I love street view, but I wonder if Apple sees Flyover as a replacement for it.
First, street views are kinda creepy. Those millions of people who appear in those pictures, and whose private properties appear, did not give their permission to have their pictures taken and put on the internet. People seem to have accepted it (with some exceptions), but it's still creepy.
As everyone has noticed, Flyover removes most transitory objects like people and moving cars - I imagine through an automated process of rendering stationary objects into 3D rather than manual removal due to privacy concerns. But still: Much less creepy.
In addition, street view has a more clunky interface than Flyover. Basically you're just tapping through consecutive photos in street view (is it still like this in Android?), whereas in Flyover you can pinch and zoom and pan around much more smoothly. Street view feels much more like a separate mode that you have to get into and out of, whereas flyover feels like just a more detailed map view.
Of course Flyover doesn't get down as far and provide nearly the kind of detail as street view, and so I imagine that Apple will eventually do street view too. But I sorta hope they find ways to make flyover a better replacement for street view instead of just doing it the same way google has.
