Apple Begins Testing Revamped Maps App in UK and Ireland

[LV426]

Apple Maps still has me living in the wrong town in the UK.

Really? In Contacts | My Card, does your address have a postcode? Most correctly defined postcodes are mapped to well defined coordinates. The Post Office provide the lookup data.

Verify your postcode and see it on a map here.

 

[LeeW]

And this stuff ain't free. Device purchase + 30% app store cut pays for these free services.

Yet Google still does it better.

 

[LV426]

Is this just London and other big cities?

The changes will likely apply to the whole of the UK, but you’ll probably need an updated version of the Maps app to see the changes, and that hasn’t been rolled out yet.

 

[LV426]

Yet Google still does it better.

And you are paying through your nose for that, by losing your privacy, being targeted by ad sharks, etc.

Both Apple and Google have a long long way to go to get mapping right. Ordnance Survey do it best.

 

[nickgovier]

.

 

[Vjosullivan]

A fleet of cars is a tiny part of a much larger organization. It took Google almost a decade and thousands of employees/contractors around the world to complete the migration from 3rd party maps to its own product. They were still working on Western Europe (which was their second continent after North America) around 2012-13. 10 years is not a long time to map a large portion of the world and Apple only started it about two years ago.

Apple maps have been around for a lot, lot more than two years.

 

[weckart]

Yet Google still does it better.

Not navigation, though, which i discovered after switching to an Android phone. Having to recentre every few miles or so really is annoying as is the lack of choice of voices. It's also slower than I expected. Paying for Tomtom now.

 

[Vjosullivan]

And you are paying through your nose for that, by losing your privacy, being targeted by ad sharks, etc.

Both Apple and Google have a long long way to go to get mapping right. Ordnance Survey do it best.

Good luck beyond Calais with your OS map. 😉

 

[meaning-matters]

Still with pastel colors it seems.

Light-yellow roads on washed-light-yellow surroundings, for example, is severe usability failure.

Apple doesn't seem to care because they also still show tiny light-blue rain stripes on lighter-blue backgrounds; this though was messed starting with iOS 7.

 

[Vjosullivan]

Still with pastel colors it seems.

Light-yellow roads on washed-light-yellow surroundings, for example, is severe usability failure.

Apple doesn't seem to care because they also still show tiny light-blue rain stripes on lighter-blue backgrounds; this though was messed starting with iOS 7.

Sometimes it's more important to look good than to do good.

 

[Wormald]

Apple really needs to put some on the ground resources into this. The leadership has obviously decided not to though. The roll out of any announced feature takes years. On such an essential app it is pretty ordinary TBH.

It’s like all they have is some old guy and his dog slowly wandering the world getting the data for an update. And his attitude and approach to work is retired in place.

FWIW, drove past an Apple Maps camera car in London yesterday, so looks like they are actively collecting right now

 

[LV426]

Good luck beyond Calais with your OS map. 😉

Apple should hire the OS to do it properly for the rest of the world. Meantime, I spend 99% of my time well away from Calais, so i guess I’m just lucky.

 

[armhol]

Bruh (Apple) ... what about us just north of the border in Canada? Come on now show us some first level love please.

What does your vicinity to the USA have to do with how soon you get updates? lol

 

[sintra1]

Apple Maps still has me living in the wrong town in the UK.

Prove it !

 

[costyp]

A dire need for improvement of Apple Maps here in the UK. It's got to that annoying level of accuracy where you start to trust it for most things most of the time, but when you really need to get directions to something, it'll lead you astray. Search functionality needs to improve as well as map fidelity- I'm tired of having my map zoom off to some obscure rural town in the US rather than to the place within a few miles of my location- I simply don't have that issue in Google Maps.

 

[DinkThifferent]

FWIW, drove past an Apple Maps camera car in London yesterday, so looks like they are actively collecting right now

Did you wave? I'm on Google Streetview waving at the camera!

 

[LeeW]

And you are paying through your nose for that, by losing your privacy, being targeted by ad sharks, etc.

Save that for the sheep.

 

[Piggie]

Just use Microsoft Flight Sim data 😉

Seriously. It's such a bloody shame these companies cannot all work together.

Take the Data from the new Microsoft flight sim, all around the entire globe, and pile into this all the data from Apple and Google Street cars.
Then the extra data from the low flying planes shooting footage down the streets of buildings for 3D creation.

Why not get it all into one single data-set. Then companies can pull what info they specifically need from this central model?
Isn't that the goal we should all want?
As accurate as possible, near to real time as possible computer model of the entire planet.

Not different companies all trying to do bits of it on their own.
That's nuts.
Such a data set should be independent of any single company and just be able to be added to.
Perhaps financially you get more of a payout the more data you pump in to build it up.

 

[one more]

And you are paying through your nose for that, by losing your privacy, being targeted by ad sharks, etc.

Not necessarily. You can use Google Maps anonymously, without linking your search/navigation to your email account, etc.

 

[daved2424]

As does Google for me. Despite having pointed this out to them half a dozen times.
At least Apple can get the colour codes of the roads correct, unlike Google which has decided we all have to use threat coding system.

 

[daved2424]

That doesn’t mean it’s correct. As I said in reply to another post, Google still has me in a neighbouring time despite the fact I have told them half a dozen times they are wrong.

 

[headlessmike]

I switched full time to Apple Maps, deleted Google Maps app off my phone and I haven’t missed a thing, apart from the occasional need for bike directions. But I live in a small city in Germany and bike paths are well laid out so not much need there either.

I lived in Austria until recently and did a lot of driving in Austria and Germany. Google was great for POIs, but awful for navigation. Apple's POIs weren't great to begin with but got a lot better in recent years. The navigation on the other hand was always excellent. Near my house Google would always want me to make a left turn and then a U-turn at the next intersection, instead of just turning right in the first place. Also Google rarely knew about road closures, but they were present in Apple Maps.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Forgive me, but when will we know Apple is ‘releasing’ the new maps data? Do they announce it officially or will it literally just appear in Maps one day?

 

[itsmilo]

I switched full time to Apple Maps, deleted Google Maps app off my phone and I haven’t missed a thing, apart from the occasional need for bike directions. But I live in a small city in Germany and bike paths are well laid out so not much need there either.

i tried that experiment in Berlin for a week and failed miserably. Especially using the bike as you said. Often it would lead me to streets I am not even allowed with a bike or even when hiking, it lacks a lot of tiny paths through the woods where I am always amazed how Google Maps even knows about them

 

[hagar]

Apple Maps is the best!

unless you want POI, opening hours, fuzzy search, a helpful digital assistant that looks up destinations, local roadworks, speed limits, a visual distinction between buildup and open areas, or a quick fix for reported errors.