Wow. New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every which way. Not that this comes as a surprise...
Navigation is great, so much better than Siri's dreadful voice, easy to navigate from A>B with a tap of your destination. Let's not even mention the street data.
Great 3D flyovers, but no satellite-3D flyovers (if you're worried about that you probably have too much time to waste during the day - this is a maps app, to take you places, not give you a tour of Los Angeles).
UI feels great - intuitive, fluid, multi-touch works fantastic. Heard someone mention that it "lacks polish" or feels "laggy" - not sure I agree with that - feels fast on an iPhone 5 and on a 4S side-by-side. UI is clean and not cluttered, that's a plus. Someone else mentioned that it's simply GMaps in a UIWebView - no chance for that.
Of course, the public transport data is second to none. The data in general - we won't discuss that.
>> New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every which way.
* Rendering is faster on Apple Maps
* Apple Maps caches a much larger area offline, while Google Maps is basically useless without a network connection
* Apple Maps integration in iOS apps is better than embedding Google Maps, which is very obvious if you compare 3rd party public transit apps that use Apple Maps to Google transit directions.
Not saying Apple Maps is nearly as good as Google Maps (because it isn't), but 'totally annihilates Apple Maps in every way' is simply not true.
> * Apple Maps caches a much larger area offline, while Google Maps is basically useless without a network connection
Google Maps for Android has the possibility of caching e.g. a whole city offline, which is great for travelling (since we haven't solved roaming yet). It might be a Labs feature. The iOS client has been lagging so bad, I figured they would have fixed a lot in the new version.
They took the map caching feature out of Labs in one of the recent updates a few months ago, so you can simply select My Places from the navigation dropdown and then swipe to the offline section to cache some maps. It is still a little wonky though since Google Maps is so dependent on network connectivity for everything, so I tend to open the offline maps while I still have a wi-fi/3g connection just to make sure it loads properly.
Who makes the "Navigation" app that I've found on every Android phone I've used? It's been quite useful without a data connection for a daily commute. (It probably would not survive a trip to another city.)
Navigation is a Google app designed specifically to interface with maps. It seems with the new iOS maps they have just build Navigation straight into the app.
That's interesting that Apple Maps caches a much larger area. That would be worth considering if the data is any good. A larger cache and faster rendering of crap data just means the crap stinks that much more. When Apple's data gets better, then this will be more awesome.
I've been getting around the "no network" issue by using the Garmin app anyways.
Unfortunately, the better integration of Apple's app is something I have not figured a work around. Other than getting an Android phone, I mean.
>Wow. New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every which way
Once you get past the onerous task of searching for your destination, i found Apple Maps to be much better
When it's not shoving down a Google account login down your throat, places where Google maps is better (exactly where you'd expect it be)
1 - In POI and searching. However in the limited searches i did (in the Bay area so i guess the Apple Maps critics immediately discount that) both did the same. Given the widely documented inaccuracies and just downright lack of data in the rest of the world, this is probably orders of magnitude better.
2 - Public transit - This is obviously a no-contest. Apple Maps just doesn't have it.
3 - map data - This is probably the same as POIs.
>Navigation is great, so much better than Siri's dreadful voice, easy to navigate from A>B with a tap of your destination.
Navigation isn't great on Apple maps because of Siri's "dreadful voice" ?
>Great release - welcome back
I agree but the whole annahilation bit a quite hyperbolic.
>Isn't the purpose of maps to find your destination?
True. Google has everyone beat in finding things. These advantages are apparent in the Google maps website itself.
Once found though Apple Maps is smoother, more responsive and, in general pleasing to look at (although the last part is subjective and personal preference and many people will find the Google Maps better maybe).
Map data deficiences in Apple maps are well documented at this point and map data is the single most important thing about a map. Google Maps is superior ( and i'm guessing outside of the bay area/the US, orders of magnitude better ).
I did miss out on another big advantage of Google Maps - Street view (which i guess is part of the data but it is still unique to Google Maps)
The original comment waxed lyrical about how it "annahilates" Apple Maps in "every which way" which didn't gel with my experience. it's better in the parts it is expected to be. I wonder if anybody, let alone Apple, will ever be able to come even close to Google Maps for sheer data.
I wonder where the variation in performance is coming from. I'm reading some anecdotes saying Google Maps is more responsive and some saying Apple Maps is. On the same hardware. Perhaps they are using different definitions of "responsive"? Can you elaborate on your experience?
Some people do not notice the difference between 20fps and 60fps. But there's more to that than responsiveness. In comparing the two apps: How quickly do searches happen? When clicking on a result, how quickly does the info card come out? How long does it take to draw the map when you pan to a distant part of the map?
One of my fellow Australians posted. Here's my review of Google Maps, using his post as a basis for my post ;)
My findings:
For searching. Google Maps has a much better autocomplete all round. Faster, more readable and elegant. Once you have selected an entry then Apple Maps jumps straight there. Google Maps does a handy move animation showing me the relative location, although it slows things down a litte. I LOVE this feature.
For panning. Apple Maps is equivalent to Google Maps. Apple Maps has a fade in transition for loaded tiles which is a nice touch.
For POIs. Apple Maps is showing me a few POIs - often in the wrong place. Google Maps is showing me all key POIs in exactly the right place. Google Maps is the first mapping product to get my home address correct (TomTom, Navigon, Garmin, Apple).
For UI. Google Maps has a nicer UI. Apple Maps requires you to click on a small button which goes to a separate screen with more options. I really like the sidebar that Google implemented.
Overall. Google Maps has much better street data and nicer UI. Apple Maps had a smooth UI, showed POIs in the wrong spot here in Australia.
I think the competition is great. Looking forward to seeing if Apple can lift their socks on the next incarnation of Maps - they have a LONG way to go.
For searching. Google Maps has a much better autocomplete all round. Faster, more readable and elegant. Once you have selected an entry then Apple Maps jumps straight there. Google Maps does this pointless move animation making it about 2-3x slower.
For panning. Apple Maps is definitely smoother and has a higher frame rate. Especially if you have traffic/hybrid mode enable in which case even on my iPhone 5 Google Maps is lagging really badly. The biggest difference is that Apple Maps shows you a checkerboard for missing tiles whilst Google Maps has a blurred image. Apple Maps also has a fade in transition for loaded tiles which is a nice touch.
For POIs. Apple Maps is showing me lots of restaurants, bars etc. Google Maps is showing me nothing. This is in both Sydney and Melbourne.
For UI. Google Maps has a much better UI with info card. Apple Maps requires you to click on a small button which goes to a separate screen with more options. I really hate the sidebar that Google implemented. It is far too difficult to click with the tiny button especially one handed. And it isn't that intuitive that the street view picture is actually a button.
Overall. Google Maps has much better street data. Apple Maps had a much smoother UI, actually showed POIs here in Australia and the inbuilt 3D view is better implemented. The 2.0 versions of both apps should be real nice.
I've found that in Melbourne that while Apples maps have a lot of data, its all very very stale. I live I'm the Eastern suburbs, a lot of the places of interest are very old. Shops that haven't been there for years are listed, and large points like Universities are completely absent. It makes finding a particular shop or business near impossible.
The road data is good buy very old. Roads that are listed have has buildings on them for years, dead ends aren't, just general mapping issues there. For some reason they've listed half the tram stops as train stations too, which doesn't really help.
I want to love them. The vector map tiles are silky smooth an very easy to navigate. The app is well thought out and easy to use. I just wish they'd used better sources for their data.
Googler here. I'm seeing POIs in Melbourne and Sydney - you're seeing nothing? Even zoomed all the way in? It sounds like a bug. Could you provide a link of where you're looking? If you tap and hold in the viewport, slide up the address page, and hit share you can copy a url.
> i'm guessing outside of the bay area/the US, orders of magnitude better
On the contrary, iOS 5 maps (Google bitmap tiles) and iOS 6 maps (Apple vectors), were generally comparable in Rome during the month of September. Neither was ideal, and cross referencing both helped.
For driving, Navigon Europe beat them both quite handily.
What's more, during my visit to Italy, the iOS 6 maps improved several times. As one example, in early September the areas between streets were a single background color, but by the time I left, they showed shaded buildings for every block.
By now, the historic center is rendered in astonishing "3D buildings" mode, making the hybrid view the easiest way to orient yourself among the maze of twisty streets and fantastic landmarks. Google Earth is cool, but doesn't look like the real city in miniature, and has severe memory problems showing Rome when zoomed close enough for rectangular instead of triangular buildings. I'm not going to say Apple's view "annihilates" Google Earth, but it feels like a completely new generation of technology by comparison.
Using the new Google Maps, asking for transit directions in Rome today says none are available for the region.
