Why don't they just put street view back?
Google won't let them, because Apple refused to share our private data with Google. Fair enough: both companies have to defend their business, and Apple's primary business is satisfied customers, while Google's is harvesting data.
There's no ideal outcome possible from that scenario, but I do like what we've got! A great Apple Maps app (thankfully, in my region) plus a Google app if you need it (but I never do).
What a waste of resources.
How about improving the overall mapping software than working on gimmicks Apple
That was exactly my thought.... at first.
I though Street View was terrfic for figuring out super-local details like which driveway goes with which building, or which doorway goes into which business. And I thought Flyover was a super-cool gimmick that I'd play with and forget.
In reality--since my city DOES have flyover (and I know that doesn't help everyone) I use it all the time, and it does what street view used to do, only MUCH BETTER.
Street view: your view is directly at the familiar street level perspective, and will look just the way you expect when you're there in person. Nice!
But...
- Your view is often in the wrong lane, taking the "familiar" advantage away.
- It's often blurred and smeared beyond recognition, noisy, poor contrast, and obscured by lens flares, so you can't read most of the signs you need anyway.
And...
Flyover view is WAY FASTER and WAY EASIER TO NAVIGATE.
Street View is such an awful experience (including terrible desktop navigation controls). Turn... turn some more... adjust... click to move forward... wait for loading... look around... oops, went down the wrong way... turn around again... turn some more... tap back where you came from... loading delay... turn again... click again... loading delay... can't quite see what I want... try a little farther ahead... loading delay... wish I could back up just a little... but I can't, I'm stuck with nodes 40 feet apart... give up.
Compare to Flyover: you can navigate instantly and smoothly using the SAME panning/zooming controls as 2D maps. It's not a separatre, awkward mode. It just works.
And you can easlly see the lay of the land, the driveways, etc. that Street View could show you. Not perfectly, but not worse either--just different. It turns out that the human brain actually has no trouble recognizing a place from an angle 50 feet in the air.
Try this experiment: find a square block of your city, and pretend you know a restaurant is in that area, and you know what it looks like but you don't remember the name. Now take a "walk" around that block, all the way around and back, four turns, in Street View. Now try it in Flyover.
No contest. You can spot the place in a few seconds in Flyover. With Street View you will spend minutes, and that's not counting the time you need to go get a shot of whisky to survive the hassle.
So let's hope Apple KEEPS expanding flyover like this. It doesn't help nearly enough people yet.
