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Comment by moomoo11 | Hacker News Reader

Love Apple Maps. It has progressively gotten so much better and awesome. I don’t think I ever use my iPhone and get frustrated. Leaving android in 2015 was the best decision I made.

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Apple Maps has a good UI and bad data. Their problem is the same problem people face when anyone tries to unseat an incumbent platform: they don't have the audience, so people don't contribute to their knowledge base. Apple Maps shows an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood as open on Saturdays, but they haven't been open on Saturdays in years. They didn't even update their hours on their own website, but the hours are correct on Google Maps. Why? Because business owners maintain their info on Google Maps, because it reaches their customers. And the customers do their own editing of business data as well. So Apple is stuck at a point with not enough users to edit the data, and they are either not climbing out of that rut or they are climbing out very slowly.

Perhaps Apple users do not feel inclined to edit the data. It may be a difference in attitude.

I just compared for my town. Popular cafe on Google maps has 844 reviews, 0 on Apple Maps. Another cafe, 202 reviews on Google, 1 on Apple Maps plus Apple hasn't updated the name. Also I quite like seeing the review text on Google, gives you a sense of what people like about a place and whether the review is genuine or just a grump. Apple seems to only show quite a simplified rating, although I've not used it enough to determine if there's more info in there.

Apple is probably better in the US where it has had a lot more use. It's pretty poor here for the main thing I use it for - finding businesses.

I find Apple Maps incredibly frustrating. The endless zooming-in and out when approaching turns. I want a consistent layout and structure when I glance down at a map. Not some gee-whiz-shiny display that only works well if you have been watching the entire animation.

It also seems to be deliberately obtuse when you want to zoom around the map. Like, how dare you not fully trust its routing.

I honestly love that zoom feature, because with Google Maps, I can't count how many times I've missed an exit due to thinking the blue line was just a little further up, and there's multiple exists clustered together.

I want to use Apple Maps more, but in some parts of the world, the amount of info on Apple Maps (locations of places, restaurants, etc) is TINY compared to Google.

This is true, and it would be ideal if Apple Maps had more up-to-date business info.

But perhaps it’s okay for business directories to be separate tools from maps. Before the internet, you’d have Yellow Pages at home and a map in the car, right?

If we can’t accept that, then we might be stuck navigating with Google’s subpar app forever. I personally don’t mind looking up the business I’m interested in online before I navigate to it—in most cases I want to check their current hours on their own website or Facebook page anyway as even Google’s info can be out of date.

I often open Apple Maps and google maps in the same location, just for fun. Google Maps is sinfully ugly and cluttered now in comparison. Whatever the merits or demerits of Material Design are, its cleanliness and elegance hasn’t made it down to Google Naps. And while I’d grant that maps is a hard problem to solve, Apple’s example has been out there for a bit now.

I would switch to Apple Maps if there was a web-based version. I often search Google Maps in Firefox on Windows and then star map locations that I then pick up in the Google Maps app on my phone. I know the components of a web-based Apple Maps exist because sites like DuckDuckGo use them, but AFAICT there's no way to log into Apple Maps on the web.

"It's Apple Maps Bad"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq1wgIN62E

Was there a need to make this comment thread iPhone ad? Is this some kind of submarine advertising thing?

What’s wrong with sharing my opinion when the subject is that google maps has become an eyesore (aka sucks visually)

The fact that your love of a phone has nothing to do with it. If I'd wanted to look at ads I'd open Google not HN.

Did you read the article? It is about the mobile experience....

One of the quotes was: "Google Maps still holds around 80% of the mobile market. But in recent years, I’ve found myself getting increasingly frustrated with the Google Maps experience, especially when it comes to general navigation and exploration of a map area."

And I wanted to say that overall, I barely feel any frustration as an iOS user. It is the truth for me, and my opinion. So I'm gonna say it.

Going to take a wild guess and say you didn't.

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