Doing the same in Apple maps offers to launch Navigon Europe on my phone which has "Urban Guidance" for Rome, but also gives me a list of local data specialist apps such as In Arrivo! HD (which claims to have real time bus positions).
All this said, when browsing Rome the new Google Maps app is significantly more speedy than the iOS 5 version, though it suffers from the early Apple Maps problem of having no data for roads (much less POIs) when zoomed out even a little, and when zoomed in a bit, is very challenging to read at a glance and still misses most points of interest.
> Google has everyone beat in finding things.
In the Trastevere restaurant neighborhood, Apple's data shows 10 restaurants for every 1 on Google Maps, any of which can be tapped to see a photo of the building and read reviews on Yelp. Google Maps, if zoomed in far enough, eventually shows you the POI, and can be tapped for a street view panorama rather than the actual storefront.
The wildly popular local seafood hangout "Fish Market"[1] shows up on Apple Maps with 3.5 stars and 5 reviews, but doesn't show up at all on Google Maps. Searching for it sends you to the other side of the Tiber, to an actual fish market.
My point isn't that Apple Maps data is better, but that to a local who is looking for differences, either product can be shown to come up short. This suggests neither is "orders of magnitude" (presumably meaning at least 100x) better than the other, even when comparing this new offering rather than the iOS 5 version.
For me, the missing piece in Google Maps is that it does not integrate with my contacts. Most of my searches are based on contacts. Probably coming in v2. Otherwise pretty solid.
The in-app search widget could allow you to type in names of contacts. It doesn't at the moment. Well. It does, but it doesn't actually search for the contacts address
Where I live, annihilation is actually an apt description. Apple Maps is completely unusable for me. I don't know how they managed to put the airport where _it used to be 25 years ago_, for instance. It can't find one of the biggest swimming halls outside of town, and last time I needed driving directions it put me on the wrong side of a roadblock, whereas Google Maps routed me the correct way (running on an old iOS device).
When it's not shoving down a Google account login down your throat, places where Google maps is better (exactly where you'd expect it be)
How is it shoving a Google account down your throat? It took me a minute to find where to log into my Google account so that I could retrieve my saved Maps places.
How do you contrast this with Apple Maps, which transparently uses an iCloud account on the backend?
Do you lay the blame on Google? Or Apple, for not having system-wide account services for Google (as they do with Facebook and Twitter).
i don't want to log in to an account.
Everytime i tap search, three fourths of the screen is filled with how my life would better if logged in to my account. It's a big nag screen.
Try logging in. The results may surprise you. If you use Chrome signed-in on your computer it will remember your recent map searches from your computer and pop them up first on your phone. Pretty useful feature if you ask me, and it will get rid of "the big nag screen"
I'm absolutely certain it will be pretty nifty. However, once i have willingly decided not to do a login ( i don't use gmail or Chrome ) it should just not feel the need to shove that to my face everytime. A first time setup prompt is all that is needed and once you say no it should tell you " ok, you're missing out but in case you do feel like trying it out - it's in settings->log into account".
Since Apple Maps works perfectly fine for my area ( yes, i'm aware there's a world outside the Bay Area where Apple Maps is horrible), the constant nag for a login is enough to for me to stop using it. It is an awesome app though.
I find that rather annoying too. Every other click it seems to be asking me to login to my Google account. Kind of makes me wonder why they are so insistent.. Good way to get data for local ads?
> Wow. New GMaps totally annihilates Apple Maps in every
> which way.
Especially in nagging about signing-in department. Otherwise…
It still does not have public transoport or transit data where I live and also das have its own share of misspelings.
"totally annihilates" is totally incorrect.
I was surprised that when I swiped lift and hit 'public transit' it reported no data for Vancouver, sing Gmaps has supported directions for transit for a long time.
It turns out that getting directions via transit works as expected. I'm not even sure what the transit link when you swipe left is supposed to show. So it's a weak ui in that respect, but the app gives me what I was missing.
The function of the "transit" button seems a little weird generally (in web maps too).
My observation is that it (1) turns off some of the excessive highlighting of highways and other roads (which for some reason is done by default even in very transit-oriented cities), and (2) it turns on highlighting of "rapid transit" lines.
Unfortunately the definition of "rapid transit" used for this function is sometimes very poorly thought out.
For instance, Tokyo has a massive rail system that covers the entire metropolitan area with a fairly consistent level of service. However Google maps only considers the city-center subways—which form about 25% of the entire system—to be "rapid transit", although from a user's point of view there's very little difference between subways and most other rail lines in Tokyo (they generally use similar scheduling, rolling stock, stations, and even station spacing in many cases). So enabling the transit option in Tokyo highlights subways, but it actually de-emphasizes many other (essentially equivalent) rail lines!
The only thing I can think of is that the design of this feature was based on the particular city (e.g. NYC), and then sort of slapped onto other locations without a whole lot of actual thought... :(
If you're into 3D satellite views, this is available in the Google Earth for iOS app. Google launched the 3D flyover stuff in that app a couple of months before Apple released iOS 6, so it's been around for a while.
If you have Google Earth already installed, then you can jump directly to that app in the swipe-left menu of the new Google Maps app (and it will even jump to where you were looking in the Google Maps app, so it's pretty seamless transition).
The little up and down arrows to the left of each post let you upvote or downvote a post. (If you're below the karma threshold, you won't see the down arrow.)
The purpose of voting is to sort comments on the page, so that you can save time by only reading the first (theoretically, the "best") N comments in a thread.
It's changed a few times over the years, so I wouldn't get your hopes up. I've lost and gained it before. I think it was around 100 when I joined, then it went up to 250 or so, now it's apparently 500.
> Heard someone mention that it "lacks polish" or feels "laggy" - not sure I agree with that - feels fast on an iPhone 5 and on a 4S side-by-side.
Personal experience report on an iPhone 4: the app is laggy as hell with one to two seconds of delay when dragging. You have to actively combat inertia to navigate around, and minimal movement occasionally sent me overshooting by multiple screenfuls. Also, it keeps wanting to turn north around on the slightest twist when zooming, which is even harder to handle due to lag.
> Someone else mentioned that it's simply GMaps in a UIWebView - no chance for that.
That's not how it looks, but that's exactly how it feels. Well, that's also how it looks on the login screen given the overflowing sign-in form. The drag lag on the map feels like the typical JS-overriden scrolling. I'd really not be surprised if it is a UIWebView and a properly designed web app (not web site backportedly shoved in as an app).
On this hardware, Apple Maps has a clear victory on the performance and interaction front.
Want slow? Try an iPod touch :) Though I definitely agree - that drag-lag feels exactly like it's a UIWebView... hm. I wonder if it is. A very well-constructed one, to be sure, but so far I've only seen supporting evidence, nothing that would make me say "definitely not".
Running on an iPhone 4 here, no real lag, maybe a few milliseconds, but that's natural. What kind of connection are you on and are we talking satellite view or classic view?
Living in Iceland, the largest difference for me is that the app is actually usable. Apple's data (and satellite photo resolution) for small/remote places such as Iceland is absolutely horrendous.
Does living in the Bay Area color my view of Apple Maps? Because honestly, I use it nearly everyday to navigate and it's never let me down. It's actually a pleasant surprise and works pretty well with other apps I'm using at the same time, like Spotify in the car.
Yeah - I think it does. I do a fair bit of travelling and use maps a lot since I have the worlds worst sense of direction.
There are some places it's fine. Other places it's problematical. Other places it's a complete disaster.
The last two categories seem to outweigh the first for me. In the UK especially where basic things like searching for local train stations (we actually use public transport quite a bit here ;-) seem to fail completely in large chunks of the country.
Since my experience of Google Maps on the iPhone until the switch over was that - as long as I could get GPS and an internet connection - 100% fine the Apple maps app is a complete fail for me. I can understand that there might be reasons for it being necessary from the business perspective - but for me personally it now means I have had to have three map apps on my home screen to get around rather than just one.
I'm hoping I can switch back to Google Maps to have one thing that works.
I'm in Pittsburgh and also have never had a problem with Apple Maps. It fails at a "fuzzy search" like "shadyside" (a neighborhood in Pittsburgh), but if you give it a specific address or type the correct name of a place it works fine. Fuzzy search is admittedly why Gmaps is still way better.
I live in Tennessee, and Apple Maps has taken me: to what it thought was a grocery store but was actually a church; to the middle of a subdivision in search of a coffee shop; and to a nonexistent entrance ramp to a highway.
