Wow. New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every which way. Not that this comes as a surprise...
Navigation is great, so much better than Siri's dreadful voice, easy to navigate from A>B with a tap of your destination. Let's not even mention the street data.
Great 3D flyovers, but no satellite-3D flyovers (if you're worried about that you probably have too much time to waste during the day - this is a maps app, to take you places, not give you a tour of Los Angeles).
UI feels great - intuitive, fluid, multi-touch works fantastic. Heard someone mention that it "lacks polish" or feels "laggy" - not sure I agree with that - feels fast on an iPhone 5 and on a 4S side-by-side. UI is clean and not cluttered, that's a plus. Someone else mentioned that it's simply GMaps in a UIWebView - no chance for that.
Of course, the public transport data is second to none. The data in general - we won't discuss that.
>> New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every which way.
* Rendering is faster on Apple Maps
* Apple Maps caches a much larger area offline, while Google Maps is basically useless without a network connection
* Apple Maps integration in iOS apps is better than embedding Google Maps, which is very obvious if you compare 3rd party public transit apps that use Apple Maps to Google transit directions.
Not saying Apple Maps is nearly as good as Google Maps (because it isn't), but 'totally annihilates Apple Maps in every way' is simply not true.
> * Apple Maps caches a much larger area offline, while Google Maps is basically useless without a network connection
Google Maps for Android has the possibility of caching e.g. a whole city offline, which is great for travelling (since we haven't solved roaming yet). It might be a Labs feature. The iOS client has been lagging so bad, I figured they would have fixed a lot in the new version.
They took the map caching feature out of Labs in one of the recent updates a few months ago, so you can simply select My Places from the navigation dropdown and then swipe to the offline section to cache some maps. It is still a little wonky though since Google Maps is so dependent on network connectivity for everything, so I tend to open the offline maps while I still have a wi-fi/3g connection just to make sure it loads properly.
Who makes the "Navigation" app that I've found on every Android phone I've used? It's been quite useful without a data connection for a daily commute. (It probably would not survive a trip to another city.)
Navigation is a Google app designed specifically to interface with maps. It seems with the new iOS maps they have just build Navigation straight into the app.
That's interesting that Apple Maps caches a much larger area. That would be worth considering if the data is any good. A larger cache and faster rendering of crap data just means the crap stinks that much more. When Apple's data gets better, then this will be more awesome.
I've been getting around the "no network" issue by using the Garmin app anyways.
Unfortunately, the better integration of Apple's app is something I have not figured a work around. Other than getting an Android phone, I mean.
>Wow. New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every which way
Once you get past the onerous task of searching for your destination, i found Apple Maps to be much better
When it's not shoving down a Google account login down your throat, places where Google maps is better (exactly where you'd expect it be)
1 - In POI and searching. However in the limited searches i did (in the Bay area so i guess the Apple Maps critics immediately discount that) both did the same. Given the widely documented inaccuracies and just downright lack of data in the rest of the world, this is probably orders of magnitude better.
2 - Public transit - This is obviously a no-contest. Apple Maps just doesn't have it.
3 - map data - This is probably the same as POIs.
>Navigation is great, so much better than Siri's dreadful voice, easy to navigate from A>B with a tap of your destination.
Navigation isn't great on Apple maps because of Siri's "dreadful voice" ?
>Great release - welcome back
I agree but the whole annahilation bit a quite hyperbolic.
>Isn't the purpose of maps to find your destination?
True. Google has everyone beat in finding things. These advantages are apparent in the Google maps website itself.
Once found though Apple Maps is smoother, more responsive and, in general pleasing to look at (although the last part is subjective and personal preference and many people will find the Google Maps better maybe).
Map data deficiences in Apple maps are well documented at this point and map data is the single most important thing about a map. Google Maps is superior ( and i'm guessing outside of the bay area/the US, orders of magnitude better ).
I did miss out on another big advantage of Google Maps - Street view (which i guess is part of the data but it is still unique to Google Maps)
The original comment waxed lyrical about how it "annahilates" Apple Maps in "every which way" which didn't gel with my experience. it's better in the parts it is expected to be. I wonder if anybody, let alone Apple, will ever be able to come even close to Google Maps for sheer data.
