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Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.
For example, see random part of Poland: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/52.1081/21.1167
Main power of Google is live traffic data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Easter Europe even Google Maps are much worse that OpenStreetMaps.
Here maps is good too. I'm always amazed how it consistently gets the speed limit right even in sparsely populated areas and small towns, where the speed limit often changes literally every 50 meters.
Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.
> ...it'll take decades ... I'm very literal. Google maps was released in 2005. The upper limit on how long it would take Apple to build the whole thing from literally nothing is 15 years, if they are investing to improve their service. Let alone with computer vision, satellite imagery, hardware improvements and the ability to lazily copy the interface Google has created which would speed the process up.
Street numbers seems like a pretty big weakness for open source datasets. If all you have is the name of a 1km street, you only get 1km precision.
The APIs from other commercial providers (e.g. TomTom) have better data, but noticeably worse search. I don't think they make their raw data available except for very large deals.
Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.
In Easter Europe even Google Maps are much worse that OpenStreetMaps.
> They appear, to me, to be acting from a place of fear and conservatism rather than innovation. Bingo. Here's a fun exercise: try to find the last genuinely useful feature added to the Maps API in the release notes. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/... To give you a taste, here's the largest change made in 3.42: > InfoWindows now have a default max width of 648px which can be overridden by…
Do you open Google maps and frown when it does the same reliable simple thing it always has? I don’t
Apple is so far behind outside of the places they prioritize that it'll take decades at this pace to get on Google Maps' current level. It's really useless in places like Eastern Europe, where Apple has no interest in supporting and isn't likely that it'll turn that around any time soon.
Mapy.cz is far better than Google in case of Slovakia or Czech Republic. They have full coverage of high resolution pictures taken from planes and not satellites. Also these contain all the hiking, cycling and other routes. The native Android and iOS apps work great and support offline maps - you can download the whole map for a country with one click. Google Maps is unusable for sport or hiking because you only see…
Much of this is stuff the software based on OSM isn't even trying, or doing so only very half heartedly, as far as I am aware. On the flipside, OSM is, in many places, peerless in its core competency, a detailed map that everyone can use.
> They appear, to me, to be acting from a place of fear and conservatism rather than innovation. Bingo. Here's a fun exercise: try to find the last genuinely useful feature added to the Maps API in the release notes. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/... To give you a taste, here's the largest change made in 3.42: > InfoWindows now have a default max width of 648px which can be overridden by…