In the UK (although just outside and around London, so data is probably quite good) my experience has been that if your driving the directions work about as well as Google Maps. If you're traveling by public transport its useless, since it just doesn't support it. Finding places is also really hit and miss, sometimes it works fine, and other times I'll get pointed to some place in Texas despite there being an identically named place within a few miles of me.
Based on my anecdotal experience in the UK outside of London it's fine.
I'm not going to say I can't see what the fuss has been about as I've seen enough examples to know that there are real and significant problems, but I can say where I live (west of Scotland) for my use cases (basic searching and navigation) I've not had anything to complain about.
I wouldn't be surprised that Apple Maps works better in the Bay Area because Apple is based in Cupertino, so it's more thoroughly tested. It's pretty bad on the East Coast.
It is really well done. The sensor-based street view navigation is a nice touch. I'm not sure I'd call it a clear winner over Apple's maps app though. I expect I'll be using both in the future.
I have to agree. While it's nice to have access to Google's long-aquired dataset as a native app, both the previous Google based/Apple designed app and the current look and feel more polished and considered.
Yeah dude, totally annihilates Apple Maps...provided you don't want to do any zany edge case actions like, oh I don't know, rename a bookmark from a random street address to an easily readable name like "Tim's House". But yeah, who would ever want to do that? Totally annihilates it. Yup.
Or maybe it's possible I'm a regular nerd who happens to want Google to address what I think is a useful feature? I've rehashed my sentiments three times in this thread in hopes of it gaining visibility. Nobody outside of one guy seems to have noticed this.
Also, the Google Maps app for iOS hadn't been out for more than an hour and already users were touting how it was flat out better without even having used the damn thing out in the real world. How is that being an Apple shill? If anything, I'm saying: reserve your judgement until after you've used it for a week in the meat space, and don't claim it "annihilates" Apple Maps at 1 am in your dinosaur pajamas after it has been out for only an hour.
Definitely don't agree that the voice is any better. I'm still impressed by the improvements we've made with synthesized speech (anyone remember the PowerPC AVs?), but both Google and Apple have work to do here and I actually prefer Siri to the voice on Google Maps. They both are really funny attempting to pronounce certain street names. There should be a feedback mechanism to help improve that.
As an android user, this is not at all the same app we've had for a while now. The UI is very different and takes some getting used to. There's a lot more animation and transitions, they're really taking advantage of having everything in one screen. (As opposed to android where everything is broken up into activities which have very limited transitions)
I'd be surprised if they polished anything, considering you can't exactly reuse Java code when writing an Obj-C app. They just have a lot of very talented engineers and actually cared about making it nice.
You can't be serious about public transportation data. Google maps for city like New York are the most outdated I've seen online! Totally unreliable with subway lines that do not even run anymore!
I found/find the UI confusing. It doesnt feel like an ios app at all. It doesnt even feel like maps.google.com. With that said, it is good to have it back on the iPhone.
I generally agree, but there is one respect in which Apple Maps is scads better than Google Maps. It's not exactly important, but it is really nice: Typography.
This is leaps and bounds better than Apple Maps and even the original maps client on iOS that used Google Maps. I didn't even think Apple maps were 'that' bad. The huge hole was POI data, in London at least. Most POI's seemed to be approximated and the rest of them were missing, old or incorrect.
After playing with this app for 10 minutes I think this is far superior to the iOS5 Maps experience. It's an extremely refined and clean app that is extremely fast with lots of features. Start typing a street or location and it'll know what you mean within a few letters.
My impression is the opposite - Google Maps' data is so much better that it hardly matters, but this app seriously lacks polish. For instance, it's laggy - iOS 6 Maps doesn't always make 60fps, which is a shame, but this app doesn't even try. Simply panning around (on my 4S) is enough to produce serious stuttering; even the simple transition to the side menu is not smooth. Or consider Street View, which is missing the signature transition as you "move" from one place to another.
edit: Opening the side menu, for its matter, visually seems to depend on hitting a tiny tap target; there is hidden space to the left of the target but not above it, which is the natural place I tried tapping. The menu itself is weirdly designed (giant spacing) and prone to accidental dismissal by someone trying to scroll it.
I've been playing with both of them, side by side for about 30 minutes. Google maps feels about 2x faster. Unlike IOS 6 maps (this is on my iPhone 5), I can't seem to scroll fast enough to get ahead of the map cacheing. I definitely feel like I'm getting a more FPS than IOS 6 Maps. This suggests this is a CPU/Graphics issue?
Re: Side Menu - Unlike those stupid tiny x marks in the notification tray which I can never hit on my first try, I can't seem to miss opening the side menu. Are you swipe-in opening it? It's not a push, but a swipe.
Bookmarks are there - you just have to click "save" when you open the item. Then clicking on an empty search bar will bring them up.
Not sure how you're getting the 2x fps sensation. On a 4S, using the OpenGL ES analyzer in Instruments while browsing similar neighborhoods at similar zoom levels, I average ~35fps in Google Maps and ~55 in Apple Maps.
Not terribly surprising though - Apple Maps would have access to all the private APIs that AppStore apps can't use.
I've been playing with it for about an hour - and I think one of the interesting tricks that the Google Maps plays is that, in addition to making aggressive use of cacheing (which the IOS 6 map application does as well) - The Google Maps displays low-resolution version of the map you are moving into, before display the high res. The IOS 6 Maps app tends to display a blank background, so you may be more aware that the entire map hasn't been displayed.
It will be interesting to see if there is any server impact, as millions of people start using this Map Application tomorrow. (In both directions - it may be the case that the Apple Map servers will see a drop in use, and increase in performance)
I have a 3Gs running 5.1 and the new version is much slower than the original. I'd guess about about 5FPS, and 2-3x slower. This app needs some performance optimization.
I'm also on a 4S and it doesn't feel laggy to me. In particular I'm feeling much fewer "hiccups" as new data comes in than I do with Apple Maps.
Now, at the same time, it does seem to be locked at 30fps rather than 60 (as in Apple Maps). So it's not quite as silky smooth in that respect, I suppose, but it'll also drain battery more slowly.
Can you elaborate? If you are drawing to the buffers at half the rate (and correspondingly swapping them out at half the rate), how would that not be easier on the graphics processor?
Triple-buffering allows for arbitrary relative speeds. The result is, you draw to the buffer as fast as you can in total disregard of the actual refresh rate. So they're both at "100%" CPU/GPU, but that simply isn't enough for Google Maps.
I think Google actually locked Google Maps at 30fps though. In other words, I don't think it is actually drawing as fast as the processor would allow, were Google to remove that lock.
Otherwise I'd expect to see more fluctuation in the framerate of the app, especially when there isn't much detail on the screen (similar to Apple Maps, which is obviously not locked to 30fps).
Usability? In this app you can actually switch different modes of navigation (car, on foot, public transport) after the route is displayed to you. That, at least, is something this app has over Apple’s app.
That's a nice feature I guess but I agree that the UI is quite bad. Tapping on a spot does nothing. To get a pin you have to tap and hold. Tapping on your new pin again does nothing but make the stupid toolbar bounce. Tapping on the toolbar brings it up partially. You have to swipe it to get the full view.
And getting options took me 30 seconds to figure out. There is that stupid tab with 3 little dots.
Public transport data is available for Sydney on the web but curiously missing in the app.
And asking me to sign in on start up. Really? Get out of my face unless I explicitly ask to sign in through the standard iOS settings app.
Of course correct data and great search trumps all complaints.
I retract my complaint about dropping pins. iOS maps requires tap and hold too. What threw me off was that Maps gives you the pin first then loads data. Google maps starts loading data then gives you the pin.
That's what threw me off.
Lack of POI data? The mapping data appears equivalent to the web app. Maps has more POI data it seems, or at least shows it without have to zoom in too near.
I think for bookmarks, you have to sign in (with your Google account, or a dummy one) and save them in your account. Not sure though, haven't tried yet (and probably won't, as I don't need it).
And I agree about polish. You have a 4S. I have a 4. It barely makes 20 fps.
Is Apple Maps even Apple for iPhone 4? Because if it's not, then it would've probably had the same issues. iPhone 4 had a really slow GPU - one of the slowest around at the time it launched, especially with the "retina display". It consistently scored at the bottom of GPU benchmarks. Remember the iPhone 4S GPU was 7x faster according to Apple.
You're certainly right about its CPU being very slow, but still, all other apps that use Apple's UIKit (standard visual elements, like menu bars, sliders, buttons, etc. - it doesn't matter if they're "stock", or are heavily modified/themed) are just as fast as they are on iPhone 5 or iPad 4.
GMaps uses something else for the UI (the "slide from side" thing) and that's the problem.
Still, I'm not really complaining. As a developer I know it's hard to write something that both pleases you aesthetically, and is performant on all devices!
