“Today, Google Maps for the iPhone has arrived. It’s free, fast and fantastic,” David Pogue writes for The New York Times. “The brand-new, completely rethought design is slick, simple and coherent. Google admits that it’s even better than Google Maps for Android phones, which has accommodated its evolving feature set mainly by piling on menus.”
Pogue writes, “Google Maps for iPhone is a home run. It is not, however, without its footnotes. The biggest thing you give up is Siri integration. If you say to your iPhone, ‘Give me directions to the airport,’ Apple’s Maps app opens automatically, your course charted. It takes more steps to get started in Google Maps.”
“And despite its superior design and fluidity, the iPhone version of Google Maps doesn’t have all of the features of the Android version. It still doesn’t let you download and store maps for use when you don’t have an Internet connection. It doesn’t have indoor maps (of shopping malls and airports, for example),” Pogue writes. “Finally, although Google Maps runs fine on the iPad, it’s just a blown-up version of the iPhone version. There’s not yet an iPad-specific app.”
Pogue writes, “Google says that goodies like those will be coming soon. But for a 1.0 app, created in the space of only a few months, Google Maps for iPhone is an astonishingly powerful, accurate, beautiful tool. For millions of iPhone owners, it’s a drive in the right direction.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, lookie here: All of a sudden Google Maps goes vector-based and gives iOS users turn-by-tun navigation and Street View.
Who says Apple’s Maps didn’t work?
Regardless, or more accurately, because of Google’s “okay now you can have what we could have given you all along but withheld in order to move our and our partners’ iPhone knockoffs” effort, we’ll pass, thanks. Apple Maps are the superior choice for iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, and iPod touch users.
