After 11 years of work, people actually like Apple Maps
The Wall Street Journal has just noticed that people do actually like and use Apple Maps, a change that took only 11 years to be acknowledged.
Apple Maps
Apple Maps had what could be characterized as a terrible start to its existence in 2012, with a catalog of issues that didn't help users shift over to it from Google Maps. Now, over a decade later, the Wall Street Journal acknowledges that Apple Maps is no longer terrible.
The profile of the navigational tool published on Monday refers to the "hot-mess territory" of Apple Maps' launch, including considerable map errors that threatened lives, as well as a poorly implemented 3D Flyover. The issues were sufficient enough for Maps chief Richard Williamson to be fired from the company, and for CEO Tim Cook to offer an apology to customers.
After asking users and user experience analysts, the report deems that Apple has finally fixed the service enough to be usable. This apparently occurs after a decade of upgrades, updates, and refinements to the service by Apple's engineers.
"Some users are finding reasons to switch to Apple Maps, including its clear public directions and visually appealing design," the article claims. It even quotes Craig Federighi stating "Maps has come a long way, and people have noticed," albeit from WWDC 2020, three years ago.
Changes of opinion
A number of reasons from users are also mentioned as proof of this change. However, while the headline and the initial tone proposes the change in sentiment was a more recent event, its first example goes completely against that.
Airline industry analyst Jason Rabinowitz claimed they switched to Android to use Google Maps more easily after being "incensed" by Apple Maps' introduction. He then returned to iPhone in 2015, and returned to Apple Maps after the introduction of transit features.
In another example, Apple Maps became more useful to a "Google Maps power user" after being prompted to use it in an airport, complete with recommendations within the terminals of shops and restaurants.
"It made me kind of revisit and rethink some of my prior assumptions about it," Jane Natoli explains. "Whatever initial reputational hurdles that Apple Maps faced, I think they've jumped over those."
Throughout the piece, Apple's ability to present data to users in Apple Maps is seen as a big selling point, as it's "really good at making things look pretty," user Agelica Nguyen insists. By contrast, Rabinowitz calls Google's own transit layer "sinfully ugly to look at," due to being heavily cluttered.
Despite Apple's decade of work, the article still says Apple has more it can do.
Referencing two users, it claims Apple still needs to fix routing, with one "led astray" in Boston . The other, a Los Angeles intern, believed that Apple Maps routed him through residential neighborhoods to avoid gridlock, but insists that the diversion still added time to the commute compared to sitting in traffic.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
To give you a couple of examples:
- I am not a Waze map editor myself. It’s a bit complicated—which keeps vandals away, too, I guess. A nearby road has a 30-day closure, because of roadway realignment, starting in two days. I reported this in the Waze map. An editor has already implemented this change and scheduled it, and two days from now, I can expect Waze to send me on a detour (not necessarily the officially suggested one). After 30 days this road closure will automatically disappear, unless someone reports that the construction project finished early, or—let’s hope not—took longer.
- A while back, Waze advised me to make a left turn across a median that was not interrupted at that point. I reported that, and a community editor implemented that change. Community editors are eager to help make even minor edits like that, which improve overall map accuracy.
With Apple’s loyal following, I would think that an army of willing editors could easily be found who conscientiously would make edits. This could propel Apple Maps ahead and would likely help especially in markets outside of the U.S., on which Apple places a lower priority (case in point: today’s news that Apple Pay is rolling out in Morocco, nine years after its inception).Apple's following may be loyal, but its user base - especially its Maps user base - is dwarfed by Waze/Google's. I've also found that even in moderately-sized US metro areas (500k+) new, major roads were on Google/Waze the day they opened, but took weeks-to-months to appear in Apple Maps. I've also found new-ish subdivisions that have been there 1-2 years, where the streets are there, but the numbering is all wrong. If you're not in a major US city, Apple Maps is still fairly terrible, in my experience, even today.
Having lived in Boston now for sixteen years (NYC native), I gotta say that the driver that was “led astray” is either a crappy driver (there’s a preponderance of them here), or was confused by Boston’s actual physical layout, which can be tortuous and full of conflicting visual guidance. I highly doubt it was Maps. (Basing that on using it to drive daily to work sites all over the area for years. Thousands of road miles.)
It’s the opposite where I am. Our house is fairly new, built on a new street in 2021. People using Apple Maps get directions to my house, as expected. People using Google Maps end up on a street that’s about 1/2 a mile away from us, that isn’t similarly named and usually call asking how to find us. This was especially frustrating when we kept getting calls from furniture delivery drivers who were on the wrong street and using Google Maps. I’d have to walk them through all the turns to get to my house. We’ve been here now for over 18 months and last month Google Maps was still providing incorrect directions.
And yeah, since I didn't really know how to pronounce many of the names myself, I typed them in rather than using Siri. I assumed that if Siri is set to use the same language as the street names, it would do a better job of understanding the names. But it sounds like that isn't the case.