jingo

Apple Maps has some really big UX fails which mean Imalways go back to Google Maps. In particular it is close to useless if you are the “navigator” while someone eslse is driving. A vast part of the screen is taken up with a panel showing details of the place when you search for a destination, and there are only two ways of seeing the map full screen (that I have found). Firstly you can click the X to close the panel, but then you lose the route. Secondly you can start the route, but there is no way of switching to a mode where you control what you are looking at, or lose the directions. 

It surely should be possible to use it like a map book, but with the route displayed on it? This seems really fundamental to me but the UX designers seem to have almost wilfully stopped you from using it that way.

Other things that bug me in CarPlay is that you can only have the display in dark mode or “automatic” when it seems to always be in dark mode as well. Why can’t you set it to always be in light mode? This doesn’t make any sense to me. The ideal scenario would be a quick and easy way to manually change it to the mode you want, not the mode that Apple seems to think you should want.

Another failing is the difficulty in CarPlay of seeing what is coming up on the map a little bit further ahead than what is immediately in front of you. Viewing of the map is extremely limited.

Finally another annoyance is that the warnings for speed cameras are only given when you are using it in routing mode. Why can’t you switch on the warnings even when you are not following a route?