very high-resolution 45 degree shot photographed from airplanes, but this is no longer available.
Bing still has this feature, though they've updated it (made it less discoverable, I feel) and removed older photos. If you go to https://www.bing.com/maps and point at the "Road" menu on the upper right, you will see "We have updated Bird's Eye. Learn more", which gives you the following information:
>Bird's Eye has changed
> New and crisp Bird's Eye imagery is available in many metropolitan areas. There are two ways of viewing the new Bird's Eye.
>1. In cards
>2. Right-click on the map
>Note: Bird's Eye may not be available in your area as outdated imagery is no longer available.
If I go to central San Francisco or Seattle, I can right-click the map as indicated and select "View bird's eye", and the picture will show up.
582 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 303 ms ] threadMaking good a new globe covering map data layer is not exactly a 9mo project.
It sounded like many inside knew it wasn’t ready.
Forstall lost his job over it, didn’t he?
Now I'm scared they're gonna break it again by rebuilding it. If it ain't broke (any more), don't fix it.
EDIT: BTW, if you're on anything that might be labelled "fireroad" you don't want to be depending on a map app that needs a connection to begin with.
I think search is almost certainly better on Google Maps, but that's no surprise. I think Apple Maps is the better choice for iOS users, though, if only for the tighter integration with the OS itself and reportedly better battery life.
So, gmaps is more accurate and overall better in execution, but you recommend an inferior product because of OS integration and battery usage? Makes no sense to me. The number one priority is getting the best directions to where you want to go.
Last time I checked, one of my favorite apps for routing me on back roads, Scenic, still can't use my Watch for routing.
Maps is no bad (and clean), Gmaps is better-ish from a features POV (but noisy).
for directions and in selected cities https://citymapper.com rocks
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15965653
I won’t use it now because of this.
Or you might be using the osm.org website which itself uses 3rd party search applications.
The search on the project website is designed to find data and is not designed to be a competitor for google maps.
Because in that case I have sympathy for your plight, but would still like to ask:
Are you actually trying to make that argument by pointing out how counter-intuitive a story is you just made up?
As to the actual problem: It is both well known and not as easy as some low-level interns think: Fundamentally, Maps only does this when it finds absolutely nothing relevant at the user's location–these are almost always (really bad) typos.
In that case, the only alternative is to completely ignore the far-away match, frustrating users' #1 expectation of how a search engine works. Or to present the user with some dialog "oh but that's far away!"
The latter doesn't help anybody, because the user can return with the back button, just as easily as by declining the notification. Yet the user who actually intended the search gets inconvenienced.
No, he is making what is called an "assumption" about what might have transpired.
He's not using the made up story as a chain in some larger argument.
Strangely, it's you who makes up a whole argument that the parent supposedly implied: "Are you saying that we have it all backwards, and that the wrong people get promoted, while the smart prolem-solvers get stuck in low level position and ignored?".
In fact the parent doesn't make any such argument, just asks "how this made it past QA" -- and then makes an guess/assumption about what could have transpired.
>In that case, the only alternative is to completely ignore the far-away match, frustrating users' #1 expectation of how a search engine works. Or to present the user with some dialog "oh but that's far away!"
Assuming a user wanting to find a POI thousands of miles away from where they are is rare, then the latter would be better than wasting their time, and changing their selected area on the map, with an irrelevant result.
They only care if a feature gives them a good experience, or distracts them with nonsense.
This should probably be the Number 1 rule in UX camp. No one cares if you're a wizard. No one cares if you've perfected the ultimate software moonshot, or if your architecture is a twinkling diamond of executable and perfectly maintainable perfection.
They only care that your product works and makes life easy for them.
If it doesn't, it's somewhere on a scale between irritating and crap. They either won't use it, or - if they have no choice - they'll use it and hate it.
Let's hear you explain away Apple maps' 2012 snafu where they f-ed it up so badly that they dropped the NYC subway stops. Was that "not as easy as it sounded" to keep the product features that worked fine in a previous release? Could they just "hit the back button" and use the old maps that, you know, worked ?
The problem is with arrogant product managers that don't give 2 fucks about the UX. "Oh they don't need the subway stops, I mean come on, we have a release schedule to make or I won't get my bonus!" "Their time is ok to waste, they can just hit the back button!"
IMO The UX of apple maps is better than google maps (exempting biking directions)
Apple Maps doesn't always find the fastest route, but at least I can understand what it's saying.
Personally I won't use Apple Maps while driving, for example, because Google Maps lane hints provide a much better experience - although when I was out of the UK recently, I wad disappointed by how poor Google's routing was on some journeys.