Animations in built-in apps are buttery smooth, and always have been, ever since the first iPhone. The problem is with newer iOS apps that are either unoptimized or heavily UIWebView based. The newest Gmail app is definitely mostly HTML5, and I suspect this one is as well.
Wow, my jaw is on the floor because of a huge, but sorely lacking feature in this app: the ability to edit the name of a starred location. This isn't a problem if I want to star "Steve's Pizza" since that's how it shows up in their directory, but what about my grandmother's house? I can star her location, sure, but it'll appear in the search history list as a random address once it's one of many other such entries. Am I wrong to think this is a massive oversight over a common use-case? Let's put the Google praise parade on hold and reflect on this for a second.
TL;DR You can't edit the name of your starred locations from the iOS Google Maps app.
Doesn't seem like a 'massive oversight' to me. Definitely a 'should have' feature, but not something that needed to be in this release from an MVP perspective.
This was one of the first things I noticed as well. It seems like such basic functionality (the maps app in iOS had this since at least iOS3), I was amazed to find you can't edit them in the app (thankfully you can see @andrewaylett's comment for a way to do it).
There are several serious bugs in the saved locations functionality.
I found that if you 'pin' a location (say a building) on the map (by pressing and holding) it will show the address. But when you 'save' it, the details of the address get 'lost' when looking at your search history. I ended up with multiple entries in my list titled 'Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan' (which is the equivalent of, say, 'Manhatten, New York, USA'. Clicking each one still takes you to the correct location on the map, but they are impossible to tell apart in the list. Also then when using the 'directions' widget on the map and picking the destination, these saved locations appeared as longitude/latitude!
I wonder if these issues are specific to Japan? I submitted feedback about this.
That being said, overall the app is quite impressive, and I'm sure it will improve.
You can't do this from the Android version either, it's an annoying oversight. I've resorted to taking all important locations and putting them into a custom map; the location markers in custom maps /can/ be named.
For the side menu, try swiping left near the icon, like it's a "handle" to pull out the menu. Works for me, and it seems to be how they're distinguishing "open the menu" vs. "pan the map left"
Although when I typed in a POI it actually found what I was looking for, so I say that makes up for being short maybe 1-2FPS (I used to say Apple Maps was reasonably decent until searching for "logan" in Boston and having to try about 15 different search terms before getting the Airport when I was two miles away; Google Maps got it right with "logan boston" while I'm sitting in Palo Alto)
boston logan airport was the second suggestion when finished typing boston logan. logan boston also gave an instant result although i suspect it the earlier search contributed to it.
It's very smooth on my iPhone 5, but it does have moments where you can notice a bit of frame drop (only if you've read this comment thread beforehand).
From a UI/UX perspective:
+ Fonts and text entry are great
+ Search speed and interface speed are fantastic
- The pull-out menu on the right (akin to a hamburger menu) feels a bit odd and it's not immediately clear as to what it does (they are layer toggles for traffic/transit routes/satellite)
- I can't figure out how to bookmark my home or work addresses (whilst being logged in) - if there is a way it is not intuitive.
You're right - it's not intuitive. To set your work and home while logged in, click the person on the upper right and then the gear then edit home or work?
Bookmarks (while logged in) require you to find a location, and then slide-up to reveal the "save star". You use the slide-up option to "Share" and "Switch to street view" as well. If it's a business, the "Call" / Website / Zaggat(?) rating is available from slide up.
I don't have a 4 or 4s to compare with, but I haven't noticed any significant lag on iPhone 5 over Verizon LTE. Even satellite and street view are pretty responsive.
It is positively beautiful for public transport. It shows the next service leaving and how far (time) it is.
I'm still looking to see how the option to save Home and Work addresses helps me - it makes home and work function as search terms but there must be more to it?
> It is positively beautiful for public transport. It shows the next service leaving and how far (time) it is.
It's quite amusing to see how excited people are about this when this has been available with Google Maps on Android since 2009 (IIRC). I remember I used my Galaxy Nexus to navigate NYC for a whole week with public transit without ever asking a person for directions.
I upgraded my iPad to iOS 6, and left my iPhone 4S at iOS 5 and compared the navigation results in India. Apple maps were a letdown in this part of the world. I have used iOS 5 Maps application a lot in Northern India and had far better (if not perfect) results.
Now finally I can upgrade to iOS6.
Nope. In order to rename starred places in Google Maps you apparently need to use the Google Bookmarks service on the web and manually edit the names that way -- not very intuitive considering how much they got right with the app.
So a question I have for some people more knowledgable than me in the iOS system:
Now that we have an apple maps program, and various competitors including and not limited to google; we also have a chrome (and other) iOS browsers to compete with safari (and yes, I understand it's really just skinned web kit) and a new default video player,
Is this situation not akin to the anti-trust wars that threatened to consume Microsoft a decade ago?
For instance, they (the apple defaults) are all installed by default, and they remain the default option: for example if you receive an address (either physical or web) in messenger or whatsapp or whatever, iOS will attempt to recognise it and make it a hyperlink, but it will then open in the apple default app - if you want it to open in say chrome or google maps you have to copy and paste it.
So- is this the same as the anti-trust case against Microsoft?
Will apple ever change the default program?
Or will my next phone be an android..
Just buy an Android. You can configure what browser opens links. You can configure what map application opens maps. You can configure what video player opens videos.
Yes, this is much like Microsoft a decade ago; in fact, it's worse, the iOS offers significantly less choice than Windows did back then; you could develop your own software for your own computer without joining a restrictive developer program from Microsoft.
If you don't like it, my recommendation is that you don't buy into it. Get an Android. I've been perfectly happy with mine.
<<nothing related to what you said, just a general comment>>
If more people just bought what they liked, shut the hell about it, and didn't rage jihad against the opposite platform, the internet would be WAY better.
No, it won't be. Bad things must be criticized (or boycotted), to force them to become good. Your use of Apple is affecting my life badly - it's just like passive smoking. No one promoted the culture of ridiculous patent law exploitation as much as Apple did. They are not just doing their own work, but indulging in UGLY competition killing tactics(like they don't want anyone to make rectangular phone with rounded corners).
To give you some insight of your own logic, if everyone "not killing someone" will just not kill people as they like it, and didn't say a word to the 'opposite party' - who kill (as they like it as well), according to your logic the world would be WAY better. Jihad is a bad word, but I'll fight against the injustice to my world of technology that Apple is doing.
Remind us how snarky zealotry tells Apple to stop (ab)using the patent system. If that's the problem you have with them, I think the world would be improved if you directed your energy at patent reform.
And comparing IP litigation to murder is just ridiculous, not that you didn't already know that. Among all the other problems, you can fix a bad call from a judge. Murder, not so much.
It's not ridiculous. I explained and it's not hard to understand why opposing bad things (any) is important. And it's always a good test to validate your logic with extreme cases. It helps - if a logic suddenly breaks by increasing the 'intensity' of the subject, then there's something wrong in it.
Again, I don't think the patent law is getting 'reformed' overnight. I have written to state officials to improve it, have signed petitions, and have written to Apple as well. But on top of that, if more and more people stop using their products for this reason, they will understand it much more quickly.
> And it's always a good test to validate your logic with extreme cases. It helps - if a logic suddenly breaks by increasing the 'intensity' of the subject, then there's something wrong in it.
I would suggest avoiding doing so publicly. People can come to the same conclusions if they want to apply theory of extremes, but when you jump to that kind of thing in your initial comparison (especially without a disclaimer) it just makes you come off as a crazy person. Doubly so since the extreme didn't hold up.
It didn't help that some of the more rational points are easily countered (even if not wrong). Stating that my use of Apple harms you because of my "support" of their business and legal decisions may not be entirely false; however, it's a) unreasonable to expect consumers to know about the operational choices of every company they do business with and b) also helpful because it promotes competition in the market. Again, your points had merit, but so does the other side of the equation.
The unfortunate reality of being a publicly-traded US company is that you are more or less legally required to try to litigate your competition out of existence if the numbers support it. This instance is unfortunate because Apple was granted some patents that they should not have been, and there was inept jury in deciding to uphold them (never mind the fact that it was a jury-based trial at all). The Apple/Samsung thing should have been a trademark case which I think actually had some merit, but patent litigation has a higher potential upside so the finances said that was the way to go.
Patent law exploitation? They are going after people who take their products, sit down with a drawing board, and copy them feature by feature, logo by logo, and interaction by interaction. It's exactly what the patent system is designed to make legally actionable.
This isn't a case of Amazon suing every online shopping cart with a "click to buy" button.
