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.
