Comment by btown
16 hours ago
Ternus recently gave an interview where he said this about the initial flop of Apple Maps:
> “When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy,” said Ternus. “But the team had just been over the years just pushing and pushing and pushing. And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. If you have the vision and you're persistent and you keep working at it, you can take something you know that has a rocky start and turn it into something great.”
Here's hoping he recognizes that Apple's current generation of software is in the "rocky start" phase, not the "pushing and pushing" phase and definitely not the "absolutely amazing" phase. Time will tell...
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/apples-joz-and-ternus-on...
>And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing.
Perhaps that is the case in the US, but in Poland, I haven't had a single app guide me into the literal bushes as many times as Apple Maps does. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, I shit you not, the navigation aspect literally expected me to drive through a lake.
This may just be my bubble, but even among my iPhone-owning friends, I haven't seen a single person use Apple Maps in Europe, so I wouldn't be surprised if the efforts to improve the map data have been more focused on the US.
I’m in Europe. I use it as part of Apple CarPlay for all my navigation and I think it’s much better than Google Maps (for car navigation, at least)
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German here and me and my wife almost exclusively use Apple Maps, mainly because it looks and feels nicer. The differences in navigation are miniscule, but if we want to really check the traffic before we start we do a quick glance at Google maps. One difference in navigation we noticed is, that Apple Maps gives some small local streets - those just one revel above "Feldwege" (agricultural/forestry roads) - more weight than they should have. They are not really "single track" (almost unheard of in Germany) but come close, with no lane delineation dashes, etc.
European here. Been using Apple Maps exclusively for the best part of a decade now.
It’s quite good in both Spain and UK. Better at public transport than Google Maps.
Europe here. We have a friend who always gets lost and for that we call him "Apple Maps".
I've used it quite a lot in Europe - specifically for walking directions in cities. I prefer Apple Maps for walking directions, especially paired with the watch - the data is good and the UX with the watch is excellent.
I'm from Europe and I use it 99% of the time. I find the UI in satnav mode much better (cleaner and readable) than the one Google Maps has. The only time I use Google Maps is when I really want to find something that's not in Apple Maps or when I want to read reviews without fumbling with the web browser.
The reason is that Google are highly commercialized first on thier maps, while Apple focused on major markets. E.g. I can remember the times like 2017, when Apple maps was as rocky as possible, but they were working fine in Shenzhen with matching chines to transcriptions, while Google maps sucked at scale there.
Here in the UK, Apple maps is the only app I use. I dont even use the inbuilt car gps.
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I changed to it for car navigation. It's a less cluttered interface and integrates better with voice control than Google maps. I still use Google to find out what's around me in a city, which is probably where the money is.
I can’t reply to sibling comment, but the Apple Maps native integration in the Apple ecosystem is far far ahead of Google’s. Their CarPlay, Watch, notifications, island etc integration shows how all apps should feel, but not even Google can be bothered to have the integration right.
to be frank, I have a feeling that Google has more / better data.
in Japan apple maps is commonly used.
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I use it all the time, because its driving directions interface is so much better than Google, it's not even funny. But it is overall worse than Google Maps.
And they are planning to make it even worse with ads, so.
Well, back in the days, it took Apple 3 years to fix umlauts in PDF documents with VoiceOver. It is pretty much normal that you're being treated as a second-class user if you are not residing in the US. It is a form of digital colonialism. Learn english, move to the US, or suffer the death of a thausand cuts.
The interface and the direction instructions on Apple Maps are way ahead of Google Maps. The app performance is also much smoother / snappier, it connects to the car instantly and reliably, where with Android Auto it’been always waiting and pain. But the accuracy of maps is indeed worse.
However my biggest gripe with Apple Maps in Poland is that Siri does not understand Polish and cannot be told to navigate to a Polish address. It just can’t understand the street and city names :(
Btw: I haven’t counted the times Google Maps wanted me to go through the worst possible traffic jam (where the traffic jam was not visible on the map) or a closed road. I guess it just happens with every navigation system that errors happen.
It does not understand English either :)
Very regionally dependent.
Around here (Long Island, New York, USA), it’s better than Google Maps. I get to compare a lot, because I have a friend that uses GM, and constantly sends me Google Maps universal links.
I hear that it is a lot less effective in rural areas, though, and I think Google Street View is better than the Apple variant.
