I disagree. The crowdsourced alerts (police and accidents) are the most valuable, but those also happen to be the alerts that Apple Maps doesn’t support. Apple Maps integration with Apple Watch makes it great if you don’t have CarPlay or for walking directions, but the value of having alerting and near real-time data feeding in from drivers far surpass the data Apple is getting from DOTs.
In addition, I find Apple Maps‘ ”selective” use of traffic colors confusing and inconsistent. As much as I hate to admit it, I prefer the way Google shows traffic lines/colors for all roads where they have data.
The question I was answering was "does Apple Maps have live traffic updates?"
It does. And considering nearly every iPhone out there transmits the data whether or not someone even has Maps open, I'd say it is really accurate.
Preference regarding showing green, yellow and red lines in Google versus showing "none", yellow and red lines in Apple Maps is nothing more than that...preference.
It varies from city to city/country to country, but there seems to be no discernible difference between what Apple Maps shows from a traffic standpoint to what Google shows other than what I pointed out above regarding "normal" areas where cars stop like at stop signs and traffic lights.
Is Google showing a red line at every single intersection that has a stop sign or traffic light really "traffic?" If you prefer seeing that, than fine. I prefer Apple's method of showing traffic (or better yet, not showing where it isn't).
They both use the same government submitted data as well as movement info from their products (phones, tablets, etc.). Google has an advantage when it comes to crowd sourced data (via Waze for the most part) where they show construction/police speed traps. I'm not sure Apple will ever allow that sort of direct user input.
My own tests of Google Maps features a couple of weeks ago on a 1,500 mile road trip failed. Not one police or construction alert despite seeing many and the traffic updates were out of synch (showing traffic when none was there). It also crashed on me several times on CarPlay...like, just stopped navigating.....I had to switch back to Apple Maps for that reason after a few hundred miles. Maybe the new features aren't widely released yet?? And I would love to try it on an Android device or Android Auto in my car as I hear it is much better on their own platform.