The IT Nerd

Here’s an interesting question that just popped into my inbox.

Good morning. Perhaps you could give an opinion as to if Apple has fixed their mapping application? 

Thank you!

Thanks for the question.

The short answer is it better but it is still a work in progress. The longer answer goes something like this. I have to admit that when I travel on business, I’ve been using Apple Maps to navigate me around whatever city I’m in and I haven’t used Google Maps in months. That’s because that I personally find Maps to be much much better now than when it launched. Here are the reasons why this is the case for me:

• Apple clearly has put in a lot of work into making sure the directions are as accurate as possible. That includes not giving directions to make illegal left turns and forcing you to drive off road which were very commonplace when Maps first launched. It also places me within feet of my destination which is also a major improvement from when it launched.
• Maps is fully integrated into iOS, so it has the ability to not only launch from say an appointment entry that has an address, but if you start to type something in it will pull the address from appointments, e-mails, or address books. That’s very handy.
• Maps is also integrated into OS X Mavericks, so I can send directions from my Mac to my phone which is also very handy.
• Apple Maps seems to be at least level with Google when it comes to traffic and road construction notifications. That allows it and you to better select the right route to your destination that saves you time.
• One cool feature is that I can start out navigating by car, park my car at a parking lot close to my destination, and then walk the rest of the way with Apple Maps automatically switching over to directions that are better suited to walking. That’s a very cool feature.
• Even if your phone is locked, you can still see directions on the screen.
• It will automatically switch to a display that is better suited to low light if required.
• If you enter the name of a business instead of an address, not only will Maps accurately find it, but the information on the business such as phone number, hours of operation and even the address of the business in question is consistently accurate. When Maps first appeared, that was hit or miss at the time. Mostly miss.

Now are their areas for improvement? Yes. Here’s a list of them:

• Apple needs to go out and try a Garmin GPS that’s been made in the last two years and witness how their lane assist function works. I say that because when I use Apple Maps in environments like highway 401 where there are two sets of lanes going through the Greater Toronto Area (known as the “express lanes” which have fewer exits and the “collector lanes” which have all the on an off ramps for the highway). Apple Maps will often not explicitly say which you need to be in up front. That leaves you to guess which one to take and if you take the wrong one, it will have to re-route you accordingly. Not only that, accurate lane advice makes it way easier to navigate complicated road junctions and merging on and off highways. This is the only thing left
• Any attempts to use public transit result in you being directed to a third party app. Fortunately there are many options out there for navigating via public transit. But Apple either needs to support public transit like Google Maps does, or drop it from the feature set and leave it to others to do.

While Apple has made improvements, there is still work to do. Keep in mind that Apple has aggressively been buying mapping related companies, so they are serious about making Maps something that people will rely on. Thus you can fully expect to see further improvements in Maps going forward. So if you ask me this question in a year, I might be able to say that they’ve fixed Maps.

This entry was posted on January 24, 2014 at 11:53 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.