
A YEAR OF GOOGLE and APPLE MAPS - julianozen
https://www.justinobeirne.com/a-year-of-google-maps-and-apple-maps
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throwaway40483
This is really a nice visual comparison of Google Maps and Apple Maps over the
years.

The gist of the article is that Google has deemphasized roads in favor of
showing places, e.g. bars, restaurants, shops, etc.

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tinus_hn
When you are just looking at the map, chances are you are looking to go
somewhere so the focus is on the places. When you've planned a route you're
interested in the roads so the labels disappear.

I think this is just the dynamics that are enabled by transitioning from
bitmap tiles to vector data.

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DanBC
Google maps on iPhone doesn't put bus stops on the map until you've massively
zoomed in, even if you're in the route planning bit. (Maybe it's a cultural
thing? Most bus stops in the UK are request stops, and bus users need to see
the stops on the map to know when to ring the bell. I'm not sure if that's how
bus stops work wherever the Google Map programmers are.)

This is one example of how unusable Maps is.

It's a shame, because it's one of the things that really feels like living in
the future.

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brudgers
So I was curious what the OpenStreetMaps version of Patricia's Green looked
like:

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=patricia%27s%20gr...](https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=patricia%27s%20green#map=19/37.77623/-122.42444)

Partially because Google and Apple maps are proprietary and partially because
mapping things like foot paths are more amenable to community involvement and
Google and Apple maps are built in ways that do not strongly facilitate it.
And partly because treating Google and Apple maps as the important
alternatives seems to be a bit of Silicon Valley shaped world view.

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jrnichols
I wonder what would happen if the author went to the places he noted Apple had
on top of each other and did the "Move Pin" thing. I wonder if the changes
would show up.

How long does it take Apple to trust users that submit corrections? Or, do
they do such a thing?

