It’s gotten a lot better, but I still find the address database better in Google Maps, which helps when you have only a fragment of an address. I also find that the Apple Maps database has a lot of roads that read the same. For instance, in Texas where I live, we have a lot of “Ranch Roads” that are numbered. Think of them like state highways in other state (which we also have; don’t ask). For whatever reason, most of the Ranch Roads are spoken by Maps as “Ranch Road,” not with the number. So, if you have a spot where multiple Ranch Roads intersect, Maps will just say “turn left on Ranch Road” instead of “turn left on Ranch Road 123.” It’s tremendous annoying. In another state, imagine it saying “turn left on Interstate,” without a number. Anyway, Google Maps does better.
replyGoogle is not without its errors.
replyI used to work to resolve addressing disputes and google just doesn't expose (maybe even store) the relevant information for a lot of parcels of land.
It’s all available freely from the government in simple formats but for Joe Public they don’t know that much less how to access it and it’s the case that technicians on the ground don’t always have it in their SOP either. Google has a level of market dominance that means their errors can be, for a small individual or over an aggregation of small individuals, costly.
Addresses are hard. OSM Nominatim struggles with them all the time. Probably the biggest hurdle to OSM adoption, imo
replyYep, they all have flaws. I just fine that when I want to drive somewhere, Google does better for me than Apple, though certainly Apple has improved a lot recently.
replyactually a sign of our times that we can gripe about this. i remember how annoying it was to rent a car on a business trip without anything other than a road atlas. you had to dedicate a fair bit of cognitive load you really didnt want to use.
replyIndeed. I remember flying to Atlanta and arriving at midnight. I rented a car and had to try to find my hotel in the dark with one of those one-page maps the rental car company had. So, yea, we’ve come a long way for the better.
replyIn the 80s I rented a car from the Minneapolis airport. Drove to my hotel visually navigating with respect to the tall buildings of downtown. Eventually realizing I was in St Paul.
replyGoogle Maps often picks the non-idiomatic thing. It'll say the road name when no sign uses that, and it's a US highway that you have been following for a while. Or it will tell you the state highway number when it is a major named artery, and nobody knows that it is a state highway at that point or uses the highway number. This makes it hard to know if it is carrying you along on the same route or if it has come up with one of its weird shortcuts to save 1 minute.
replyIt has absolutely no clue about roundabouts. On a journey in England or France on a road that has a roundabout every mile it will constantly spam you with "take the second exit onto wailing street" every minute, when a human would say "go straight at the next 20 roundabouts staying on the A38".
replyYou're not wrong that it does that, but that's kinda what I'd expect. Maybe because I'm used to it, but if there's a potential turn it'll say "keep right" or "keep left". So it makes sense to me that it says "second exit".
reply"Straight" can be ambiguous, second exit isn't. Maybe it's because I'm terrible with directions and hate driving, but I like the constant feedback that I'm going the right way.
I once printed out a directions from an online map that contained "pass straight over the next fourteen roundabouts" (I think it was on the way into Reading). Lose count, and you are stuffed. I much prefer a turn-by-turn approach.
replyHere in Australia Apple Maps names everywhere by local council, which isn’t used at all, we use localities. I have reported this as a bug repeatedly but they just keep at it.
replyIt just means nothing here except who you pay to collect the bins.
Salt Lake City roads are amusing
reply"Turn right on East one hundred and twenty three thousand South"
Salt Lake City is a perfect grid, better than Manhattan. An address in SLC tells you EXACTLY where it is. It was GPS before GPS.
replyYep, that’s sometimes true as well.
replyI hate how Google scrapes business addresses so you get like "There's a grocery store X here" but actually that's just their corporate office building. I see that all the time. Machines just don't know.
replyOn macOS there are so many basic things you’d want to do - share itineraries, annotate places, keep lists of things, but there’s not even a document concept. With the exception of guides, anything you do is ephemeral. It’s excellent at planning a route, but doing anything with that route, including getting back to it later is useless.
replyAll true, but you have to measure it against how enshitified Google Maps has become.
replyJust a week ago I could still create a Google Docs "map" document, add spots, share it with friends who could collaborate from any (incl. non-Apple) device... It's just a pain to do this with Apple Maps compared to how easy and straightforward it is with Google Maps. You can also still import desktop Google Earth bookmark files.
replyI primarily use Apple maps and bounce back to google sometimes because I think the browser experience is so much better and it is faster to just type my terms right into ironically safari. Every time I do I think it is still simpler and snappier. Especially true if I have recently tried to use the MacOS maps app… that never behaves how I would imagine it should if I go beyond a simple location search. There are things about the ios app that make me crazy too. No qualms about the maps themselves these days.
replyI don't agree with that assertion. Just because google maps has become one thing, doesn't excuse Apple maps flaws. They can exist on their merits.
replyThe app on macOS is terrible, like all Catalyst/SwiftUI ports. Fisher-Price software.
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replyMaybe elsewhere it is. Here, it's terrible.
replyIn general, for all it benefits from globalization, Apple disappoints on global markets.
In the US. In many other countries it's borderline useless.
replyI haven't used google maps in years.
reply90% of my usage of it is because it actually displays the map on my Watch, whereas Google Maps & Citymapper only show directions.
replyIf it weren't for that, I'd use Citymapper for practically everything.
It’s okay. It’s still subpar and barely keeping pace with Gmaps
replyit was far inferior to its competitor when it was released
replyThat was, what, twelve years ago? Hardly seems relevant.
replyit's relevant in the context of this conversation:
reply> Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps:
While it is great now, it did flop because it was terrible.
Bah, missed that part initially. Thanks.
replyAnd they just added ads.
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