I don't think its 100% fair to blame Apple for the business metadata - and I'm sure they're aware of it and working on it.
The opening times data on Google comes from business owners who create an account on Google and then create a Business Profile (in rare cases, Google scrapes it from the website but it needs to be presented in a specific machine readable form[1] which, let's be honest, most websites do not, especially small businesses).
Apple probably just need to spread the word more that they have an equivalent mechanism in place.[2]
Google can be wrong too, of course, but it’s usually accurate in my experience while the examples I gave for Apple Maps were not selective. The places I check have the time wrong on Apple Maps in nearly all cases - even the Colosseum is wrong!
If they are taking this data from Yelp and Foursquare then it’s not surprising if it’s low quality (they are linked in reviews and the only places I see with the same incorrect hours). Presumably it’s different in the US, but Google and TripAdvisor are the only services with traction here and therefore the only ones likely to be maintained by the actual business.
The same in Canada -- the hours and even phone numbers are wrong frequently enough that it makes them entirely untrustworthy and thus ignored. I just search for the business website to find those sorts of details, and it isn't something I expect from a mapping product.
I neither go by Apple Maps or Google Maps for restaurant opening times in my area. A lot of them still have their pre-pandemic times posted online and most simply don’t have the staff to stay open from 12p-1am.
With Covid, I've noticed Yelp, Google, and Apple all have untrustworthy business hours. In some cases all of them were wrong with different times. They all provide ways to submit new hours; some ask for a picture, others let you type in the hours. I know with Apple I'll get an alert a week or two later when the data is accepted. I've done this in multiple countries. So it's not just a US-centric focus (may be a Euro-centric one, though).
This is the same data quality I face in Singapore. Looks great, but gets simple
Things wrong, including wrong routes (doesn’t show several options usually) and business details not up to date.
How forgiving do we have to be? Google maps is just better.
Google let's business owners do updates directly to their listing which is nice and claiming a business in google is MUCH easier (no document uploads etc in my case).
I really wish Apple Maps was available on web or Android so there would be a viable alternative to Google Maps. I love and use OSM apps, but they're lacking any up to date local business info, and often can't find my searches, forcing me to switch to Google Maps to find what I'm looking for.
Well that’s a stretch. It’s there as a JS embed that requires a paid API (with unknown costs past the free tier).
There’s no first party website and the JS embed looks to be mainly just a way to show places on a map, not access most of the place data you’d find in the iOS/macOS apps.
Apple Maps uses data from OpenStreetMap, so shouldn't it be as good (or bad) as OSM is? On Android, try OrganicMaps. It's a fork of the Maps.me OSM client by the original devs. It's good, but then again I've made thousands of edits to OSM around my city so that's part of it!
I'm not super familiar with Apple Maps, but it's common to use a mix of data. OSM may provide the base, but Apple almost certainly has done their own search indexing and may be curating business info from other sources and user reports.
Or they may be using OSM in some places and other sources in other places.
I use OrganicMaps. It's fine for road maps and addresses when I have the number. But there's very little up to date local business information. I use maps apps like people used to use phone books. But OSM data just isn't suitable for that in most places.
When I worked at HERE, until late 2018, it was company policy not to use any OSM data at all.
HERE, along Apple, Google and TomTom, is one of the four companies in the world that create original digital map data, from scratch, on a planet spanning scale.
If I don't have any iOS device, or an Apple account, can I still send an Apple maps link somehow to friends or family?
In particular, some of my elderly relatives use Apple maps and last time I tried I couldn't figure out a way to send them a maps link to the place I wanted to meet them.
Apple doesn't want you to use their map unless you fully buy into their silo.
But for what it's worth, it looks like you can just pass coordinates in the URL, so use OpenStreetMap to grab the coordinates (these are in the URL too), and change a / to a ,:
No idea how you're supposed to share a specific POI. Even DuckDuckGo (which weirdly enough uses Apple Maps instead of something more suitable) hides the search parameters from the URL.
That's the opposite of what hiisukun is asking. They want to send a link to someone who owns an Apple device. Without an Apple device, maps.apple.com doesn't have a share button as far as I can tell. There is only a big blue 'directions' button which sends you to Google Maps.
It’s been at least a year since cycling directions were announced yet I can’t navigate between Boston and Cambridge. Apple Maps has a nice interface, and I use it often for driving, but it’s a half-assed product for every other navigation category.
It seems that Russia views counting, classifying and categorizing internal infrastructure as hostile, and expressly forbids it; similarly with aerial and satellite imaging.
Personally, I understand this bargaining position, but I think the built environment (roads,buildings) ought to be fair-use, ala Openstreetmap.
I believe modern Apple Inc. is an egregious example of corporate abuse of commons data, so the right answer for the built infrastructure is to build Openstreetmap worldwide.
Oddly, I was quite startled to see libre-search somewhere using Apple map tiles last year, which indicated to me that Apple is using low-cost-to-themselves arrangements to further the total viewership, while conveniently overlooking the aims and goals of FOSS participants.
I've started trying Maps as a substitute for Google on my iPhone. Its map looks simpler while driving, though I've had a few glitches. Meanwhile I use search.brave.com instead of Google search. It seems just as good for almost everything. Is Google falling behind in its key products?
I like apple maps for navigating around but Google maps main advantage is the search. I can put the name of a clients business or a landmark into Google maps and then hit start. Apple maps search just doesn’t find things.
> I started with an Apple IIc. It's beyond me why anyone would own an iPhone today.
I started on an Apple ][. As a hacker, I find any business strategy that locks down hardware appaling. But I understand why uninformed consumers would buy this type of hardware.
Probably because they don’t care. They just want something that is low maintenance and consistently works. I don’t think it has too much to do with being uninformed. I know plenty of informed users that feel the same way.
They’re not even uniformed. The device perfectly matches what they need and when it doesn’t they have every resource to see what other device does. HM grievances are not reflected of what the general consumer wants.
I only checked a handful of places that I know well, but nearly all have some kind of issue. I get:
- A very popular local restaurant with incorrect opening and closing times (closes at 10pm according to Apple, 2am in reality and Google)
- A supermarket with everything correct
- A pet food shop which has no opening hours (unlike Google)
- a pasticceria which doesn’t exist (this is one people queue in the street for)
- a gelateria with incorrect closing times
If the data was reliable I would switch, everything else is better than Google Maps.