But even if it were true - what's the point of a good UI if it displays bad data?
I suspect "bad data" is both a little subjective and, as I mentioned in another comment, very location dependent. It's quite possible that one of the reasons Apple is starting to build their own location data set is because relying on other providers leads hasn't worked out so well for them outside the US. (Although I suspect they're going to still be dependent on those providers for years to come.)
My personal feeling is the extents of the map window should be immutable and sacrosanct.
Google Maps to the rescue; it gave me 100% accurate directions 100% of the time.
Off topic, but this sounds exactly like the scene from The Office.
Their data still isn't as good though. For the most part, as long as you're in/near a population center or sticking to major highways it's fine. But it still makes a lot of minor errors when you're out in the hinterland. When I'm going places I'm not familiar with I still default to Google Maps since it's more reliable. This is especially true in countries outside the US.
Google also does a way better job at address verification. Apple Maps tends to take the names I type very literally while Google is pretty uncanny at being able to infer where I'm actually trying to go. For example, if I type the name of a local French restaurant, I can't count the number of times Apple Maps defaulted to showing me a restaurant by that name in Senegal or France or something.
This is especially weird in light of the fact that it's Apple, not Google, who has access to my chat logs and calendar appointment data and I have location services on by default for Apple Maps.
If you're looking for walking/hiking trails, Apple Maps has pretty much nothing. Google certainly isn't as good as a dedicated trail map app, but at least they try sometimes.
I think on the whole it's good for Apple to be taking control of their mapping back end, although I suspect it would have been better for them if they'd started by, say, buying Here (the former Nokia mapping unit).
Something is showing Apple that it is broken. I am betting it is user rates. Google has taken over iPhones for so much of it and I am sure they don't like the fact that Google Maps are used more then Apple Maps.
On my imperical evidence side, my daughter uses Apple Maps and I can tell you it gives back mapping when we are less then an hour away but more then 20 minutes. For example the way i drive isn't on Apple Maps and it adds 5 minutes to the trip and Google Maps has the trip 5 minutes faster. I don't know if Google is getting that data from my driving or from better algorithms but it has happened for then a few times.
The problem is that Waze and Google Maps are definitely better. Being the 3rd best solution means it’s not my go to option.
Siri has the same problem.
Apple Maps has improved since it launched but its far less accurate for me than Google has been despite that its integration is far tighter including CarPlay.
Your results may vary but I am very happy to hear they are doing a ground up rebuild. I won’t miss what they have today at all.
However Google Maps has an incredibly obnoxious UI pushing me to enable more data collection. The largest text on the search surface is "You're missing out" (by not signing in). If I do sign in, a search for "Home" pops up a modal dialog "Turn on Web and App Activity to search for home and your other personal places". This occurs despite setting an on-device Home location, which GMaps supports.
Apple Maps doesn't ask for sign-in, and a search for "home" uses the location stored on-device. Privacy is why I prefer Apple Maps.
Not for me. It's always eerily accurate. Maybe you're a really slow driver.
Do you live in a low-traffic area? IME GMaps is least accurate when there's heavy traffic.
I think whoever cracks lane-aware positioning, mapping, and routing could make some big improvements.
But mainly I just want a big button that says "don't make me make unprotected turns across multiple lanes of traffic" - Apple Maps seems less aggressive in that regard than Google Maps, which is why I prefer it.
Exactly, that's the one case where Gmaps gives me bad estimates, as there's something like that for me on my drive to work. The rest of the time, its estimates are very good.
I guess it'd be nice if Google over time determined if you're a faster or slower driver than average and adjusted accordingly.
As of a year or two ago, Apple Maps now consistently performs as well as Google Maps (as measured by its ability to route around bad traffic). At least in my area. So given their equivalence I always opt for Apple Maps these days to help preserve my privacy.
Of course, as other have already said, Google Maps has had a number of UX failings over the years (doesn't Google always?). But what really frustrated me was their handling of toll roads, at least a few years ago. They updated the app and then suddenly the Avoid Toll Roads setting was tucked away, hidden behind layers of obscure and opaque minimalist UI nonsense that Google so loves. As if that wasn't enough the setting would constantly revert.
So there you are scrambling to bring up directions in the car while running late. If you're lucky you recognize that Google is routing you through the toll roads. So you burn precious time trying to remember the arcane recipe of nameless shapes that you have to press to find the setting. And then re-find directions.
