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Apple Maps review.

KevinJS

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Having pretty well ignored Apple Maps since the first version turned out to have difficulties, I thought it was time to return to it, and check it out in real world use.

I've been using Google Maps extensively so, inevitably, this review will draw comparisons between the two apps.

The first time I set out to do the test, I didn't realize that I had some options set that were going to severely skew the results. So before you use it, check that the options are set according to the route you want. I had "Avoid highways" and "Avoid tolls" active. Not the best plan for a trucker.

So, having corrected this, I restarted the test. It should be borne in mind that I'm a professional driver. That doesn't mean I'm any good at what I do. It just means I get paid to do it. And I do know my way about. With this in mind, I was testing the app against my own knowledge and intentions. More on this later.

The route I used was between Redwater, Alberta, Canada (my then-current location) and Calgary, Alberta. I asked Siri to plan the route, which involved a street address. Siri opened Maps, calculated the route and started navigating. All good, so far.

The first thing I noticed was that my current position was visible on the lock screen. I like that. Most of the time I would not want to open the phone in order to check progress. I don't know whether Google Maps does the same under iOS 10. It did not under iOS 9. Score +1 to Apple.

Turning onto Highway 38 showed the first problem. Although the display showed me that I was on Highway 38, the voice prompt told me to turn onto 44th Street (that part is correct) and to stay on 44th Street for 20 kilometres. I would have expected instructions to continue onto Highway 38 as I passed the city limits. Score +1 for Google which does that.

Continuing on, the same discrepancy occurred as Highway 38 became Secondary Highway 643. The screen showed the change, but the voice prompt made no indication that I was now on a different road.

Voice instructions came in good time for the left turn onto Secondary Highway 825, but then I ran into quite a serious problem.

Screen Shot 2016-09-23 at 7.51.47 PM.png


Secondary Highway 825 has a junction, shown in the photograph above, with a minor road. The spoken instructions, 5.3 kilometres before that screenshot was taken were "In 10 kilometres, turn left onto Highway 37". I am aware of this junction, and vaguely aware of how far I've driven. Again, although the screen was giving the correct information, namely that a right turn was coming up, a driver who was unfamiliar with the area and hadn't noted how far he had driven would probably have followed the spoken instructions and followed the minor road. This is not good enough for a navigational aid.

The next instructions, spoken and on-screen were for a left turn onto Highway 37, followed by a left turn onto Highway 15.
Screen Shot 2016-09-23 at 7.59.37 PM.png


All good. But that route would lead to a mess of construction, which I wanted to avoid. My intention was to turn right onto Highway 15. I did so, and Maps rerouted almost instantly, recalculating a new route. However, I wasn't done with my own route planning, and fully intended to take a different road, because the recalculated route would have put me straight back into the construction zone.

Screen Shot 2016-09-23 at 8.02.21 PM.png


So I turned onto the Edmonton Ring Road, otherwise known as the Anthony Henday Drive,

Screen Shot 2016-09-23 at 8.06.00 PM.png


and then on to Highway 2, the main highway between Edmonton and Calgary.

This route gave me enough insight into the app to realize some of its shortcomings.

The lack of detail in highway numbering changes is a serious shortcoming. The spoken instructions should be enough. In many jurisdictions it is illegal to have the phone in your hand while driving, to say nothing of actually looking at the screen.

The absence of lane information is, for me, a deal breaker. If I were actually to travel to an area I didn't know, I'd use Google. Its lane information makes it far superior.

I'd like to see both apps introduce truck routes, and also dangerous goods routes. This would be of benefit to everyone, not just truckers. Want to share a road with a 63 tonne truck that is carrying a gas that can kill you at 700 parts per million? Thought not!

Apple Maps is much better than it used to be. In my opinion, it is still not good enough.
 
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I completely agree but I will note this. This spring I was driving to Indianapolis from Wisconsin. This is a route a know every well, my sister lives in the Indiana Suburbs of Chicago. But I was in my brand new car with Apple CarPlay so of course, I turned on maps to see how it would work. The part of the Interstate where 94 and 80 merge and head east across the Indiana border is a real pain in the butt. Because my sister lives near one of the first exits after the merger, I know where to jump off and drive through any number of towns in the area to get past the area that is usually jammed up. Well, when I got south of Chicago, the weather also became an issue as a snow storm hit. Before I had a chance to give any thought to rerouting or weather it would be needed, Apple Maps warned me of traffic/road conditions and suggested another route. This worked well, with the only issue being basically I was the only car on a two lane blacktop that was a sheet of ice but I am also a trained driver so...I checked the news and highway reports after I returned to I80 about 50 miles later. I missed a headache and might still have been stuck in the mess hours later. That was a big plus for me.
 