(Fifthly, why does a game of multi-hundred-billion-dollar corporate chicken impact your life at all? They aren't going after a kid on the street corner -- they are going after themselves dressed in different clothing. This does not change anything in your world except an extreme branching narrative in your mind which you think the world cares about.)
You have to be pretty naive to think it's not affecting my small world, OR to believe that Apple is only litigating against those who "copy them feature by feature". You probably didn't even read my full message. Now any company I prefer can't make phones without fearing about how to save themselves from a useless litigation of rounded rectangles.
And in my small world, I might have wanted to open that coffee shop whose logo is just a plain old red apple fruit made by nature, with a child's head in that. But it seems I can't do that now.
I used the word Jihad as it best reflects how personal it becomes to some people. It's not a matter of taste, but a matter of "being".
My main point, which clearly wasn't well articulated, was STEP YELLING AT ME. I can't change it. Nor do I care.
Yell at Apple, or Google, or whoever can act on it. Boycott them all you want. Just don't vilify me simply because I happen to like the platform you happen to hate.
You do that, and I promise to not yell at you for the platform you like that I happen to hate (as an example, I honestly could give two shits about Apple or Android .... it's a god damn phone).
The thing is, Apple makes really nice hardware. Really, really, nice hardware. There are some pretty good Android phones, but Apple nails it in a way that nobody else seems quite able to pull off.
According to the site, the project is pretty much dead. Shame, as I agree with the OP that Apple hardware is better than anything an Android manufacturer has turned out - or is interested in turning out. I can't remember the last time I saw an Android phone under 4.3" big.
It's a years old version of Andriod. I tried to install it on my old iPhone 3G a couple of months back and it barely worked and couldn't make phone calls. There hasn't been updates for years. It's an abandoned project.
It's not quite like that, but essentially that's true (I think it's possible to run Android on iPhone 3G S and older, but that was a long time ago and I don't think you could use it as a phone).
I don't think this was as much of a complaint about the situation a question, so your recommendation doesn't offer much in regards to the question in general. I do understand what you're saying, I just don't think it's really what robbiep was asking nor is it the place for it.
As one who worked for Netscape, and was 12' away from Marc Andreessen when the ruling was handed down, the ENTIRE case against Microsoft was predicated on them (A) Being a Monopoly (that was critical) and (B) Trying to leverage said monopoly into another line of business.
Nobody is going to suggest Apple has a Monopoly in the mobile phone, nor even the Smart Phone industry. In fact, I think Eric Schmidt publicly said that "Android had Won" today - so that kind of puts an end to that thread.
And indeed next to Android's in smartphones. Isn't the more apt question about what Android ship as defaults for mail and browsing as an anti-trust question?
After all, the MS issue wasn't about IE being the only browser so it's not about the ability to change it, it was about it being the default browser and therefore what many unsophisticated users will use by default.
Is that true? Doesn't Google's Android agreement to get the apps outside the core OS demand certain things?
I'm certainly struggling to think of an Android phone I've seen that doesn't ship with a Google browser.
(Edit: I take that back. Obviously the Kindle's don't and nor do most of the Android phones sold in China - an estimated two thirds not running Google apps suggested recently).
No, it's not a similar situation because Apple doesn't have a monopoly on the mobile OS market. Microsoft was accused of abusing it's monopoly on the PC operating system market to prevent competition on the web browser market.
Today, the situation is different: if you as a customer don't like iOS you can go and easily buy a smartphone with Android or Windows OS.
This is an important distinction. Otherwise for example every car manufacturer could be accused with similar grounds because they use their propriety software or custom parts instead of providing totally configurability.
That's right. The key point is that the rules for running a business change when you have a monopoly. Having a monopoly isn't illegal but the government doesn't want you abusing that special power with anticompetitive tactics.
If Apple have 98% of the mobile phone market and threatens OEM's that they will have licenses taken away if they include competitors products, then we'll talk anti-trust.
The primary difference is that it's Apple's software going on Apple's own hardware, rather than Microsoft requiring that manufactures installing Windows on their systems include their web browser as well.
I agree with the first part. If Mobile Safari had the reputation to be a security nightmare - with public attention rivaling the iOS6 Maps release, or IE in its worst days - then people would probably ask for a system-wide alternative.
But I don't think that Apple ever considered to cause drama about the Google Maps release, just like they didn't cause a drama about YouTube, or Nokia Maps, or whatever. That seemed more like Google trying to take a cheap shot at Apple's approval process.
Google pretty much kills it with map apps. Unless Apple keeps up people will eventually complain that they want to change their default map app. I think already there are companies making better mobile browsers, mail, calendar, etc. As people become aware of them, or Apple slips like they have with maps, I think they'll start getting more pressure to allow users to change their default apps.
Just for your information, we don't have a "real" Chrome on iOS, we have UIWebViews with Chrome branding. So Google can only innovate in the UI surrounding the web pages, not the rendering and interaction of the websites themselves.
Not 100% true: iOS Chrome bundles its own networking stack which is a differentiator (it supports SPDY for a start). They are hampered by UIWebView’s slower JS engine though.
Thanks! Was not aware of the networking part, nice to know.
The rendering engine is also much more than "just rendering". When I click two small links close to each other on Android Chrome, a small clickable popup containing a zoomed in portion of that part of the page will appear. Very useful for avoiding misclicks!
Microsoft was sued simply for bundling IE with Windows, which sounds crazy when you think about it. But at the time it seemed like selling browsers was going to be huge and Microsoft basically killed Netscape. With Windows, though, you were always free to install other browsers and set them as the default unlike iOS.
In the end the case kinda fizzled out as the times were changing so fast. Browsers kinda became an accepted "default" application to go along with an operating system.
I have to admit with all of the lawsuits in the software industry, I'm kinda surprised that Apple hasn't gotten more heat.
There was a lot more to it than that. Microsoft actively threatened to withdraw licenses from OEMs that preinstalled/bundled rival software as defaults. Given the Windows monopoly, OEMs had to comply or die. Given the massive inertia against the average non-technical user installing an alternative to IE, this effectively equated to Microsoft using their Windows monopoly to dominate an unrelated market.
Apple are nowhere near close to this until they own 95% of the global cellphone market and start making credible threats to destroy HTC or Samsung if they dare to sell an Android phone, or an iPhone with Chrome preinstalled.
It looks great, the fact that it has 480 upvotes on here shows that a lot of people wanted it.
The transport directions are slightly better, it'll find actual options for me now but does still occasionally go "Nope, no public transport around you!" when I live near a bus stop. And a train station.
It's slightly laggy on my iPhone 5, I popped it up with a high view when I was on the train and it was very visibly jerky, Apple Maps was much, much smoother.
Hey guys, SIGN IN. You want your search history? SIGN IN. That's really annoying, and given when the whole Maps shift started it was rumoured that Google was demanding more and more information on the searches it points to Google really wanting that search history with your account.
POI stuff spanks Apple, easily. Apple sucks at that at the moment, the fact that Google can autocomplete a hell of a lot of it is much nicer.
I don't like some of the UX choices, the 'tutorial overlay' says the bottom right button is tappable but it's actually a slide over, tapping did nothing for me. Accessing Street View is non-intuitive. Occasionally it felt like there was a few too many taps to get me where I needed to be. This is all stuff they can work on though.
All in all, it's pretty good. I'll have it as a secondary Maps app, I'm going to try stick with Apple Maps though. Not because I'm a glutton for punishment but because it has genuinely started getting better for the use case I need it in. Choice is always nice though.
I'm not seeing a lot of comments about how good for Apple this is.
Yes Apple want to own maps on iOS but given how their own launch went the ship has sailed on that for a while at least. But given the position they found themselves in this goes a long way to undermining the criticisms of mapping on iOS because if you think Apple maps sucks you just go and get Google maps for free.
One of Apple's big gripes supposedly was that they couldn't get Google maps turn by turn navigation on the iPhone and here it is (and without them paying for it it seems) plus they get to work on Apple maps with some of the pressure off which protects them some if Google start messing around.
I'm not in any way saying that this was Apple's plan all along - that plan went badly wrong in the summer - but as of this morning iOS, for regular users at least, just got more attractive.
Yes it's a win for Google, but it's a win for Apple too.
"One of Apple's big gripes supposedly was that they couldn't get Google maps turn by turn navigation on the iPhone"
I thought it was because when Apple asked for turn-by-turn, Google said "okay, but we want larger Google branding, and also want to hook it up to Google Latitude" and Apple said no way?
So when Apple decides drop Google Maps as their default, they probably thought that it'll bring more value to their iOS platform. But obviously that didn't happen.
Now that Google Maps is back on iOS, I agree that it's a win for Apple as well. But someone please explain it to me how it could have been a win for Apple to drop Google Maps in the first place?