If you're not lucky, you forget to check the directions for toll roads, and now you're barreling down the highway, surprised to suddenly see the traffic cleared, only for horror to dawn on you shortly thereafter as you realize you're about to enter the toll road and there's no escape.
Over the years Google has screwed with their handling of toll roads a number of times. Why they have such a penchant for dark patterns surrounding toll roads is beyond me. Maybe some Google employee is on the take with the toll road companies? (mild sarcasm)
I have not experienced these issues with Apple Maps. Another point in its favor.
P.S. It's interesting to have watched this evolution. Apple Maps came out it seems like forever ago. Wikipedia says ~6 years. The growth since then has been incredible, but I don't think any of us have forgotten that Apple Maps was, frankly, a laughing stock. The village idiot of mapping. I'm glad they stuck with it though. It's nice to have alternatives. Whether you're a fan of Google or Apple, I hope it's appreciated that options exist. Because let's be honest, before Apple Maps, was there a real competitor to Google Maps? (Though I'm always silently rooting for OpenStreetMaps.)
Until Apple fixes all their issues, they need to allow other map providers for Carplay.
Google Maps are slightly more detailed, probably since Google is generating the maps automatically from satellite imagery, but for going to one point of the city to another I feel that the two apps are essentially equivalent!
Edit: Yep, announced at WWDC. https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-carplay-ios-12-will-fina...
Apple Maps guided me to <so and so restaurant> somewhere in the North Bay...
I even walked into an Apple Store, found an iPad, and submitted a correction request once. That was almost two years ago. For a long time, every time I'd pass that Apple Store, I'd walk in, go to an iPad, and search my house on Apple Maps to see if they accepted my request. They never ever fixed it. I don't think they ever did, though it's been a few months since I gave up checking so who knows.
Until Lyft banned Apple Maps, I'd have to call drivers in advance to make sure they weren't using Apple, and if they said they were, I'd cancel on them (I still do this for Waze users, because Waze can't path to my house).
I don't have an iOS device so I can't comment on current state, but I hope this gets first class attention.
Another problem is that it loves to move your viewport -- sometimes just a small zoom out or something, but sometimes moving you entirely, or searching around your current location instead of in the selected map area. I would prefer it if every viewport move had a prompt saying "Hey, I'm going to move your map to some other area" and give me a chance to complain, or have some sort of seamless "save this view" thing that goes into a stack in the corner so I can go back to the view that I was looking at.
This is absolutely infuriating for trip planning.
If each query was a layer, you would also have a basic GIS. You could allow the user to start asking spatial questions, such as, "Show me where all the Chinese food restaurants (layer 1) Best Buys (layer 2) are.
"Hmm. I need to go to Best Buy but I'm flexible about food. Let's tap X on the Chinese food layer and search for Poutine restaurants instead."
Suppose you want to find things that match X near some landmark Y. As far as I know, you have two options. One is to search for the string "X near Y" and hope Google parses it correctly. The other is to search for Y, memorize its location on the map, search for X (which has a good chance of moving the map view to some random location), pan and zoom back to Y from memory, and click "search this area". It's a huge pain.
I'm stil amazed how hard Maps makes it to view a street name. I can fill my screen with a street and nothing else, and I still won't see its name. I feel like they actually do it on purpose to breed dependence on Maps for navigation references.
This is one of the reasons I prefer Apple Maps to Google's -- because IMO they do a slightly better job of that. Still wish it would be better, it's a daily nuisance for me.
If its a fairly fresh app launch, default to around me
2. The lack of consistency is especially annoying. "Italian" redirects to Italian restaurants in my area, and the same goes for "Chinese", etc.
Do you want to take a shorter route? "No | Yes (auto selects in X seconds)"
I feel this is possibly the best way you can provide the options.
I think changing from your current plan unless you panicedly (and in my jurisdiction, illegally) press a button to stay the course is just generally bad UI.
Part of this is I just don't trust Google Maps' new route to actually be faster. It seems Google Maps doesn't properly weigh the cost of these items, which leads to it's suggested route usually being slower:
* Crossing bridges during rush hour.
* Making a left turn without a light across 3 lanes of traffic.
* Going down small residential streets that are too narrow to safely drive the speed limit.
* Routes that require turning onto a busy road without a light and the corner having really poor visibility.
[tap] Oh, sushi. Not in the mood for that. [tap] Oh, that's closed. [tap] Oh, that's too close to the one I already tapped, let me zoom in... [pinch] [tap] Oh, sushi again.
I'm genuinely surprised at how many people here apparently consider that a better user experience.