Thanks for that additional information, @bear7962. I wasn't in a position to check any rerouting. If I'd hit the junction of 825 and 37 at a different time of day, it might have been a different tale, because there are a few large industrial complexes in the area, which all seem to throw out the workers at the same time. Google Maps has warned me about the traffic at that junction before, but local knowledge usually means I take a different route long before I get to it. That reroute adds quite a bit of distance, but avoids the frustration of waiting up to ½ an hour to drive less than a mile.

I tried to look through the eyes of an inexperienced driver as I was writing the original post, which is why I put so much emphasis on lane information. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen people come to the end of a lane and attempt, too late, to join the lane they should have been in already. It's dangerous and frustrating, since about half of the time they manage to force their way in, slowing the rest of the traffic down.

Something else I'd like to see is overspeed warnings, although I suppose that would discourage the use of these apps. Used properly, I'm convinced that they can be the single biggest contributor to road safety yet invented. The driver who actually knows where he is going can concentrate more on getting there than worrying about how he gets there.
 
Do you think Apple Maps has come further in its first 4 years than Google Maps did in its first 4 years?
 
I've tried using Apple Maps for finding a route from Helsinki-Vantaa Airport to a hotel in Helsinki, via public transport. No result. Apple Maps suggests to use Google Maps.
 
Do you think Apple Maps has come further in its first 4 years than Google Maps did in its first 4 years?

I'm not really in a position to judge that. I didn't use on road electronic maps until quite recently. My maps used to be the paper variety and I only started using this tech about 5 years ago. At that time it was mainly the GPS HD app I had on my iPad.
 
I don't know about the pace of progress. I suspect it is faster because there are more resources out there. I remember Google, Yahoo, Mapquest, all of them used to tell me to turn in one direction out of my subdivision onto the main drag, go half a block and then do a u-turn rather that just tell me to turn in the correct direction to do begin with. They all used to do it every time. But Apple does do that but I do notice it will have me drive a few blocks further than I should rather than taking angled street. It's still got a lot to improve. I will say this, drove to Florida this spring using Waze and it drove me crazy with all the warnings, switched over to Apple and as far as I know, it worked well.
 
Back home from last week's road trip. Results are mixed. For the trip out, Apple Maps took me off the Interstate earlier than I would have but I later found (talking with others who made the same journey) that it avoided construction slow-downs. So that was good. It also had a pop-up to tell me about traffic being slowed to one lane ahead which I discovered was due to an accident and was at a place where a detour was not available and of a duration that was minimal. It did occur at a blind turn in the road so the heads-up was a plus. Then we had the return trip. I planned a stop at a town a few miles off of the Interstate. But this was a fail. Basically, it had me leave the Interstate,drive in a large circle thru a little town I did not need to. In addition, there was a bridge out due to construction (on the unnecessary re-route) and when I followed the detour it finally took me back to the Interstate that there was no reason to have left. About 25 miles later, I made the side trip I planned. After the unnecessary re-routing off of the Interstate, Apple Maps again functioned well. But this inconsistency is not good. I was traveling in areas that I had been driving in for my entire adult life and so was comfortable knowing I could navigate this on my own if I had to, but this makes me nervous about relying on it for travel out of state. In addition, I was using CarPlay. In the update it shows the words other routes but it indicates that it is showing the quickest route. You need to know to scroll thru the other screens and to figure out what route you want. It used to show all the routes on a map and you clicked the one that looked best. The old way was better.
 
Thanks for that @bear7962

Your post reiterates what I've been thinking; that Apple Maps is basically a toy. It looks clever, and what it does, it does quite well, but I'm afraid I'm not going to put myself and other road users at risk by relying on its foibles.

I find Google Maps to be far superior in all the areas that matter. If I was heading into a strange area, I would feel comfortable using Google Maps to give me the info I need. I could not say that about Apple Maps.

One thing I forgot to mention in the original post was that all of the controls function from the lock screen. That is a useful feature.

Now, if Apple can get some serious work done, particularly on lane information, I'll give it another shot.
 
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