I wonder where the variation in performance is coming from. I'm reading some anecdotes saying Google Maps is more responsive and some saying Apple Maps is. On the same hardware. Perhaps they are using different definitions of "responsive"? Can you elaborate on your experience?
Some people do not notice the difference between 20fps and 60fps. But there's more to that than responsiveness. In comparing the two apps: How quickly do searches happen? When clicking on a result, how quickly does the info card come out? How long does it take to draw the map when you pan to a distant part of the map?
One of my fellow Australians posted. Here's my review of Google Maps, using his post as a basis for my post ;)
My findings:
For searching. Google Maps has a much better autocomplete all round. Faster, more readable and elegant. Once you have selected an entry then Apple Maps jumps straight there. Google Maps does a handy move animation showing me the relative location, although it slows things down a litte. I LOVE this feature.
For panning. Apple Maps is equivalent to Google Maps. Apple Maps has a fade in transition for loaded tiles which is a nice touch.
For POIs. Apple Maps is showing me a few POIs - often in the wrong place. Google Maps is showing me all key POIs in exactly the right place. Google Maps is the first mapping product to get my home address correct (TomTom, Navigon, Garmin, Apple).
For UI. Google Maps has a nicer UI. Apple Maps requires you to click on a small button which goes to a separate screen with more options. I really like the sidebar that Google implemented.
Overall. Google Maps has much better street data and nicer UI. Apple Maps had a smooth UI, showed POIs in the wrong spot here in Australia.
I think the competition is great. Looking forward to seeing if Apple can lift their socks on the next incarnation of Maps - they have a LONG way to go.
For searching. Google Maps has a much better autocomplete all round. Faster, more readable and elegant. Once you have selected an entry then Apple Maps jumps straight there. Google Maps does this pointless move animation making it about 2-3x slower.
For panning. Apple Maps is definitely smoother and has a higher frame rate. Especially if you have traffic/hybrid mode enable in which case even on my iPhone 5 Google Maps is lagging really badly. The biggest difference is that Apple Maps shows you a checkerboard for missing tiles whilst Google Maps has a blurred image. Apple Maps also has a fade in transition for loaded tiles which is a nice touch.
For POIs. Apple Maps is showing me lots of restaurants, bars etc. Google Maps is showing me nothing. This is in both Sydney and Melbourne.
For UI. Google Maps has a much better UI with info card. Apple Maps requires you to click on a small button which goes to a separate screen with more options. I really hate the sidebar that Google implemented. It is far too difficult to click with the tiny button especially one handed. And it isn't that intuitive that the street view picture is actually a button.
Overall. Google Maps has much better street data. Apple Maps had a much smoother UI, actually showed POIs here in Australia and the inbuilt 3D view is better implemented. The 2.0 versions of both apps should be real nice.
I've found that in Melbourne that while Apples maps have a lot of data, its all very very stale. I live I'm the Eastern suburbs, a lot of the places of interest are very old. Shops that haven't been there for years are listed, and large points like Universities are completely absent. It makes finding a particular shop or business near impossible.
The road data is good buy very old. Roads that are listed have has buildings on them for years, dead ends aren't, just general mapping issues there. For some reason they've listed half the tram stops as train stations too, which doesn't really help.
I want to love them. The vector map tiles are silky smooth an very easy to navigate. The app is well thought out and easy to use. I just wish they'd used better sources for their data.
Googler here. I'm seeing POIs in Melbourne and Sydney - you're seeing nothing? Even zoomed all the way in? It sounds like a bug. Could you provide a link of where you're looking? If you tap and hold in the viewport, slide up the address page, and hit share you can copy a url.
> i'm guessing outside of the bay area/the US, orders of magnitude better
On the contrary, iOS 5 maps (Google bitmap tiles) and iOS 6 maps (Apple vectors), were generally comparable in Rome during the month of September. Neither was ideal, and cross referencing both helped.
For driving, Navigon Europe beat them both quite handily.
What's more, during my visit to Italy, the iOS 6 maps improved several times. As one example, in early September the areas between streets were a single background color, but by the time I left, they showed shaded buildings for every block.
