Apple Map Data Fixes
I've had almost daily occurrences of the map being useless. I guess it's all in where you live.
It is mostly the POI point data that are the issue. It can be loaded and re-geocoded(moved) fairly fast. While they are at it here is a list -
All Apple needs to do is:
1. Fix the Yelp points that were poorly geocoded and not QA checked by Apple before they loaded them in their database. Some areas are much worse than others. Re-geocode the bad city metro areas first. Address geocode or snap to parcel and building footprint centroids in areas that have weird property boundaries like malls, colleges, and large private land holdings with odd address ranges.
2. Buy more State, County, and City POI address databases and geocode and merge them with the Yelp data. Apple is currently missing a ton of landmark and physical feature POIs plus a ton of businesses. GNIS feature points are free, but they need massive edits. Google uses USGS and gnis as invisible background layers to find features in Google Earth. They use a ton of different free databases including USGS for every thing from beach names to mountain peaks. Apple needs to wake-up and load the free data that is available.
If a small shoe string map site like Acme Mapper can do it, a billion dollar company can EASILY add the missing data.
3. Add way more transit stop points. Thin or none in many city areas.
4. Update correction interface. Google will auto match typed names with addresses off of a phone book listing or a address listing database so people don't have to type addresses, cities, zips and phone numbers.
5. Add more information colors and text to the traffic layer. Currently does not show speeds only a red dashed line for congestion.
6. Change symbols on some features. Good example is your orange country borders in hybrid view, you cannot see them very well. Needs to be a brighter wider line.
Most map companies have a professional company check the map symbols for major issues. Companies like Cartifact and others have been doing this for years.