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Google Maps's Moat: How Far Ahead of Apple Maps is Google Maps? (justinobeirne.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the past year, we've been comparing Google Maps and Apple Maps in New York, San Francisco, and London -- but some of the biggest differences are outside of large cities. That's a comprehensive comparison. Google Maps, unlike Apple Maps, doesn't stop at outlining the routes. It offers contextual details such as depiction of buildings and other structures and vegetation. It has captured everything -- from dish antennae on top of buildings to golf courses. Furthermore, Google Maps also shows name of the neighbourhood, and has more distinguishable icons and colors. You can glance at a portion of the map on Google Maps and get a good picture of what's in that place. Apple Maps, on the other hand, looks empty. Like an unfurnished house.
I use OpenStreetMap http://www.osm.org/ . It is kind of Wikipedia approach to mapping.
By the way, I use this web application to view Wikipedia articles on the OSM map: http://ausleuchtung.ch/geo_wik... . It works for all language versions of Wikipedia, and to view hotels, supermarkets, etc. this one: http://ausleuchtung.ch/travel_...
Apple's maps were only ever intended to act as an insurance policy if Steve Job's thermonuclear war with Google got Google Maps removed from the App Store. That happened for a short time, but now it's back and things have cooled significantly since 2012 on the patent war. Navigation is as much a minimum expectation of a smartphone now as email is. It was only ever developed at all to ensure there would always be maps available for the iPhone. In the event that Google removes Maps from the App Store, Apple will immediately make new, immediate, and significant investments in their program. Until then, they don't care.
Umm...no...theyâ(TM)re not. Iâ(TM)ll gladly criticize Apple, Google or any other company if I think theyâ(TM)re doing something wrong. In this case, Tim Cook has been adamant that Apple doesnâ(TM)t track what you do with their products. The only tracking they do is in the App Store, which is to be expected. But Maps? Nope. Which would explain why itâ(TM)s not quite as good as Google Maps.
It's back, but for a long while they removed the ability to download offline maps.
Another one they still don't have (I think) is search based layers, replaced most closely with the ability to search and add a waypoint to your route (I usually used it to have a gas station layer on long trips).
Offline maps came back after over a year, but I don't believe search based layers ever has.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
When I move from point A to point B, II don't care if there are antennas on the roofs of the buildings prospecting the road you travel through, or if there is a dentist in the middle of my journey. I simply want a no-frills, clearly understandable map (that by the way in my case is displayed on the screen of a iPhone SE placed at about one meter from my eyes).
In our family we have a iPhone, a Windows 8 phone, and an Android tablet. The tablet through Google maps gives the most detailed description of the territory, but we never use it for getting directions, drawing the map with all the details clogs the 4-CPU tablet to the point it becomes a paperweight. Deciding who is the best map navigator between the iPhone and M$oft^H^H^H^H^H Nokia is difficult, I actually prefer the former, my wife the latter, but both work fine and draw circles around the Google navigator in terms of usability.
Well, if you've ever made any maps with GIS, you'd know that maps aren't just any old artifacts; they're *tools* that support specific *tasks*. Driving from 123 Sesame St to 456 Maple is only one of many possible things you can do with a map. There's deciding whether a park you haven't visited would be a good place to take your toddler. If you've ever done this, you know that you use multiple kinds of details in that particular task. Is the park bordered by busy roads? Does it have a fence? Are there nearby businesses that might have a bathroom?
I use Google Maps to scout new fishing spots -- I'm looking for places where there is access to a likely looking stream, but not so obvious that there will be someone there already. You can do similar kinds of screening for locating places you might want to visit when you're thinking about opening a business. For these kinds of things you need multiple layers of detail, and those layers have to be visually organized.
Maps are like pocket knives. You can whittle with a Swiss Army knife, but it's not as good as a purpose-made whittling knife. Adding details layers to maps is like adding blades to a Swiss Army knife; sure it becomes more versatile, but at some point it becomes more awkward to use for certain tasks. The difference is with maps you can use graphic design to emphasize certain features and de-emphasize others. This reduces visual clutter, and makes it easier to use -- sometimes even when the de-emphasized features are needed for a particular tasks. Tasks proceed in steps and each step needs different information. You use high contrast for details that the user scans for, and low visual contrast is acceptable for steps where he's focused on one spot.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I haven't used Apple Maps for a while, but when they launched here it turned out that they'd bought maps from TomTom, who bought them from a company that they acquired in 1992 - and those maps hadn't been updated since. It was an interesting historical snapshot, and mostly buildings hadn't changed (a load of them have been here for the best part of 800 years, so only a few were obviously wrong), but a lot of pubs had changed names since then and so it was quite confusing.
That said, last time I was near the Google Maps HQ, I had a look at Google Maps and OpenStreetMap and found that the OSM data was better. I mostly use OSMAnd for mapping - it's open source and stores offline vector maps and does offline routing (for car, pedestrian, and bicycle). I find the Google maps difficult to read - roads are only two colours, irrespective of type, and not the standard colours for a road atlas. About the only feature that Google Maps has that I'd like is live traffic data.
I've just looked at Google Maps, and they do now have my house! I've been living here for over a year and it was built about a year before that. They don't, however, have the houses on the other three sides of the square (or, in fact, the roads for two sides). They also don't have the road that runs around the back of ours, or any of the 23 houses on those roads, or either of the blocks of flats. Oh, and the roads that they do have are in the wrong place and include a large road where there's now a block of flats, two small roads over a park, and one through someone's house. Now, compare that to OSM: They have all of the roads, house numbers for all of the houses and one of the blocks of flats, the footpath that cuts through one row of houses to the row begin, the park in the middle of the square, and the footpaths across the park. The other block is in a part that is marked as under construction, so I at least know that the map might be wrong (Google doesn't even appear to have any indication of construction work). We moved from around the corner and the Google Maps data there is weirdly wrong. It's as if they tried to draw a map by asking drunk people where things are: there are no gaps between buildings that have a driveway between them, there's a take-away at the wrong end of a row, and so on.
Some of the buildings on Google Maps are extruded, but not consistently and they don't appear to have any correlation with the heights of the buildings (three story house: flat, 1-story shop next to it: extruded).
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Waypoints, departure times from the app (iPhone at least), street view integration, several others that escape me. From Google, I now need Maps, Waze, Earth, and the frigging web site to get what used to all be in one place.