Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacobolus | Hacker News Reader

> People who say "they can just build their own search engine" should try Apple Maps.

... to be validated by concrete demonstration that Apple is capable of building an excellent service if they put their mind to it...

View on HN

I don't doubt that it's usable in the areas where Apple cares to make it so.

But as the comments make clear, it's all about the number of 9s in the reliability. If they're 99.9% reliable, that means 1 out of 1000 data points are wrong. You will definitely hit a wrong one. If it's 99.9999%, then it's 1 out of 1,000,000. You might not. Adding those last few 9s are incredibly costly.

Excellent? It works but Google are pretty obviously the top dog here

Is this true? Apple Maps came out with a feature a couple years ago where it knows which intersections are stop lights v.s. stop signs v.s. uncontrolled side streets. Rather than saying “in 1000 feet turn left”, they say “at the light, turn left”. As opposed to “go past this light, then turn left,” or “at the stop sign, turn left. Then, turn right onto <street name>.” If you glance at the screen while this is happening, the upcoming intersections helpfully have the appropriate stoplight/stopsign/etc graphic on them. They’ve found a way to communicate instructions such that you never have to worry about lane positioning, or not being ready for the next turn.

Mind you, I juggle between Apple Maps and Google Maps on an iphone, so maybe Google’s features are different on Android. But this was the feature that finally got me using Apple Maps by default, and last I checked Google still hasn’t implemented anything comparable on Apple.

Using Apple Maps in the few spots they actually care to fully support, and using Apple Maps anywhere else in the world is a very different experience.

While Google is able to deliver more or less the same product almost anywhere.

Google and Apple have been playing cat and mouse with their map data for a while now, with Google's newest version only existing in four cities: London, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo.

Are those the only cities Google cares to fully support, or does creating new and more detailed map data take a while to roll out?

Apple Maps is a complete joke in India for instance. I’ve heard of stories of people getting lost because they followed it, then they open Google Maps and get the actual directions. Apple Maps is also almost never updated here. Good luck finding new places, instead you will find places that were closed 2 years ago.

I like its new UI but the most crucial parts of the Map such as directions are so horribly wrong that it would frustrate you.

Google Maps does a similar thing with POI's like Starbucks or gas stations.

I always struggled with that. Way easier to visually identify a landmark that's on the road than adjacent to it, IMO.

I know it was trash when it came out, but Apple Maps surprisingly seems to often find significantly shorter routes than Google. Google Maps always tells me to go to the nearest interstate while Apple Maps seems better at recognizing if a local highway is actually faster.

I have to double check the routing on both to make sure they are not making me go through 20 traffic lights to have a 10% probability of saving 45 seconds and 90% probability of wasting 2 min.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com