Apple Maps

Up until now, Apple has used simple white vans to handle its mapping efforts, using a similar camera setup to what we saw all the way back in 2015. After announcing an effort to rebuild the service from the ground up, new Apple Maps vehicles have been spotted in Los Angeles.

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Apple’s interest in augmented reality has become pretty clear over the last couple of years, and just this past week it acquired a startup focused on building lenses for AR glasses.

As if Apple’s growing AR ambitions weren’t already clear enough, diving into the company’s hiring trends reveals even more.

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A new report out today on navigation app trends sheds some light on how far Google Maps could be ahead of Apple Maps and other services. Included are the top reasons why almost 70% of users are sticking with Google Maps.

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A Counterpoint blog post today questions whether the planned ‘massive overhaul’ of Apple Maps is too little, too late.

This brings me to my key point — that map making, map data collection and keeping maps up-to-date, is an expensive and unending task […]

Apple will have to pour in hundreds of millions of dollars every year to collect, parse and integrate maps, transit and traffic data. Further, having Apple Maps cars equipped with expensive LiDAR, 360 cameras gear and drive hundreds of thousands of miles globally will still take Apple years to perfect the maps at a global scale […]

In summary, it could be a little too late for Apple to build maps content from the ground-up.

For a company which boasts of saying no a thousand times for every time it says yes, Apple Maps always seemed like a strange project to green-light, but I think there were a couple of reasons for it …

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I love Apple Maps. No, it didn’t launch well back in iOS 6, but it’s turned out to be an impressive app. I like the overall design, Siri support, and Apple Watch support. My family also makes a lot of dinner reservations through Yelp and OpenTable, so being able to launch it with a single tap is something I find myself often doing.

Like any app, it’s not perfect, and there are things I’d like to see it borrow from some competitors. After traveling a few times this summer, I’ve discovered five things I’d like Apple to add to Apple Maps in the future.

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Apple Maps has been down for many hours today, causing mayhem for customers seemingly worldwide. Whilst Apple’s system status reports no issues, users across Twitter and Apple Support forums are finding that is currently impossible to search for locations or get directions. The map tiles appear to be loading normally, but points of interest and critical functions of the app are simply not working.

Update: Apple has now confirmed the issue on its support site, noting that ‘all users are affected’ by maps navigation and search issues.

Update 2: As of 1:20 pm ET, service has been restored.

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The Apple Maps app didn’t get any major changes in iOS 12, but the MapKit team announced at WWDC that they are officially launching MapKit as a web framework for others to use. Google Maps is incredibly popular as an embedded map for other web services, and now Apple is trying to take a slice of that pie. MapKit JS is the same map component that Apple uses in many of its web properties, including Find My iPhone on iCloud.com, and the WWDC 2018 site.

The Apple MapKit JS library is launching in beta this week. It mirrors the MapKit API available to native iOS apps, with Apple Maps iconic cartography and data sources.

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Has there ever been an app that has caused so much of an uproar in the Apple community as Apple Maps? It was released in the fall of 2012 with iOS 6, and it was not received well to say the least. It was so poorly received that Tim Cook even wrote a letter apologizing for the poor launch of Apple Maps which contributed o the firing of Scott Forstall:

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

Now that we are almost six years into Apple Maps, I am of the opinion that Apple was right, certainly in a post Facebook privacy scandal world, to replace Google Maps with their in-house mapping product. In fact, Google Maps isn’t on my iPhone, and here are five reasons I prefer Apple Maps over Google Maps.

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Earlier today, a report explained that Apple was among a handful of companies who had applied for government permission to test drone usage beyond current FAA limits. Now, Apple has officially commented on these plans…

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Indoor mapping lets Apple Maps users explore the internal layout of buildings across multiple floors, with precise location positioning to help you find your way around places like airports and shopping malls.

Apple has today expanded its list of indoor mapping locations with a few new airports; iPhone and iPad can now explore Sydney International, Edinburgh and Hamad Internationl (Doha, Qatar) …

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Apple has today made some improvements to both transit directions and lane guidance in Apple Maps. The company has been making a rapid push to get both of these features out the door and has been looking to expand them in as many cities as possible.

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Since its introduction in 2012, Apple Maps has carried the burden of much scrutiny and criticism for the quality and coverage of its mapping data. While Apple’s data has steadily improved since day one, a new comparison shows just how much more work it will take to surpass Google Maps.

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iOS 11 introduced a new indoor mapping feature that offers walking directions through a variety of different airports and malls. Apple has been slowly rolling out support for additional buildings, but changes and additions have been hard to track…

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