Geocentric App Developers Compare Apple's MapKit and Google Maps SDK

[Reason077]

So are they implying that Google maps LACKS "longevity" since they listed that on Apple's side.

Really? How is that a checkmark for Apple? Sounds like they needed more in that column to balance it out. I would say both companies have longevity.

What's being referred to here is longevity of the APIs, not the companies.

For the most part, Apple's APIs have remained pretty consistent across iOS versions. It's a pretty safe bet that if you code an app for MapKit today, it's still going to work in iOS 7 and iOS 8 without much major maintenance.

Google, on the other hand, tend to fairly aggressively deprecate and shut down old APIs and drop support for old versions of SDKs. If your app uses a Google SDK, you'll need to keep up and make sure you upgrade your app to the latest SDK versions every so often, and there may be incompatible changes in those SDKs so you'll have to update your code.

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the data itself was supplied by a company with a very long history of premium mapping services and for them to offer such inaccurate data was shocking, Watching them pretty much get away with it while their client gets all the bad press was worse.

Well, TomTom supplied the ROAD data for Maps, which to be fair isn't that bad. It's everything else that's the problem.

 

[samcraig]

What's being referred to here is longevity of the APIs, not the companies.

For the most part, Apple's APIs have remained pretty consistent across iOS versions. It's a pretty safe bet that if you code an app for MapKit today, it's still going to work in iOS 7 and iOS 8 without much major maintenance.

Google, on the other hand, tend to fairly aggressively deprecate and shut down old APIs and drop support for old versions of SDKs. If your app uses a Google SDK, you'll need to keep up and make sure you upgrade your app to the latest SDK versions every so often, and there may be incompatible changes in those SDKs so you'll have to update your code.

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Well, TomTom supplied the ROAD data for Maps, which to be fair isn't that bad. It's everything else that's the problem.

Understood. And I agree with that if that's what statement was being made. As for the application. I don't think Apple or Google Maps is going anywhere.

 

[CShort]

He might be referring to the stability of the API. Google has a history of changing things up.

I'll go with that, I'm still using a very old version of Nokia Maps API, in the set-up I say I'm using version xxxx and even though I still get the old maps it works. Whereas with Google they changed some of the location API's and a tracking website we use doesn't work under certain circumstances.
If found at the time (years ago) that they are both easy API's to develop with.

 

[Zaim2]

What is being cancelled is not JUST Reader as an app; what is being cancelled is the Reader API and the Reader service, as used by a large number of 3rd party apps.

To be fair it was an unofficial API which was scraped/backwards-engineered by third party developers. Google didn't explicitly offer it up for use.

 

[noktulo]

I think you might mean "geography-centered"?

The word "geocentric" refers to the earth being at the center of something (usually in reference to people who believe the sun revolves around the earth rather than the other way around), not "related to geography" as I think you meant it.

 

[Object-X]

3D & heading control

Google's API allows you control the heading, MapKit forces you orient the map North. Google's API also allows you to display a map using the 3D perspective, not so with MapKit.