Apple Maps Native Ratings System Coming to US Places of Interest, Perhaps as Early as Next Week

[mansplains]

Cue the antitrust squeals from Yelp...

I used to not mind Yelp but then all the places I needed it for had no recent reviews, utterly useless. Let alone the changes to Waitlist.

 

[michieru]

This is great news. I hate Yelp and their business practices of extorting businesses. That place has been running for far too long in that manner.

 

[V.K.]

Good! Yelp is terrible, especially in countries that are not the United States of America. Here in The Netherlands some most recent Yelp reviews about a restaurant are 3 years old.

Glad Apple is improving this. I cannot wait to try this new Apple Maps feature in 2028.

I know you are jesting but 2028 is an optimistic target even for the US. People in this thread don’t seem to appreciate how hard it would be for Apple to make such system robust. It’s not just a matter of flipping a switch on it technically which I am sure Apple could do easily. The reviews won’t write themselves. Apple will need a huge buy in from the users to get enough reviews so that they don't need Yelp anymore. It would take many years and it's not at all clear they'll succeed. While Apple does have large user base it can't compare to that of Google. This matters for a review system like this. Look at the movies review system in iTunes for example. Apple has had it for many years and it remains a rather pathetic thing.
And this is before we even get to the issue of curating the reviews. Judging by how poorly Apple has dealt with fake reviews in the App store I am not optimistic they'll do better with POI reviews.

So while it's good that Apple is doing this people really should temper their expectations.

 

[timeislove]

Really require physically visited the poi to qualify for reviewing?

I am not in uk but I am able to access the map page to review a poi in uk.

 

[I7guy]

[…]Yes, Google Maps is still far superior, even if that causes some soreness around here, […]

For you. Like everything else in life, YMMV.

 

[ignatius345]

Yes, Google Maps is still far superior, even if that causes some soreness around here, however I have to give Apple credit for acknowledging their shortcoming and working fast on making Maps better.

I think Apple Maps is great for navigation. It's great with traffic, lane guidance, rerouting, and has solid and growing support for transit options and now bicycling. I'll totally go to the mat for Apple Maps for wayfinding, every time.

But for POIs, I have to reluctantly agree with you. Their database is still hit and miss. I can't count the number of times its let me down when trying to find a restaurant or something. This was a few years ago, but I was in Manhattan trying to find a sushi place and Maps led me to not one but three places that were out of business, or which had changed to another restaurant. To be fair, I think it's gotten better since then and they also respond very quickly to error reports from users. But they just don't have as deep a bench as Google for POIs.

I'm hoping that with the improved base map rolled out to so many places now, they're turning their attention to improving POI data so I can just be done with Google maps once and for all.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Surprised I missed this article when it came out but, this is good news. Way to go Apple.