Relations between the two companies were hardly cordial. I suspect Apple didn't want to be beholden to a rival over what was becoming an increasingly core service.
Remember Apple already give Samsung, another competitor, a shed load of each money for components. Why enrich someone you're competing with?
Two-finger slide from the right sometimes opens up a sidebar that apparently contains settings (not sure what the magic incantation is).
Zooming in works, but there's no street view, you just keep zooming waaaaay in.
No bike directions. :|
I might like the map drawing better, can't really say which is quicker on my relatively slow device, and it does work quite well. But so far I'm not impressed at all. The previous iOS 5- version was better, if less new-Google-aesthetic-y.
It does have street view, it's just not obvious how to get to it. Hold your finger on a location. When the address appears at the bottom, tap it. More info will slide up, including a street view image. Tapping that image will take you to actual street view.
Maybe there's a better way, but I'm with you, I tried just zooming way in first.
I must've missed that, thanks! It showed me this time when I launched the app, but not the first time - I accidentally triggered the settings area when trying to move around in the 3D view.
Though now I discover I can only change one setting before it automatically closes it, which also sucks. And crashed when I tried to change two anyway.
--
So far I'm seeing it as a decent alternative that uses a better data-set, but not much else. Definitely not "now I can finally upgrade to iOS6" material.
Unless you want to have the phone attached to the bike, I haven't found any good mounts for my galaxy nexus, but there's plenty of mounts for iPhone. I've considered a switch just because of that.
I hope this get's more use than the "Open in Chrome" button does. Both are awesome, my only gripe with iOS 6 is not being able to set default apps for browser, email, and maps. (coincidentally I'd switch them all to Google or google owned items)
I don't think it is coincidental; I think that is precisely the main reason why Apple chooses what apps can be used for these purposes, instead of the user being allowed to choose.
As long as you buy Apple hardware, I don't think they care what default mapping software you use. I think there is a different reason why they don't have settings for this.
I think you may be able to now. Yesterday I did a backup of my phone, then erased the phone, selected the restore file, and ran through the questions it asked me.
I had Chrome installed on my iPhone for the first time since I have ever performed a restore like this. ( I was getting jumbled cover art on albums and a restore seems to have solved it ) During this process, I was asked to setup the phone, first I think I had to unlock it, then wait some time, then set my location, then some security questions, and then a new screen I had not seen before, where there was Safari and Chrome listed, and I needed to pick one.
The problem is I was rushing, waiting for a phone call and didn't want to miss it. While in this setup mode the 3G radio icon was not on so I wanted to get back up and running. I didn't read what this screen does, chose Safari, and moved on.
I remember thinking to myself, hmpf, odd, Apple asking what default browser I want to use, that's a first. But it was what first came to mind. I can't say for sure that is what it was, as I didn't take the time to read the screen.
It's such a painless process, I may restore my phone again to answer this question. If I do, I will report it back here.
Interesting. I will have to do another restore and see what in the heck it was. Maybe I was being asked to import settings/bookmarks.
One thing can do — a cheap trick that takes an extra step I feel we shouldn't have to take — make a Javascript bookmarklet. When selected it will fire that url open in Chrome.
The problem for me is it takes too many steps to get to bookmarklets. Not as simple to get to as in a desktop browser.
If you want to give it a try, add a bookmark/boomarklet withthe following:
Yes, but keep in mind you can't make Google Maps the default mapping application, so links to addresses (e.g. in calendar, web browser, contacts) will open in Apple Maps.
What I found really interesting is how after playing with Google Maps for a couple minutes, then hopping out to the Settings app to change something, the standard iOS look instantly felt really dated, with the bubbliness, heavy gradients and pinstripes.
I get that every time i use an iphone. Feels like the "Web 2.0" era or some shitty flash-game where everything consists of rounded corners and gradients. The sms-view really makes me cringe.
Not in line with apples otherwise timeless designs at all.
Now police in Colac, west of Melbourne, say faults with Google maps are putting people's lives at risk along the Great Ocean Road and in the southern Otways.
Sergeant Nick Buenen says trucks, buses and tourists are being directed down Wild Dog Road, which is a one-way track, not built for heavy traffic.
He says VicRoads has denied responsibility and Google Maps has not responded.
"Update, 12:41 p.m. PT A Google spokesperson said that Google Maps routes drivers onto Wild Dog Road only if the driver searches for a destination located on that road. For directions to other nearby locations, Google Maps routes drivers onto Forrest-Apollo Bay Road/Skenes Creek Road.
"
Ranking based on a number of factors, not just a string match is generally a good idea.
When someone searches on the term "maps" do you want the "best" (highest rated, most popular, whatever) app to be the top hit (give it a week and that'll likely be Google Maps), or the one from the person who had done a bit of SEO and thought to call his app "maps" to hit the exact string match?
I contest that what's happening is actually a good thing and what you propose would be a field day for those who look to game the system.
Does that hold true when the exact string match is already #1 on the Free Apps list? Because to me, if it's an exact string match, AND it's wildly popular...
Okay, how about, it's an exact string match, it's wildly popular, and it's from a well known and long time developer whose apps have always been wildly popular? Is that enough yet, to make search not suck?
PS, Google Maps is now the third search result instead of the fifth. After how many days should search not suck?
Given that that app is going to be there for years, how about what percentage of the time? At the moment it's likely that it will be a small fraction of 1%.
And search doesn't suck - it's still easy to find, you just need to look a little bit more. Given that it's the number one free download discovery really doesn't seem to be an issue here.
Does it have a few problems that, when compared with all the progress Google has made in that arena, makes its performance untenable?
I say this because I have used Apple Maps to navigate the rural southeastern U.S. with absolutely no problems. I even had my dedicated GPS to make sure Apple Maps wasn't leading me astray.
I have maybe 75% success in having a search term find the right place in Apple Maps. In Google Maps, it was more like 99%. This sounds pretty close, but every single one of those 25% that failed, I had to go look up the address on Google and cut and paste it into Apple Maps. I do not enjoy doing that.
I've also had it direct me to locations that did not exist (but were in Yelp). But since no one uses Yelp to review bank branches, that data has never really been checked before.
My theory is that people want it to be worse than it actually is. I've put ~1000 miles on it via turn-by-turn and I like it a lot better than the old maps app.
What I dont get is that people were/are willing to wait for google to get it together with the "next release," and crucify apple for doing the exact same.
Either way, we win because apple removing google maps from ios forced google to work hard on providing a good app and google's app will force apple to polish up their maps.
A bit of a hyperbole...it's been fine everywhere in Georgia. I've been using iOS6 Maps since the first beta, and I honestly didn't notice any of the issues people have with Apple Maps until people pointed them out after the public release.
It isn't hyperbole at all. Tim Cook himself apologised for its shortcomings. The fact that Google is getting so much attention for their maps app speaks volumes as to how problematic Apple Maps is.
Tim Cook responding to bad press makes sense, but having bad publicity doesn't necessarily mean a product is awful. "Apple Maps fail hard after Steve Jobs dies" is a big headline, and it's no surprise that news agencies pick up on that regardless of how much substance it has.
And realistically, I don't think it says much. First, tech sites are obviously going to pick up on this release. It continues the narrative they've had going for months. Second, even if there had been no stories about Apple Maps, we'd be seeing tons of stories about this release. Very few people had issues with mobile Safari before Chrome came out, but the response to that was huge as well.
There's no getting around it. For most of the world Apple Maps was truly awful, it was particularly bad here in Australia to the point that it was useless and even life threatening. I'm not sure why you're even trying to argue the point, it has been written about and commented on everywhere around the world, and the overwhelming consensus is; Apple Maps was a step backwards.
You can't just dismiss the criticism because it made for a good headline.
All right. Outside of the US, it may have been bad. I don't have any personal experience with that, so I'll concede that point. The original comment was "It had real difficulty everywhere except (parts of) California". I pointed out that that was a hyperbole. Apple Maps is fine in the vast majority of the United States, and fine with a significant portion of iOS users.
I am in Florida and use Apple Maps to travel all over the state. It was wrong countless times, from location of restaurants to taking me to wrong addresses because I did not spell "northeast" as NE. Worst of all it did not find most local businesses. Unless you have personally used it to travel all over the US, how can you say it works everywhere?
I can say it's been fine in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I've been using it since June, and I just haven't encountered any problems that seem to plague everyone else on the Internet. Maybe it's just good luck on my part, but whatever. At least everyone can be happy now :)
I'm wondering if Japanese carriers will pre-install google maps on iphones they sell, and maybe even figure out a way to get it wedged in as the default maps app...