Or that Google (of all companies!) hasn't rigorously tested this and found that lists work better. They convey so much more information and the whole reason you're using a map is because you don't know where stuff is, so you're going to need all that information.
If you search for something like "McDonalds", you care about which McDonalds is easiest to get to, and you don't really care about anything else.
Even if I'm looking for something more vague like "restaurants", I still usually prefer to see everything laid out on the map, but that's because I usually walk places, so location matters a lot to me.
Being able to hover your finger over certain points and quickly browse the options on a map would be great.
With a mouse, the 3 actions
form a sequence where each action is an extension of the previous one.Ideally, the actions triggered by them are extensions of the previous one, too. With the mouse, we have that:
A big advantage of that is that it allows the interface to be faster. A GUI can react to a click by selecting an item without having to wait whether it will be part of a double-click, for example.⇒ if we can’t get a real hover, in an ideal world, a softer or shorter finger tap, not a long one would mean “tell me about this”. I doubt we can shoe-horn that into the UI this late in the game, though.
We do. Samsung used to have this on their phones (not sure if they still do):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRzUzRD9Y8k
I really liked the idea (and thought the hardware was pretty good on the Storm 2), but was too unusual on too-unpopular a phone to do much of anything.
BB never really understood how to do 'experience' - except in things at their core like battery length and keyboards. As nuanced and insightful as they were there ... it's like they considered everything else a joke, or didn't want to go deep.
The whole screen on Storm moved - neat idea - should have never made it out of the lab. Or at least, not in the manner it was. It was possibly ahead of it's time as I could feasibly see Apple doing something like this - the new MacPro trackpads are very, very nice. So subtle.
But it's all history now :)
I absolutely cannot understand why this isn't fixed. This happens so often.
Sorry for ranting so much about iTunes in this thread, and from some other comments maybe I don't need to use it as much as I thought I'd have to. But then again, why do I have to use third-party apps for e.g. podcast client and music player. Those are such a central appliances that they should really be served well by Apple, who even include things like iMovie and Garage Band with their OS.
You can even do that without iTunes if you pay $25 a year for iTunes Match.
My original comment was about iTunes on desktop, although the mobile version is also confusing and counter-intuitive, but much less buggy.
I never knew exactly what type of catastrophe would happen to my iPhone when it "synced" with iTunes.
I was responding to this.
Movies was not a good idea. Apps was too far. Music (the subscription service) was stupid. Then they forced UI changes on the old/working stuff because of the new garbage.
I really hope the low level rumors that a rewrite/breakup is happening are true.
iTunes WAS great.
In addition, it's terribly buggy. Some things just go wrong from time to time with no apparent reason, and without non-cumbersome ways to recover from. There's lots of issues in the Apple support forums where the answer is just 'yeah, this sometimes happens, you'll have to delete this or that and re-add it'.
I used to use iTunes extensively, but have since switched to Vudu (Walmart), Amazon Digital, and Play/YT for my digital rentals because I'd prefer to watch them in a browser or on a Roku, neither of which are possible in the iTunes/Apple ecosystem.
One big reason why is that browser video streaming is extremely reliable on a reasonable connection, but iTunes' rental buffering was a huge headache last I tried to use it (and the data usage significantly higher than browser video for some reason, even at the same resolution).
https://developer.apple.com/musickit/
We really took a big step backwards with Google Maps and the maps that are trying to be Google Maps. The maps are garish and have no useful details. I have to scroll and zoom around until the name of the street I'm currently in decides to appear.
And then those huge swathes of nothing. Random stores being indicated. But you always get an incomplete set of data. Not every store on the block or nothing.
This is especially bad if you're on a bus and want to see where the stops are, so you know when to ring the bell. GMaps makes you zoom so far in that you're constantly scrolling the map to keep up with the bus.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/IRJpNZZ.png
This is totally off topic... Michelin have the same old school European thing for travellers that Guinness have for drinkers, a cause for those with a cause. I like the idea they pulled off an app that's good. I bet the Guinness app is shite.
I honestly think this is a hidden gem that more people should know about.
I think you posted in the wrong thread. This one is about Apple Maps.
Please consider the quality of your comment before you post it, plus its relevance to the topic.
I, like many, rely on HN for high-quality news and high-quality perspectives on those topics. I'm frankly more and more dissuaded by low-quality, hardly-on-topic comments like yours. You appear to enjoy co-opting the topic to gripe about the MacBook Pro. Please do that somewhere else.
