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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

>I am forced to go to street view to read the sign, then type the company name into the search box to force the business marker to show up and get clickable. I've found Apple Maps is a little better in this regard.

the way you juxtapose them calls for pointing out, Apple Maps don't have streetview which makes Apple Maps a lot less convenient.

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Apple Maps has had "Look Around" (their implementation of Street View) for a while now.

Where are you? Apple street view coverage isn't as extensive as Google's but there's a binoculars button for it if they do for a given location.

Hardly anything unless in a major city, no way to easily tell if there is any coverage other than randomly clicking until it shows, also doesn't tell you the date taken.

Google street view has the 2d overlay letting you know where there is coverage, shows the date taken along with previous imagery, and they have coverage nearly everywhere in the US at a least, although some of its pretty old.

Apple Maps does seem to have more up to date satellite / aerial imagery though.

Hard to overstate how valuable all that street view coverage is on the Google side.

My little Swedish village has full Look Around coverage, and clicking on the ⋯ icon shows an “Imagery” menu item that tells me the month and year the coverage was last updated. I think you’re underestimating where they’re currently at.

In the US is has basically zero coverage outside any major city. Google on the other hand has exentiqive coverage into rural areas, albeit some of it old, at least its there, where it has newer coverage it usually has multiple one at different times allowing one to look back in time as well, very useful.

I just double-checked my village. Every single road and cul-de-sac that I could find, with no exceptions, has full coverage on Apple. Google on the other hand, has coverage for maybe 50-55% of the roads. The worst example is a residential area on the outskirts where they’ve driven the car in, down one side-street, then given up and gone home.

On the other hand, they do have historical coverage, have to give them that.

Yeah so not sure why but Look around coverage is much better in Europe than the US for some reason which seems odd since Apple is US based.

You can see the very poor US coverage here: https://brilliantmaps.com/apple-look-around/

Of course compared to Google Street view there is no comparison on a world wide basis as you can see on the same page.

In areas with partial coverage Apple Maps has basically the same overlay showing where Look Around is available. It just doesn't have a great indicator as to why the option is greyed out when there's no coverage.

I mean in Google Maps you can drag the little man over the map and it has a map layer that highlights all the roads available, so you can easily see where it is and is not. Not randomly picking a point and seeing if indicator is available.

Actually… last time I checked some local addresses Apple Maps had newer streetview data than Google.

As interesting as StreetView is, it's such a colossal privacy invasion, it's absurd. In my neighbourhood, you can literally see in peoples windows, into their living rooms.

And how is this any different from walking down the sidewalk? They're on the road, they're not stuffing cameras into your living room window to try to catch you walking around nekkid or anything. It is literally documenting what public view looks like.

The biggest difference is that you would have to actually travel there and look, rather than scanning the whole city from your recliner.

The difference, as usual with this kind of thing, is scale.

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