I'm using almost exclusively Apple Maps in Poland and never had any issue (that I remember). Your mileage may vary and so on.
Apple Maps only works well in North America, possibly just the US. The same way a lot of happy paths in Apple products are designed for California/Single Culture/Single Language/Single Residence.
Anecdotal evidence, but I do use Apple Maps in Poland and they work just fine for me, I guess the mileage may vary.
So does my father - but then again, it is important to remember the context. It's not going to be an issue if you only drive in big cities or on main roads. The only time I really need to use GPS to navigate is going out into the complete boonies, and Waze does that expertly. Apple Maps, meanwhile, helps me remember my Mercedes' stock navigation, which is forever locked in 2011 and runs in 256 colors. :-)
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They do work for me either, but I have learned to double check the locations of POIs with Google Maps to make sure I’ll arrive at the correct place.
Personally I doubt they test the hardware outside an air conditioned and dust less office in California.
I made the mistake of trusting Google Maps with driving directions in Sicily, and it always sent me down tiny single lane (but two way) roads because they were "better" by the algorithm. That taught me to trust my gut and follow the highways/main roads rather than use any shortcuts that an algorithm can conjure up. (I'm sure this has relevance in the age of LLMs).
These reports seem unhelpful unless you specify the date at which you had this experience, as this thread is about continuous improvement over time.
Well, even generally much better Google maps sometimes tries to force me through unpaved field roads with unavoidable damage to normal cars. Or create absolutely ridiculous 'shortcuts' that save 5 metres but I should exit busy main road to join it again 100m later, spending few minutes trying to join back. Or lead me through forbidden/one way roads from wrong direction that are like that permanently since forever.
Generally they are fine, but not literally in every aspect in every place, Europe or not.
There's some irony there in that the whole maps fiasco lead to firing of Forstall which allowed Ive to become head of design, which basically led to the current state of macOS design.
I do wish that some day someone will tell the story of what happened during that time. Maps was bad at launch yes, but it also wouldn't get better without people contributing more data, and the fact that it took a decade to slowly improve implies that there's nothing anyone could have done to get it right "off the bat". It still feels to me Forstall was set up as the fall guy, especially considering no one was fired for antennagate.
Reportedly, Forstall wasn’t liked by the other senior execs but was kept “safe” as Jobs’ protégé, they thought alike and shared the love for skeuomorphism design. Ive in particular disliked Forstall, and Tim Cook made a choice.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apples-minimalist-ive-assume...
Could Forstall potentially return under new Apple leadership?
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> Maps was bad at launch yes, but it also wouldn't get better without people contributing more data, and the fact that it took a decade to slowly improve implies that there's nothing anyone could have done to get it right "off the bat".
Absolutely.
Was the choice to release way way way too early the right choice in the end? Needed telemetry, or even more time, to beat Google? Also taking the data from Google must have had significant ramifications.
Forstall fired an engineer I had worked with (and who I respected a lot) to take the fall for Apple Maps.
Like one engineer could ever be responsible for that epic of a fiasco?
I’m sure it’s amazing in California or the US. So often I think how much better products would be if the people responsible would have to use them for a week outside of the happy path.
Example: Taking the airport train instead of a private driver and realizing there’s no luggage racks, staying in a regular hotel room and realizing there’s no light in front of the mirror, only behind you. So many examples like that on a daily basis.
Another huge exemple : in most big cities in Europe you have special parking lots around big public transit hubs outside of the city where you can park for free as long as you continue your journey by public transit.
In a lot of cities, that’s either the fastest or the most comfortable way to go somewhere in the city when you come from the outside.
Not any single navigation app support this (tbf, the few European ones don’t support it either)
There was a Not Just Bikes video about how Google Maps is optimised for driving where it pretty much actively hides the biggest walking routes and promotes roads for driving by making them bigger. Useful in the USA for sure but actively harmful in Europe, given that you're more likely to plan a route by which roads you can see, and unless you know what to look for you're not going to find them easily.
Yes. Unfortunately transit between public transit is always walking. No options to take a first part by bike or car, or folding bikes for intermediate hops.
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I think you mean country/region capitals, or countries like Germany.
I can assert than this isn't a thing in most Portuguese big cities, although it would be great to have it.
