International Maps?

[mavis]

For those that have the beta, can anyone comment on whether the new map app displays transliterated location names for countries like Japan?

In Google Maps, location names in Japan are displayed in English, with smaller Japanese text underneath. For example, Tokyo Station is labeled "Tokyo 東京", which is awesome for those of us foreigners who are still learning kanji. So does the new map app do this as well, or is it all English (or worse, all Japanese)?

 

[mavis]

Anybody? It should only take about thirty seconds to check ... Please?

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Anybody? It should only take about thirty seconds to check ... Please?

Appears to be all in Japanese at the moment.

 

[mavis]

Appears to be all in Japanese at the moment.

Thanks for checking that for me, I appreciate it!

Unfortunately, that's even worse than I was afraid it would be. In fact, it's absolutely worthless in its current state. I hope Google Maps is available as a standalone app, because I actually use it daily and this new map app is awful.

I'm attaching the same view in Google Maps so you can see the difference. It's almost as though Apple spent about three minutes on their map of Tokyo, as opposed to Google, who seems to actually give a damn about non-US markets.

 

[lympero]

Yeah I'm afraid that international support will suck as Siri sucks outside USA.

 

[Darrensk8]

Could someone try London?

Thanks

 

[Daveoc64]

I didn't try London specifically, but most of the UK looks poor to me. Nowhere near as much detail as Google and some roads were missing or incomplete.

 

[Cheruman]

I didn't try London specifically, but most of the UK looks poor to me. Nowhere near as much detail as Google and some roads were missing or incomplete.

This is what I was afraid of I know it's beta but I can't see Apple's Map app being anywhere as good (outside the USA) as Google for a while, I hope Google release a standalone app with all the features of the one currently used in iOS 5.

If they don't (and I hate to say it), this is a deal-breaker between getting the iPhone 5 or switching to Android.

 

[mavis]

Agreed. I don't want to lose core functionality like this, so it's either be stuck on iOS5 forever or jump ship to Android. Never thought I'd see the day ...