I'm shocked how fast the UI is. I'm on an iPhone 4S and every UI gesture, view load and transition has absolutely no lag. For example, from the sliding info sheet, tap on the street view button and it loads instantly.
Even requests that are hitting the server seem to return almost instantly.
Looking at the UI I can see why it's fast - everything is set up in a way to maximize performance if you're willing to put in the work.
Which is to say, simple text, simple lines, simple shadows - all of which, so long as you take the time and draw smartly using Core Graphics, is well within the capabilities of any iOS device. Combine with a few dashes of smart UI caching and the whole thing will scream.
iOS UI optimization is a topic I wish more devs knew about. So many relatively simplistic apps are dog slow because no one has bothered to do even the most modest amount of optimization.
tl;dr Use Instruments while running on the device (not the simulator) to pinpoint the highest avoidable CPU usage and then optimize the relevant code. Repeat until the scrolling is buttery smooth on a 3GS :)
Could I also ask, lots of people are asking about the FPS. I notice the app seems to have zero hiccups/ latency spikes throughout the UI, however the framerate does seem to be around 20/30 FPS in the map view on my iPhone 5. Is this intentional? It is a very consistent framerate it is just that it is noticeably lower than most every other part of the iOS experience.
I'm on an iPhone 4, and panning around is stuttering quite a lot. I'm looking at the downtown Seattle area in particular, if that matters. I'm wondering if the network speed has anything to do with it. I'm using 3G in a heavy urban area, so maybe it's hanging when fetching server data due to network congestion.
On a cursory glance,
The panning performance is disappointing (looks like 20fps) on my iPhone 5, whilst Apple maps is buttersmooth at 60fps.
I like the overall look of Google maps more, having more detail and and the 3d buildings that pop-up are cute. Apple maps are right down bare looking in comparison.
I was sorely missing streetview, I was amazed myself how used to I was checking streeview of various places.
Can't offhand remember places Apple maps couldn't address-locate so I don't have any good comparison off the map data quality, but both have been mostly fine, with google having slightly better heuristics finding an address even if it doesn't know the exact street number.
I like the rotation with two fingers in google maps is less sensitive, I often rotate in apple maps accidentally. But then again, Google maps has this menu that comes up when sliding with two fingers (by placing two fingers and then dragging) and that came up accidentally few times.
In google maps, sometimes a quick tap tells you the address of that place, but sometimes it needs a tap-and-hold, feels erratic.
Google maps driving directions didn't say a word while staying still, so I can't say much about that. The finnish voice in apple maps is very understandable, but quite harsh. The US voice of course failed to read any finnish names in a comical way (but had to change phone language to get finnish voice, I usually prefer my electronics in english).
Public transport stuff has always been useless in finland, so nothing to say about that either..
Just one Data Point -
My first query (from my office in Redwood City) was "Directions to Lake Merrit" - it found Lake Merrit, but, unlike IOS 6 Maps, couldn't get me transit direction there. IOS 6 Maps one-clicked me over to "HopStop" which gave me a choice of Walk/Caltrain/Bart.
Prior to the uproar around IOS 6 maps not having Transit direction, I wasn't even aware the IOS 5 Map had transit directions. In San Francisco, Tokyo, New York and other places this is a big deal. But, if you want to get Transit Direction from Redwood City, CA to Oakland, CA, IOS 6 Maps currently beats out Google Maps.
With that said, I'm blown away by how quickly the interface can guess what I'm looking for as I start typing into it. Apple has a long way to catch up in that department. I suspect for much map searching, Google Maps is going to become my "Goto" client on the iPhone.
[Edit - Love the speedy Swipe Left/Right interface. Also Offline Maps. Just Cached all of California, Switched to "Airplane Mode" - and all my mapping data is cached. Awesome.]
[Edit 2 - Wow - this map is fast. IOS 6 Maps wasn't particularly slow, but switching back and forth shows me Apple has a long way to go. Have to Love Competition]
[Edit 3 - Jumping into StreetView is silky smooth, and, they make use of the accelerometer so you can look around]
Is this a UI issue? Or does it not think it has any transit directions to offer? The web interface and android have transit available from Redwood City to Lake Merritt:
I just get "No Route Found" when trying to get Transit route instructions from 555 Broadway, Redwood City, CA on my iPhone using the Google Map client. HopStop works fine. Even lets me know when the next train is leaving.
I think this is just "an exception that proves the rule" - It's pretty well accepted that Google Transit Direction are pretty good - just not well defined on their iOS App for my use case (yet)
I am a regular IOS5 Google Maps transit directions user in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Google Maps transit is far superior here to HopStop, which seems to think we have a subway. Looking forward to testing this new app, so I can upgrade to IOS6.
Is there a way to manually cache areas for offline use (i.e., how could I cache all of California like you said you did)? When I go in airplane mode I can see that it's cached the areas I had been browsing online, but I can find any explicit UI to add areas to the cache.
There is on the android version, there's an option "Make available offline" you just draw out a square of what part of the world you want offline. Not sure if it's available on the iOS version though.
I just scrolled through the state at various zoom levels (quickly), switched to airplane mode, and the confirmed that 100% of the areas were still available.
Possibly. I found it by chance on the page which lists all the apps by "Google, Inc." in the App Store. It's listed there, but agree it doesn't show up in search results yet and I can't download it. It just seems this is definitely the permalink to it.
Update: Following OP's advice I was able to get to the Google, Inc page where the Maps app is listed. Still no luck. This is gonna be a waiting game :(
The app does not show up on search yet. However, I was able to install it by:
* Open up App Store
* Search for Chrome
* Click on Chrome to bring up the app page
* Select Related tab
* On "More By Google" section, click see all
* On the list of Google Apps that appear, Google Maps is at the very bottom... Click on the "FREE" or "INSTALL" button to install. Alternatively, click on the item to bring up the app page for Google Maps
Notice the last screenshot preview of the app? Interestingly, it is the iPad aspect ratio. So I'm sure it's just simply not yet ready for public release.
I'd rather they put another designer on the project and develop both interfaces simultaneously from the beginning. Other companies manage it, but apparently not Google.
Finally, I'm happy that this app is released. I refused to use Apple Maps any further.
The one major drawback from the Original Google Maps app is that the original one did an excellent job showing every single street name on even a deep zoom level. The new Google Maps one does a poor job on this and you have to hunt back and forth to figure out what zoom level you need to get to in order to read the street name. Once they get this right, things will be back to normal.
Maybe a small bump. They hit over 60% adoption in October, and when you take out devices that can't upgrade to iOS6 and people who don't even realize updates are available (my grandma, for one), I'd have to think people who have intentionally held out this long make up a small but vocal minority.
Apple had an interesting choice here, they could allow it, or they could not allow it. If they didn't, Google had a very good opportunity to slam Apply publicly and get users riled up, and enemies more ammunition. They chose the latter, which I think is the best choice as they now have real competition and they'll have to step up their game. This is app number two that will probably take place over the natively installed apps now by Google.
I think what you're talking about is just that: history. There is a slew of email, weather, web browsers etc. All in the App Store competing with their native versions. There have been for a while.
Google Voice for example. Apple felt that another app having a dialer would be confusing to users. I'm not sure what excuse they'd have to block Google Maps, given the large selection of mapping apps available, but I wouldn't put it past them to come up with something.
Google Voice is in the App Store these days. It's pretty clear that they've worked to come up with a fairer and more consistent set of approval guidelines.
Why people insist Apple made their own map app because they wanted to take Google out?
Hasn't it been stated already that the original Google-backed apps weren't being updated anymore and the contract expired?
It's the same situation as the YouTube app. Why would Apple not allow the Google Maps app?
If anything, this was actually good, now we have 2 map apps and Google is forced to make a good one, just riding on the superior mapping data won't cut it.
It will be interesting to see - Google Maps is pretty darn good and has a great brand. I'm willing to wager that, because people are incredibly lazy (and, honestly, the vast majority probably don't care as much as we do) - that a small majority will continue to use IOS6 maps - but I don't think it will be way more.
It's actually Chrome, I use it 90% of the time. The other 10% is when things open in Safari. Apple could be a little looser about setting which apps to open by default.
1) Search for "Google Maps" and it is the 5th result. The app is literally called Google Maps. The results before: Fine Maps, PD Maps Worldwide Edition, Google Earth(?!).
2) 300 comments and the topic of Apple anti-competitive behaviour with regard to App availability is hardly touched. In fact the top most comments are on UI and nitpicking over details such as Bookmarks and response speed.
> 1) Search for "Google Maps" and it is the 5th result. The app is literally called Google Maps. The results before: Fine Maps, PD Maps Worldwide Edition, Google Earth(?!).