If Apple released a mobile workstation with the same (or similar) form factor as the 2015 15" rMBP with the same keyboard (and obviously get rid of the touch bar), same 99.5 Wh battery, same port selection (except replace TB2 ports with TB3), same Magsafe charging port, updated internals with non-proprietary, non-soldered RAM, SSD, and wireless card, I would pay whatever the hell they would want. It won't happen, but a man can dream.
Latest entry in Dec 2017: How far ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps? https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat
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-Satellite imagery to generate build footprints. -Lots of human intervention -Land based car imagery
the article mentions being able to create a 3d, textured world and do some pretty interesting localisation (street signs that look like local signs, fonts that match local fonts etc) that shortens the gap between the real world and the map.
id say that from a UX perspective (even if their core data isn’t quite as good, which we really can’t comment on yet) they’re doing a lot of interesting things that google isn’t doing.
that’s not even to mention that they’re doing it all while respecting their users’ privacy... something that google will likely never do any more than obligatory hand waving toward.
it think they’re doing quite a lot better than google maps, but it’s just not data related.
A point that I often see missing is that Niantic (Ingress then Pokemon Go) historically is strongly bound to Google.
The get people’s real world movements for long periods of time, it’s even included in the game mechanics where you see path with consequent flow of people. Coupled with all the user submitted and user validated “places of interest”.
Overall it’s a tremedous amount of data of pretty decent quality.
Anyway, it's possible that Apple sees it as just beyond their capabilities at this time.
1: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/37.8505318,-122.2224643/37.8...
2: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Canyon,+CA/Oakland,+Californ...
3: https://www.strava.com/heatmap#14.73/-122.22836/37.85920/hot...
I do bike directions based on OSM data: https://cycle.travel/map
For example competing with Google at big data and AI with Maps and Siri, or competing with Microsoft with iWorks. Keynote is great, but I'd rather use Google Docs or Open Office than Pages and Numbers.
In contrast, today Logic and FCPX are very competitive in their market.
The fact that Apple Maps exists forces Google to dedicate resources towards keeping Google Maps decent on Apple's platform. Competition is good, even if you don't use the competing product.
But is it good for Apple to keep investing resources in something that will most likely never be as good as the competition?
“Everybody but Google” isn’t good enough judging by the current state of affairs, and Google doesn’t play by the same privacy rules as Apple, so they seem to have few options.
My point is about investing to produce mediocre results.
Does this seem contradictory to anybody else? Kind of like "anonymized data collection" that turns out to be not-so-anobymous when it invariably leaks?
So even if they could find all the segments from YOUR trip (which they can’t, according to what they’ve said) they couldn’t even reconstruct what you were doing, only a few small stretches of road you were on.
That's why you need to do more work, as in two of Google's patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8972187B1 https://patents.google.com/patent/US9794373B1
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/questions-about-apples-new...
[0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
I'm not sure if Apple Maps rewrites "code from the scratch". From the article, it seems they are building "Maps from the scratch" with some code reuse.
Our car has Car Play so I've been using Maps exclusively up to now and whilst I think I still prefer Waze overall, Maps is perfectly fine and I've gotten used to its rough edges.
(I'll admit that it's sometimes hard to square this viewpoint with the level of brokenness they ship)
If Apple Maps gives me that, especially if it syncs from a webapp to my phone, I'm in.
The interface is not the most intuitive but it’s there.
there isnt any web version of osmAnd though but you can sync the osmAnd folder to a pc and open the bookmarks in any gps app. ive never tried editing them there and syncing back to the phone so youll have to experiment yourself on that one
could anyone with map/traffic experience please comment on when data scale overshoots functional requirements? that is, what is the user threshold (e.g., 1,000 users in the same 5 mile radius) above which traffic accuracy stops improving?
But for me, that is not all there is. I want an app that feels light and responsive, when I'm on say a bike, or in traffic. It needs to be reliable and not get forced to shutdown due to memory constraints. It also should not sell my data to the devil. All of these are ways in which Apple Maps is better.
Bing still has this feature, though they've updated it (made it less discoverable, I feel) and removed older photos. If you go to https://www.bing.com/maps and point at the "Road" menu on the upper right, you will see "We have updated Bird's Eye. Learn more", which gives you the following information:
>Bird's Eye has changed
> New and crisp Bird's Eye imagery is available in many metropolitan areas. There are two ways of viewing the new Bird's Eye.
>1. In cards
>2. Right-click on the map
>Note: Bird's Eye may not be available in your area as outdated imagery is no longer available.
If I go to central San Francisco or Seattle, I can right-click the map as indicated and select "View bird's eye", and the picture will show up.