By now, the historic center is rendered in astonishing "3D buildings" mode, making the hybrid view the easiest way to orient yourself among the maze of twisty streets and fantastic landmarks. Google Earth is cool, but doesn't look like the real city in miniature, and has severe memory problems showing Rome when zoomed close enough for rectangular instead of triangular buildings. I'm not going to say Apple's view "annihilates" Google Earth, but it feels like a completely new generation of technology by comparison.
Using the new Google Maps, asking for transit directions in Rome today says none are available for the region.
Doing the same in Apple maps offers to launch Navigon Europe on my phone which has "Urban Guidance" for Rome, but also gives me a list of local data specialist apps such as In Arrivo! HD (which claims to have real time bus positions).
All this said, when browsing Rome the new Google Maps app is significantly more speedy than the iOS 5 version, though it suffers from the early Apple Maps problem of having no data for roads (much less POIs) when zoomed out even a little, and when zoomed in a bit, is very challenging to read at a glance and still misses most points of interest.
> Google has everyone beat in finding things.
In the Trastevere restaurant neighborhood, Apple's data shows 10 restaurants for every 1 on Google Maps, any of which can be tapped to see a photo of the building and read reviews on Yelp. Google Maps, if zoomed in far enough, eventually shows you the POI, and can be tapped for a street view panorama rather than the actual storefront.
The wildly popular local seafood hangout "Fish Market"[1] shows up on Apple Maps with 3.5 stars and 5 reviews, but doesn't show up at all on Google Maps. Searching for it sends you to the other side of the Tiber, to an actual fish market.
My point isn't that Apple Maps data is better, but that to a local who is looking for differences, either product can be shown to come up short. This suggests neither is "orders of magnitude" (presumably meaning at least 100x) better than the other, even when comparing this new offering rather than the iOS 5 version.
For me, the missing piece in Google Maps is that it does not integrate with my contacts. Most of my searches are based on contacts. Probably coming in v2. Otherwise pretty solid.
The in-app search widget could allow you to type in names of contacts. It doesn't at the moment. Well. It does, but it doesn't actually search for the contacts address
Where I live, annihilation is actually an apt description. Apple Maps is completely unusable for me. I don't know how they managed to put the airport where _it used to be 25 years ago_, for instance. It can't find one of the biggest swimming halls outside of town, and last time I needed driving directions it put me on the wrong side of a roadblock, whereas Google Maps routed me the correct way (running on an old iOS device).
When it's not shoving down a Google account login down your throat, places where Google maps is better (exactly where you'd expect it be)
How is it shoving a Google account down your throat? It took me a minute to find where to log into my Google account so that I could retrieve my saved Maps places.
How do you contrast this with Apple Maps, which transparently uses an iCloud account on the backend?
Do you lay the blame on Google? Or Apple, for not having system-wide account services for Google (as they do with Facebook and Twitter).
i don't want to log in to an account.
Everytime i tap search, three fourths of the screen is filled with how my life would better if logged in to my account. It's a big nag screen.
Try logging in. The results may surprise you. If you use Chrome signed-in on your computer it will remember your recent map searches from your computer and pop them up first on your phone. Pretty useful feature if you ask me, and it will get rid of "the big nag screen"
I'm absolutely certain it will be pretty nifty. However, once i have willingly decided not to do a login ( i don't use gmail or Chrome ) it should just not feel the need to shove that to my face everytime. A first time setup prompt is all that is needed and once you say no it should tell you " ok, you're missing out but in case you do feel like trying it out - it's in settings->log into account".
Since Apple Maps works perfectly fine for my area ( yes, i'm aware there's a world outside the Bay Area where Apple Maps is horrible), the constant nag for a login is enough to for me to stop using it. It is an awesome app though.
I find that rather annoying too. Every other click it seems to be asking me to login to my Google account. Kind of makes me wonder why they are so insistent.. Good way to get data for local ads?
> Wow. New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every
> which way.
Especially in nagging about signing-in department. Otherwise…
It still does not have public transoport or transit data where I live and also das have its own share of misspelings.
"totally annihilates" is totally incorrect.
I was surprised that when I swiped lift and hit 'public transit' it reported no data for Vancouver, sing Gmaps has supported directions for transit for a long time.
It turns out that getting directions via transit works as expected. I'm not even sure what the transit link when you swipe left is supposed to show. So it's a weak ui in that respect, but the app gives me what I was missing.
