I'm excited about the Share ETA feature. Every night after work, I get in the car, open Google maps, get the ETA and text my wife my expected arrival time. If this works out well it will be one less thing I have to remember to do.
Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
281–290 of 476 posts
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seem to remember someone posting their results of testing Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze for ETA accuracy, and what you describe was also what they found: Apple Maps was the most accurate, Google Maps was optimistic, but accurate, Waze basically reported the best case scenario. Edit: found the original [0] I've long thought that Waze creates the illusion of saving massive amounts of time, when its benefits are m…
After using Waze for over a couple of years, I really started getting the impression that I was just a data pawn in a bunch of A/B tests -- like send this one down that route, send that one down the other way & see what happens.
The flipside to me is that Waze will send lots of people down the "time saving" path, which is usually a small road, and kinda defeats the purpose.
I think Waze only really saved time when it wasn't popular. Once everyone takes the same shortcut, you're back where you started.
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Is it Apple Maps bad?" --Gavin Belson, Silicon Valley They had no place to go but up. That first version was absolutely embarrassing. I'm honestly surprised they were allowed to make it this far. To this day, I still do not use Apple Maps. As much as they try to get me to use it with all of the iOS embedding they've done, I still won't use it.
This update may make me switch from Google Maps. The UI in Google Maps has always been confusing and cluttered. There's a search bar, then quick search buttons underneath, then the layers button, "Explore nearby", explore, commute, "For you", and then finally the hamburger menu. Apple Maps is a lot cleaner but the only thing missing was the quality of the actual maps. Hopefully that has changed now.
Google maps used to be fantastic, but in the last year or so it's become so fucking toxic - constantly spamming suggestions and asking questions, even during navigation (in other words, distracting me from driving!).
Apple maps may not be quite as good (the lack of cycling in my neck of the woods is annoying) but at least it's not trying to crash my car.
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#284At this point, I absolutely hate when people use Apple Maps to find our community college. Apple just plain refuses to acknowledge the town we are located in exists. It also ignores all businesses on the reservation and points to the local Coca-Cola bottling location as the closest grocery store. I've filed bugs going back years and no changes. Privacy and UI cannot overcome really poor data.
Google has these sorts of problems too. It fails at correctly parsing examples straight out of the Canada Post Addressing Guidelines. [1]
Put in "10-123 Main St, Montreal QC H3Z 2Y7" into Google Maps and it will take you to "10 Main St, Montreal QC H3Z 5X3" Or, rather, it would if that was a real address. The correct building would be to "123 Main St, Montreal QC H3Z 2Y7".
[1]: https://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/manual/PGaddress-e.asp?ec...
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#285it seems that OSM is a data pivot point -- Apple and Google are directly competing with OSM (super-walled-garden-data) while Facebook, Microsoft and who-knows-who-defense are augmenting OSM as fast as possible
> Apple and Google are directly competing with OSM Apple Maps _is_ OpenStreetMap in many countries. In Denmark it's used for turn-by-turn navigation even. (Source: Talk by Apple employee at the OSM'a 'State of the Map' conference 2018 https://2018.stateofthemap.org/2018/T081-Working_with_the_Co... )
this is interesting of course - but, the topic post here is "Brand New Maps, North America Only" ?
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
After using Waze for over a couple of years, I really started getting the impression that I was just a data pawn in a bunch of A/B tests -- like send this one down that route, send that one down the other way & see what happens.
Absolutely sure Google Maps A/B tests routes too. Even when sitting next to each other in the same car, Google Maps suggests radically different routes to the same destination on my wife’s phone than it does on mine, often with a 15+ min difference in arrival time. It must be testing different routing algorithms as otherwise they should be the same.
Could also be an optimal routing thing too. If google maps sends everyone down the same path it might become too congested. Especially if the route is a detour around construction or and accident or something.
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I'm quite happy with Openstreetmap's directions for biking (I mostly use OSMand, but there are other apps/routers). They have elevation, private/public roads, road surface, bike lanes, etc, and routers can take it into account. Of course, that doesn't really take into account varying laws, but that might be reflected in the maps themselves (private/public places, bikes allowed/disallowed, etc). See also https:/…
Openstreermap drives me crazy. They use the designations “town” and “city” as a way of ranking places in terms of importance. Here in the UK that designation is almost arbitrary. There are several large towns with greater population and navigational importance than surrounding smaller cities. All the commercial map providers, including Apple Maps, grok that. Only opensteetmap seems still rigidly to the town < city th…
In the UK, the City designation is political and not based on size. So I agree, a worthless proxy for size.
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#288Shameless plug, but we just shipped our huge Gaia Topo update too. Gaia Topo focuses on the backcountry, and specifically downloading for offline use: https://blog.gaiagps.com/easy-to-read-tiny-to-download-the-a...
I've thought for a while that your Gaia Topo layer could be improved, especially because until now I don't think you had any hillshade at all for a topo map! I spent some time checking out your map this morning, and it looks really nice at low zooms, but I'm still a little disappointed at high zooms. At zoom 13 the hillshading ends! For example, at zoom 14, I still much prefer a map with a hillshade (my own work): ht…
That's fair... we chose to drop the shading at that zoom, but we could be wrong. I think some people prefer a cleaner read when zoomed in so far (especially for field use), and shading also makes the tiles larger/slower to download.
Gaia GPS does have a separate raster hill-shading layer from ESRI you could layer on top, and we've been considering making our own (we already have an elevation data pipeline and create contour lines, so hill-shading isn't a huge step). Maybe that would have a special UX where you could choose to include it or not in your downloads.
I dig your map style!
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#289Apple maps sucks. I use google maps on iOS.
Re: Apple delivers a new redesigned Maps for users in the United States
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is absolutely true, but it's not unique to Apple Maps. I've had an issue with the major road near my house in Google Maps for over three years, where it thinks a certain stretch is either absent or impassible. It shows it on the visual map, but it will go to astounding lengths to route you around that one-block stretch of (perfectly fine) road. I have reported it MANY times, and nothing has ever changed.
That's the nice thing with OpenStreetMap & mapping services using data from it. You can just register to OSM and fix the data and that's it. The OSM interface will update almost instantly while services based on OSM data will get the fix once they do their next data update.
What’s to protect against false/bad/malicious data?