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My favorite Apple example of this is that when the Apple Watch notices that you're walking/running/biking and asks if you want to start a workout, for some reason you cannot accept it with the double-tap-your-fingers gesture. Which is fine if it's warm outside...but when it's winter in Minnesota, if I want to activate it I have to take one of my gloves off, pull up my sleeves, and put the gloves back on, while bitching about how nobody designing the watch lives in a cold climate. (Especially when I'm on a bike. Riding no-hands in the snow is not a smart idea.)
Another example: When taking HOV and the map asks you if you want HOV enabled, there are no options I can force the navigation to take me to the nearest HOV lane.
If it happens to be there, it will say to use it, but I can't say "Route me to the nearest HOV entrance" because I prefer it even if it's 1 minute slower.
Staying in a holiday rental and there are no hooks on the walls!
I’ve started buying cheap self-adhesive hooks on AliExpress and placing them myself. Not sure if they last long but hopefully owners get the message.
> staying in a regular hotel room and realizing there’s no light in front of the mirror, only behind you.
I'll bite, what does this have to do with Apple Maps?
“When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy…”
And I know many engineers within Apple that had been testing Maps before it shipped and they were filing bugs about it. It shipped anyway.
> It shipped anyway.
“Real artists ship”
No product worth using is bug free.
No product is bug free. Are all products worth using?
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I mean the problem was the Google contract, yeah?
Apple Maps is pretty fantastic
It’s gotten a lot better, but I still find the address database better in Google Maps, which helps when you have only a fragment of an address. I also find that the Apple Maps database has a lot of roads that read the same. For instance, in Texas where I live, we have a lot of “Ranch Roads” that are numbered. Think of them like state highways in other state (which we also have; don’t ask). For whatever reason, most of the Ranch Roads are spoken by Maps as “Ranch Road,” not with the number. So, if you have a spot where multiple Ranch Roads intersect, Maps will just say “turn left on Ranch Road” instead of “turn left on Ranch Road 123.” It’s tremendous annoying. In another state, imagine it saying “turn left on Interstate,” without a number. Anyway, Google Maps does better.
Google is not without its errors.
I used to work to resolve addressing disputes and google just doesn't expose (maybe even store) the relevant information for a lot of parcels of land.
It’s all available freely from the government in simple formats but for Joe Public they don’t know that much less how to access it and it’s the case that technicians on the ground don’t always have it in their SOP either. Google has a level of market dominance that means their errors can be, for a small individual or over an aggregation of small individuals, costly.
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Google Maps often picks the non-idiomatic thing. It'll say the road name when no sign uses that, and it's a US highway that you have been following for a while. Or it will tell you the state highway number when it is a major named artery, and nobody knows that it is a state highway at that point or uses the highway number. This makes it hard to know if it is carrying you along on the same route or if it has come up with one of its weird shortcuts to save 1 minute.
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I hate how Google scrapes business addresses so you get like "There's a grocery store X here" but actually that's just their corporate office building. I see that all the time. Machines just don't know.
On macOS there are so many basic things you’d want to do - share itineraries, annotate places, keep lists of things, but there’s not even a document concept. With the exception of guides, anything you do is ephemeral. It’s excellent at planning a route, but doing anything with that route, including getting back to it later is useless.
All true, but you have to measure it against how enshitified Google Maps has become.
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The app on macOS is terrible, like all Catalyst/SwiftUI ports. Fisher-Price software.
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Maybe elsewhere it is. Here, it's terrible.
In general, for all it benefits from globalization, Apple disappoints on global markets.
In the US. In many other countries it's borderline useless.
I haven't used google maps in years.
90% of my usage of it is because it actually displays the map on my Watch, whereas Google Maps & Citymapper only show directions.
If it weren't for that, I'd use Citymapper for practically everything.
It’s okay. It’s still subpar and barely keeping pace with Gmaps
it was far inferior to its competitor when it was released
That was, what, twelve years ago? Hardly seems relevant.
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And they just added ads.
Apple Maps is definitely not amazing in India. All it's good for is "Find My." Only Google is accurate and has good traffic data.
That's worrying, because Apple Mpas is still a borderline useless hot mess.
What is he smoking?!? Apple Maps was fine a few years ago, but these days it routes me to the wrong place about as often as organic maps, and siri is completely broken. It renders a blue dot showing where I am, and responds “I do not know where you are”.
Also, the UI for it keeps getting more cluttered, and they announced that in-map ads are coming Q2-3 2026.