The function of the "transit" button seems a little weird generally (in web maps too).
My observation is that it (1) turns off some of the excessive highlighting of highways and other roads (which for some reason is done by default even in very transit-oriented cities), and (2) it turns on highlighting of "rapid transit" lines.
Unfortunately the definition of "rapid transit" used for this function is sometimes very poorly thought out.
For instance, Tokyo has a massive rail system that covers the entire metropolitan area with a fairly consistent level of service. However Google maps only considers the city-center subways—which form about 25% of the entire system—to be "rapid transit", although from a user's point of view there's very little difference between subways and most other rail lines in Tokyo (they generally use similar scheduling, rolling stock, stations, and even station spacing in many cases). So enabling the transit option in Tokyo highlights subways, but it actually de-emphasizes many other (essentially equivalent) rail lines!
The only thing I can think of is that the design of this feature was based on the particular city (e.g. NYC), and then sort of slapped onto other locations without a whole lot of actual thought... :(
If you're into 3D satellite views, this is available in the Google Earth for iOS app. Google launched the 3D flyover stuff in that app a couple of months before Apple released iOS 6, so it's been around for a while.
If you have Google Earth already installed, then you can jump directly to that app in the swipe-left menu of the new Google Maps app (and it will even jump to where you were looking in the Google Maps app, so it's pretty seamless transition).
The little up and down arrows to the left of each post let you upvote or downvote a post. (If you're below the karma threshold, you won't see the down arrow.)
The purpose of voting is to sort comments on the page, so that you can save time by only reading the first (theoretically, the "best") N comments in a thread.
It's changed a few times over the years, so I wouldn't get your hopes up. I've lost and gained it before. I think it was around 100 when I joined, then it went up to 250 or so, now it's apparently 500.
> Heard someone mention that it "lacks polish" or feels "laggy" - not sure I agree with that - feels fast on an iPhone 5 and on a 4S side-by-side.
Personal experience report on an iPhone 4: the app is laggy as hell with one to two seconds of delay when dragging. You have to actively combat inertia to navigate around, and minimal movement occasionally sent me overshooting by multiple screenfuls. Also, it keeps wanting to turn north around on the slightest twist when zooming, which is even harder to handle due to lag.
> Someone else mentioned that it's simply GMaps in a UIWebView - no chance for that.
That's not how it looks, but that's exactly how it feels. Well, that's also how it looks on the login screen given the overflowing sign-in form. The drag lag on the map feels like the typical JS-overriden scrolling. I'd really not be surprised if it is a UIWebView and a properly designed web app (not web site backportedly shoved in as an app).
On this hardware, Apple Maps has a clear victory on the performance and interaction front.
Want slow? Try an iPod touch :) Though I definitely agree - that drag-lag feels exactly like it's a UIWebView... hm. I wonder if it is. A very well-constructed one, to be sure, but so far I've only seen supporting evidence, nothing that would make me say "definitely not".
Running on an iPhone 4 here, no real lag, maybe a few milliseconds, but that's natural. What kind of connection are you on and are we talking satellite view or classic view?
Living in Iceland, the largest difference for me is that the app is actually usable. Apple's data (and satellite photo resolution) for small/remote places such as Iceland is absolutely horrendous.
Does living in the Bay Area color my view of Apple Maps? Because honestly, I use it nearly everyday to navigate and it's never let me down. It's actually a pleasant surprise and works pretty well with other apps I'm using at the same time, like Spotify in the car.
Yeah - I think it does. I do a fair bit of travelling and use maps a lot since I have the worlds worst sense of direction.
There are some places it's fine. Other places it's problematical. Other places it's a complete disaster.
The last two categories seem to outweigh the first for me. In the UK especially where basic things like searching for local train stations (we actually use public transport quite a bit here ;-) seem to fail completely in large chunks of the country.
Since my experience of Google Maps on the iPhone until the switch over was that - as long as I could get GPS and an internet connection - 100% fine the Apple maps app is a complete fail for me. I can understand that there might be reasons for it being necessary from the business perspective - but for me personally it now means I have had to have three map apps on my home screen to get around rather than just one.
I'm hoping I can switch back to Google Maps to have one thing that works.