I suspect that this is simply due to some part of the searching algorithm that takes things like number of downloads and publishing date into account. Over time the position will probably change.
Apple has blocked things like "Google Voice" in the past claiming it duplicates existing functionality in the phone.
I suspect (And this is entirely speculation on my part) that if iOS Maps had not been under such a cloud of scrutiny since it launched, we might not have seen Google Maps.
With so many having major issues with iOS Maps, and Apple needing to do a lot of catch up, being seen to block a reasonable solution would be very, very bad. Especially the same week as the well publicized "Sending people into the middle of the Australian outback with no mobile reception instead of the city they put in" news on iOS Maps.
Not trying to sound conspiracy theorist here, but observing past behaviours and the likely influence of current demands.
I used the new Google Maps for my GPS on the way to work this morning to do a side by side comparison with my regular GPS software from Navigon. A couple of things I love:
1). It connects to my car stereo via the phone bluetooth profile so even though my car can't stream music by bluetooth, I can still get my turn-by-turn directions. My Navigon uses the whichever audio profile is used for music, so I only get the turn-by-turn over the car stereo if I'm plugged in by wire. Kudos Google, that's a really nice touch. Thank you.
2). I like the way it displays the streetview when you arrive at your destination so you can see where you should be. Another great touch.
And a couple of things I really don't like at all:
1). "In 300 metres...[pregnant pause]... turn left".
2). I don't like that it doesn't provide the street names in the audible turn by turn directions. So in cases where you have two streets in close proximity, unless you actually look at the screen, you're left guessing which is the correct one.
Yeah, I copy pasted the link into Chrome on iPhone 5, it opened the install page on the iTunes app (instead of the App Store app). Possibly because of the itunes.apple.com/... in the url. What are regular app link domains anyway?
Please keep your eyes on the road and obey applicable laws. Do not manipulate this application while in motion. Directions may be inaccurate, incomplete, dangerous, or prohibited.
Traffic data is not real-time, and location accuracy cannot be guaranteed
Well you shouldn't bet your life on the accuracy of these maps but there's great distance between hugely inaccurate maps and maps with millimeter precision.
My guess is if Apple maps were introduced 5 years ago (or even earlier) people wouldn't complain as there wouldn't be any other better alternative that used to be available.
Does voice navigation work on iPhone 4? I currently use a telenav app due to them having voice nav. I'm not in a position to upgrade my phone yet, so my girlfriend and I are stuck with the 4 for a bit. I downloaded the app and gave it a test but it didnt seem to do any voice -- that may be because I wasn't moving, though. It did give me the option to mute the voice navigation -- which I found odd.
Thanks! You were right. Apparently it didn't do anything when I wasn't moving but I finally had a chance to try it on the move and it worked flawlessly. Thanks for correcting my initial assumption.
Would be interesting to see how large this would be. I remember a few years ago (3-4?) when there was a project for mobile devices that would cache Google Maps for your city onto your device.
On the android version of google maps, I saved the route from Philadelphia to Kentucky (~675 miles) without a problem. You loose voice turn by turn, however.
Wow! This is a very slick and sexy app, I am impressed. I am going to give it a try for my commute to work tomorrow. Very fast, responsive, and the voice is nice (but a little too fast as compared to iOS)
It's certainly a great alternative for Apple's maps, which lack data in many parts of the world. It also appears to be vector maps, like Apple's, unlike Maps in iOS 5.
Some things that lack or incomplete in the meantime:
- iPad version, which is less critical, of course.
- Access to contact addresses
- Street view doesn't load high-resolution images when zoomed in.
The performance on iPhone 4S is good enough but zooming in and out is sometimes too fast and hard to do with precision.
Still, I already replaced Apple's Maps with this one of my iPhone's home screen.
Tap a named location (such as a business), or tap-and-hold on a location to drop a pin, tap the name plate that appears at the bottom of the screen, then tap Street View.
So, I'm really disappointed. The thing I was most looking forward to was the return of public transportation schedules on my iPhone. But this new app simply says, "Unavailable in this region." They were there before and they are still available for my area on a desktop computer. I don't understand why they are missing.
EDIT: I take that back, as others have noticed, it's there... just unavailable from the sidebar. Not sure why.
The good thing is that OS on my iPhone can now be upgraded to iOS6...
The interesting conclusion for me as a user is that:
(1) I value the additional services like Maps more than the base OS...
(2) I don't care about Apple loyalty - my loyalty is towards iPhone and any app provider who continues to provide me an excellent iPhone experience
Will maps put the idea of unchangeable default apps on the radar of anti-competitive practices? The people clearly want their mapping from Google, but if you dont implicitly open the google map and type an address (by way of hyperlink in another app, etc.), all mapping will be routed to apple's app.
As a timed test, I wanted to see how long it would take me to search for my favorite Phoenix, AZ coffee shop (Lux). I did the test from start up to clicking on the pin on an iPhone 4.
Google Maps: 22 seconds
Apple Maps: ??? It took me to Luxembourg
I think I know which map app I'll be using from now on.
Not seeing this in the Australian App Store either. Can't wait, my girlfriend will be especially pleased she relies on having maps on her iPhone because she's a hopeless navigator and the iOS 6 maps frustrate her.
Thanks man. I just realised the app is so new Apple's app store search index probably hasn't been refreshed just yet, so went onto the HN homepage on my phone and it opened up in the store.
I wonder how this thing with Apple App Store works, and why some items appear in US store only, and in other (Croatian, and i see from comments Uruguay and Turkey) hours or even days later.
The first thing I did after reading the headline was go to the app store on my iphone and search for "google maps" - 328 results, and google maps isn't one of them.
You've got to wonder how much Apple are paying Google to support maps on iOS....or what other kick-back (more valuable to Google than cash) there might be.
Why do you think they're paying them anything given how the transition from one mapping application to the other has gone?
Apple clearly wanted Google maps to be relegated to an also ran.
This works for both of them - the complaints about Apple maps are undermined by the existence of Google maps for iOS, Google get to retain their position as the best maps on any platform.
I see no evidence for an exchange of money in any direction.
But I still don't see what motivation Google had for releasing an iOS 6 app. I mean they are already the undisputed kings in maps - and had they not released an iOS6 maps app, wouldn't have more users converted to Android phones? Just trying to understand all this, I'm not a business expert. Though I agree there wouldn't be any money exchange for this between the two.
Your smarminess is cute, but Apple eased up on the "duplicate functionality" stuff a long time ago. You have to look no further than the fact that Chrome exists.
Which is still just a UIWebView in the Chrome dressing because Apple won't permit Google to run their own Javascript or document rendering engines on iOS.
That's a totally separate issue, with completely valid security concerns (although sounds like an implementation issue that should be rethought).
It very much duplicates the core functionality of Safari, just as Google Voice does for the Phone and Messages apps. And GV was what both started and eventually ended that whole "duplicate functionality" debacle.
I have a web browser for iOS that does its own HTML rendering, and has been available in the store for many years now. Before CoreText was available, even. It doesn't deal with Javascript though, so you may have a point there.
disclaimer.. I'm a little (a lot) drunk but still... Searching for 'google maps' does not bring up this app.. I could only find it by clicking on the link... Is visibility this poor on the App Store... The name I'm searching is identical to that of the app, what's going on here..
I am seeing the same as you (ctrl+f'd for 'search').
"Google Maps" in App Store showing nothing for both iPhone and iPad. (Canada?) Had to go though this link. I understand it is new but that seems a bit underhanded...
The more likely explanation is that Apple is caching the search index. Which given the traffic volumes, number of apps and the fact they are using Lucene makes sense.
Pros:
1. You can pinch to zoom while during turn-by-turn navigation
2. You can select a point anywhere in the map and it instantaneously gives you the time to drive there from your current location (which is also a link to the navigation details/options.
3. Feels like a real map compared to the barren-ass land that Apple's Map shows.
4. Streetview (that is even smoother than the browser version)
Navigation is great, so much better than Siri's dreadful voice, easy to navigate from A>B with a tap of your destination. Let's not even mention the street data.
Great 3D flyovers, but no satellite-3D flyovers (if you're worried about that you probably have too much time to waste during the day - this is a maps app, to take you places, not give you a tour of Los Angeles).
UI feels great - intuitive, fluid, multi-touch works fantastic. Heard someone mention that it "lacks polish" or feels "laggy" - not sure I agree with that - feels fast on an iPhone 5 and on a 4S side-by-side. UI is clean and not cluttered, that's a plus. Someone else mentioned that it's simply GMaps in a UIWebView - no chance for that.
Of course, the public transport data is second to none. The data in general - we won't discuss that.
Great release - welcome back