Apple Maps transit directions come to Atlanta, Miami & UK's National Rail
Apple on Thursday expanded the availability of Maps transit directions to the US cities of Atlanta and Miami, and to National Rail lines in the United Kingdom.
Users of the iOS and OS X Maps apps can now navigate around Atlanta and Miami's bus and rail systems. Different lines are marked with their official icons, and where possible the apps will present several route combinations to choose from.
National Rail support is particularly important for residents of the U.K., since it incorporates a number of different rail systems spanning the countryside and various cities. The addition should enable cross-country trips, though some cities have their own separate public transportation systems.
Maps' transit support is still relatively limited. Only a handful of cities in the U.S. are covered, and support is typically even thinner in other countries, which may have only one or two cities if any. An exception to this is China.
Apple could conceivably be planning to widening transit support with the launch of iOS 10 and the next version of OS X, both of which will probably arrive in the fall. The company will be previewing the pair at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Users of the iOS and OS X Maps apps can now navigate around Atlanta and Miami's bus and rail systems. Different lines are marked with their official icons, and where possible the apps will present several route combinations to choose from.
National Rail support is particularly important for residents of the U.K., since it incorporates a number of different rail systems spanning the countryside and various cities. The addition should enable cross-country trips, though some cities have their own separate public transportation systems.
Maps' transit support is still relatively limited. Only a handful of cities in the U.S. are covered, and support is typically even thinner in other countries, which may have only one or two cities if any. An exception to this is China.
Apple could conceivably be planning to widening transit support with the launch of iOS 10 and the next version of OS X, both of which will probably arrive in the fall. The company will be previewing the pair at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Comments
I don't often praise Apple's Maps but this looks good.
:-)
So, where the article says it's added National Rail to the United Kingdom that is, in fact, not true. It's added rail to a little bit of the UK.
Maps continues to be so far behind Google Maps it's just not true. I much prefer Apples UI, but it's features are still sadly lacking, and this is almost 4 years after what even Apple seemed to acknowledge was a disastrous release.
I know Google had a decade head start, but honestly, I don't care. Google can do transit directions in far more places (including all over the UK, which is important for me when I go to visit family), has cycling routes all over the Bay Area (and I assume all over the place) and has a much better search.
The fact that Google had a head start is Apples problem, not the consumers.
When things were reversed, and Apple had a massive head start on Google with regards iOS vs. Android, people on this site happily laugh as Google continually remain behind Apple in their quest to copy their way to feature parity. Well, for me, it goes the same the other way.
It's pretty useless to have only some of it, not everyone lives in London..! For example, going from Oxford to Milton Keynes (about 15 miles as the crow flies), Maps suggests getting a bus (?!) 60 miles into central London, then getting a train back to Milton Keynes, another 60 miles, totalling over 3 hours. The national rail website takes you through Coventry instead, about 40 miles and about an hour and 15 mins...
Peterborough to Rugby is similar, 4 hours 30 mins for a journey that's 2 hours on the national rail site, or about 50 minutes by car.
At the current rate Apple's adding public transport (and flyover locations), they won't have done even 1% of locations by the end of the next decade.
To to be honest, I'm not sure England has one either.