I'm in Pittsburgh and also have never had a problem with Apple Maps. It fails at a "fuzzy search" like "shadyside" (a neighborhood in Pittsburgh), but if you give it a specific address or type the correct name of a place it works fine. Fuzzy search is admittedly why Gmaps is still way better.
I live in Tennessee, and Apple Maps has taken me: to what it thought was a grocery store but was actually a church; to the middle of a subdivision in search of a coffee shop; and to a nonexistent entrance ramp to a highway.
In the UK (although just outside and around London, so data is probably quite good) my experience has been that if your driving the directions work about as well as Google Maps. If you're traveling by public transport its useless, since it just doesn't support it. Finding places is also really hit and miss, sometimes it works fine, and other times I'll get pointed to some place in Texas despite there being an identically named place within a few miles of me.
Based on my anecdotal experience in the UK outside of London it's fine.
I'm not going to say I can't see what the fuss has been about as I've seen enough examples to know that there are real and significant problems, but I can say where I live (west of Scotland) for my use cases (basic searching and navigation) I've not had anything to complain about.
I wouldn't be surprised that Apple Maps works better in the Bay Area because Apple is based in Cupertino, so it's more thoroughly tested. It's pretty bad on the East Coast.
It is really well done. The sensor-based street view navigation is a nice touch. I'm not sure I'd call it a clear winner over Apple's maps app though. I expect I'll be using both in the future.
I have to agree. While it's nice to have access to Google's long-aquired dataset as a native app, both the previous Google based/Apple designed app and the current look and feel more polished and considered.
Yeah dude, totally annihilates Apple Maps...provided you don't want to do any zany edge case actions like, oh I don't know, rename a bookmark from a random street address to an easily readable name like "Tim's House". But yeah, who would ever want to do that? Totally annihilates it. Yup.
Or maybe it's possible I'm a regular nerd who happens to want Google to address what I think is a useful feature? I've rehashed my sentiments three times in this thread in hopes of it gaining visibility. Nobody outside of one guy seems to have noticed this.
Also, the Google Maps app for iOS hadn't been out for more than an hour and already users were touting how it was flat out better without even having used the damn thing out in the real world. How is that being an Apple shill? If anything, I'm saying: reserve your judgement until after you've used it for a week in the meat space, and don't claim it "annihilates" Apple Maps at 1 am in your dinosaur pajamas after it has been out for only an hour.
Definitely don't agree that the voice is any better. I'm still impressed by the improvements we've made with synthesized speech (anyone remember the PowerPC AVs?), but both Google and Apple have work to do here and I actually prefer Siri to the voice on Google Maps. They both are really funny attempting to pronounce certain street names. There should be a feedback mechanism to help improve that.
As an android user, this is not at all the same app we've had for a while now. The UI is very different and takes some getting used to. There's a lot more animation and transitions, they're really taking advantage of having everything in one screen. (As opposed to android where everything is broken up into activities which have very limited transitions)
I'd be surprised if they polished anything, considering you can't exactly reuse Java code when writing an Obj-C app. They just have a lot of very talented engineers and actually cared about making it nice.
You can't be serious about public transportation data. Google maps for city like New York are the most outdated I've seen online! Totally unreliable with subway lines that do not even run anymore!
I found/find the UI confusing. It doesnt feel like an ios app at all. It doesnt even feel like maps.google.com. With that said, it is good to have it back on the iPhone.
I generally agree, but there is one respect in which Apple Maps is scads better than Google Maps. It's not exactly important, but it is really nice: Typography.
Navigation is great, so much better than Siri's dreadful voice, easy to navigate from A>B with a tap of your destination. Let's not even mention the street data.
Great 3D flyovers, but no satellite-3D flyovers (if you're worried about that you probably have too much time to waste during the day - this is a maps app, to take you places, not give you a tour of Los Angeles).
UI feels great - intuitive, fluid, multi-touch works fantastic. Heard someone mention that it "lacks polish" or feels "laggy" - not sure I agree with that - feels fast on an iPhone 5 and on a 4S side-by-side. UI is clean and not cluttered, that's a plus. Someone else mentioned that it's simply GMaps in a UIWebView - no chance for that.
Of course, the public transport data is second to none. The data in general - we won't discuss that.
Great release - welcome back