I wish they'd sort out the rendering of road names (and this isn't specific to Apple, mind) - they're still seemingly stuck in the olden times rules for rendering street names ("only put a road name if the road is wide enough and only every N inches and starting at M inches from a junction") rather than "can we put a road name on this road that's visible on screen without it going over something else?" which would be 500% more useful.
My hypothesis is that certain products need users and feedback to be good. Maps is one of those, hence why they had to release it in a ‘bad’ state. Apple AI I think is another such product.
I agree. I think we believe that Apple's days of long-term skunkworks development is over... I don't think it's as dramatic as, say, the years since the PA Semi acquisition, or the "secret" Intel port, but they do some long-term planning.
(Apple Originals, their production house, is also an example. A huge bank of original prestige TV, subsidized by iPhones... they're just still finding a way to market it.)
Apple needs to review whichever firm they outsourced review of Maps locations to, because my report got my local hackerspace marked "permanently closed" when all I did was correct the address, map pointer, and capitalisation of the name.
I haven’t had any issues with the Maps review. Seems like perhaps you submitted a change that was normalized as an entirely new business due to having a different address, location and name. Have you tried to zoom in and see if there’s a new marker with the info you submitted?
You can imagine, if a business has changed its address, location, and name, that users would appreciate a “Closed” pin for the previous name and location instead of wondering what happened to the business that used to be there.
> * Seems like perhaps you submitted a change that was normalized as an entirely new business due to having a different address, location and name. Have you tried to zoom in and see if there’s a new marker with the info you submitted?*
Though, in fairness, I don't find any of the voice assistants very useful. Siri is probably not quite as good as Alexa though. I mostly care more about Siri because I use CarPlay when driving.
Years ago I remember a detailed comparison of Apple and Google maps, showing a lot of flaws with Apple Maps around contrast, lack of detail, misleading iconography, and other issues.
Has it improved that much? Does anyone remember what I'm talking about?
That's Justin O'Beirne's site. It has mostly improved but he wasn't really that negative on it. He just used to work there so he was being extra critical since he knew them.
On the contrary he often seemed undeservedly uncritical when he talked about Google, like going "wow this is so detailed, they must be super geniuses who did this with computers" about something like POI locations they'd actually done by hiring a ton of contractors to do by hand.
It still sucks. No amount of fancier graphics can make up for their lack of ground truth in terms of opened and closed businesses. I just spot-checked the newest cafe in my neighborhood, which opened 3 weeks ago, and it's still not present on Apple Maps, and another place that closed months ago remains on Apple Maps. It is a demonstration of the fact that you can abuse your monopoly to push a third-rate product on 10% of your users.
This is because a) Google is a data-harvesting company and Apple is not, and b) the vast majority of businesses only update their info on Google due to market share (if they update their info anywhere).
You can verify this for yourself by looking up a business on Apple Maps and seeing if there’s a “Claim this Place” button.
It is very easy to submit corrections to Apple Maps and they usually accept them within a week.
For me personally, I would much rather use a superior maps app for maps, and use the data harvesting/advertising company’s website as a business directory, or ideally get the hours directly from the business’ website or social media profile since, like I mentioned previously, they often fail to update their info even on the data harvesting website.
Google Maps does seem to be more complete with respect to businesses although I prefer Apple Maps for in-car navigation. OSM has both way beat with respect to hiking trails and the like.
In your other comment [0] you mentioned you also updated the name and location of the business. I’ve never had a single issue with Maps review and I find my corrections are usually accepted in under a week.
Big business hours have always been reliable for me in Apple Maps.
I always call small businesses to ensure they are open. Why trust a small business operator to update Google/Apple in real time when I can spend 20 seconds to press the listed phone number and confirm it?
The small business has even more incentive to keep it updated. I don’t speak the language of every place I go and it’s a huge waste of time to hope they’re open. And updating business hours might take a few minutes, but fielding phone calls takes a lot more effort and time. If I have to call a business to find out basic information, I’m not going there.
They have the incentive, but not the technical capability or trust for line level staff to be able to login to the business’s Apple or Google account and change the hours.
> They have the incentive, but not the technical capability or trust for line level staff to be able to login to the business’s Apple or Google account and change the hours.
