
Cartography Comparison: Google Maps and Apple Maps - chippy
http://www.justinobeirne.com/essay/cartography-comparison
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bane
If I had to tl;dr my conclusions from this post it's this, Google is better at
showing you how to navigate, Apple is better at showing you places worth going
to.

Really great analysis. I wish it was a bit more succinct, but there's a lot of
great information here. One thing that's not clear in each comparison is
"which is better?"

The analysis seems to be indicating that the answer is "more", but I'm not
entirely convinced that's correct in all cases.

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sandworm101
To simplify: I'd say Google is for drivers, while Apple is for people being
driven.

Apple is much more informative, but only where you have the time/energy to
focus on the map, such as someone in the back of a taxi wanting to find some
tiny location. Google is much easier to read at a glance, ie by someone
actually doing something other then using the phone and needing the info to
inform that task minute by minute.

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matt4077
There are uses for maps that that don't even involve cars at all! I know I've
spend a fair amount of time just browsing around.

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sandworm101
Not all drivers are driving cars. Some 'drivers' are actually on foot. A
driver is someone both navigating and controlling their movement, requiring
different type of map than a passenger or wandering tourist who cares more
about seeing lots of place names and interesting landmarks. The driver
wants/needs an uncluttered display that can be scanned for vital information
quickly.

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zuppy
Apple maps is beyond awful where I live (Romania), it's not even worth
mentioning it as an option. The problem is not only with the maps, but also
with the points of interest.

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chocochoco
I'm in Chile. It totally blows here too.

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sangnoir
> And both are in a race to become the world’s first Universal Map — that is,
> the first map used by a majority of the global population

First I've heard someone say that about _any_ Apple product.

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qqg3
Important to point out this guy used to work for Apple on the maps product. So
he may be a little biased.

~~~
chocochoco
I looked him up also. He spoke at Google IO a few years ago. I can't tell if
he worked at Google, but he also wrote some posts on their Geo Dev blog. So he
could biased toward Google too.

Anyway, I read the post twice (it was good) and had trouble even finding bias.
It reads more like a lab report than an opinion piece and he had criticisms of
both maps.

Kinda can't believe he even worked on apple maps. The post was surprisingly
fair.

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distances
Apple Maps is only available for Apple products, right? The claim in the
article that it could become some kind of a universal map seems simply
ridiculous. I've never seen anyone use it, I've never heard a good word about
it. Here Maps, Bing Maps, and OpenStreetMap all seem to have a larger
following.

Then again, I've been wrong countless times before.

~~~
moogleii
I've seen people use it, and I've heard good things about it. Never seen
anyone use bing maps, or say anything good about it.

Having said that, I agree: there's no way in hell Apple Maps could ever become
a universal map.

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rz2k
I think Bing's maps are the best for looking at multiple countries in a
region, since it seems to better at choosing which detail to drop or keep, and
it does a better job stitching photography so that the imagery isn't as
obviously from different days or years. The "bird's eye" view is also good for
getting an overview of a town you are visiting. I've never used it for
directions, but I don't know it's bad for that purpose either.

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statictype
Apple Maps is useless in India and South Asia in general. It was useless on
Day 1 and is pretty much just as useless today.

Google Maps on the other hand, not only has turn-by-turn directions, but has
even customized it to give directions the way they do it locally (using
buildings and landmarks instead of streets where applicable).

If Apple Maps wants to become a Universal Map platform, they have a very long
way to go.

I don't see it in their DNA to make these types of platforms.

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yalogin
Of course they started at least 10 years after Google.

~~~
statictype
Google had to wait for the tech to catch up. Apple didn't have to.

Apple is the world's richest company - ´ if they really wanted to make maps
work everywhere they could have.

Its simply not a priority for them (which is fine).

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Spooky23
My main use case for directions is inter-city travel in the US with an iOS
device.

From a mapping capability standpoint, the two products are equals at the
intercity level. (Google local directions are better at finding places)

But... Google is seemingly committed to making the maps app more obtuse to use
as time goes on. So I find myself using Apple as my map app with Waze as a
backup.

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dingo_bat
I liked the previous article and this one too but the website layout is just
annoying. 50% width of the page is blank.

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nandhp
And the images are too small.

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snopesbuffert
Click on them and they will get bigger.

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CamperBob2
Can't say that helps much.

[http://i.imgur.com/CI33nx3.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/CI33nx3.jpg)

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CephalopodMD
Isn't it fallacious to count users of both types of maps since they're
installed by default on each of the two tech giants' OS?

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IkmoIkmo
God, if there was ever a need for use of an appendix on the internet, this
article would be it.

Really didn't need to see 90% of the images. The article was so verbose, too,
taking ten pages to conclude a simple arithmetic count of cities and road
shields.

Didn't help that on my screen the content/white distribution was literally
30/70, like I'm running a mobile phone simulator on my laptop spent a minute
in the CSS to change it.

Anyway this was a great first pass, although it feels to me like the least
interesting. Why? Because maps start to really make or break as a utility
tool, once you introduce some kind of goal, which has some level of
interaction, configuration and changes to the map.

For example, search (say by voice) for Starbucks and everything pops up. The
notion that Starbucks didn't show on the default map view at the default zoom,
is pretty meaningless. Or pick a location and then press 'navigate', and
relevant roads and shields pop up. The notion immediately prior to this
interaction all roads and shields they weren't sprinkled all across the map in
all directions, isn't really important.

But none of that functionality was examined, which is THE driving force
between differences in maps for actual human beings with actual human being
purposes.

Anyway I'm sure it'll get covered in the future, but I felt it to be a
surprisingly weak article. Let's not forget this isn't just some random guy
writing an essay, this is one of the leads of the Apple Maps cartography for
almost half a decade.

I think one thing went missing too in the focus on two of the biggest anglo-
saxan cities in the world and the backyard of Apple/Google, which is that the
world's population doesn't live there, and that Apple sucks and Google
functions in less Western areas. Just read this thread and you'll find lots of
anecdotal evidence.

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chocochoco
ironic that this comment needs an appendix

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weird_css
I love this website. Very clear.

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Criticism123
Apple Maps is great because

1\. the sign it shows actually matches the sign on the roads

2 UI is clean and clutter free

3\. Takes less battery life

4\. uses lock screen properly unlike gmaps

5\. Better voice

Google Maps on the other hand is just a buggy app and a battery hog. However
there're few things Google Maps does better

1\. Which lane to use

2\. Suggest new route mid route for faster speed

For me (in US) routes are exactly the same all the time.

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pkulak
Sounds like you're using Google Maps on iOS? Shouldn't you then use Apple Maps
on Android for a more fair comparison?

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Criticism123
I've never used Android. I'm providing my personal experience of these two
tools on the platform I have.

