Apple has rolled out new Apple Maps data, acquired by Apple themselves, across the northeast United States, including Washington D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and Maine.
You can spot the updated regions by looking for more landscape details like sports fields, parking lots, ground cover, foliage, pools, pedestrian pathways and the like.
The data is gathered by Apple’s own fleet of sensor- and camera-equipped vehicles, as well as first-party data gathered from iPhones using Apple’s differential privacy. The combined data is also being made to ensure search results are more relevant.
MacDailyNews Take: Congrats to the northeast U.S.!
Apple’s new Maps data is coming to the entire country by the end of the year!
We expect to roll out this map across the entire US by the end of this year and select other countries next year. — Craig Federighi, June 3, 2019
The new Apple Maps is pretty impressive.
What about the new street view?
ehh
Sorry, but Apple Maps can’t hold a candle to Waze because Waze is crowd-sourced. So if there’s an accident or a “pop-up” speed trap, it’s reported and everyone gets warnings. Also, the GUI is MUCH better: my speed is shown in the lower left-hand corner and when I hit the speed limit, it changes color. When I go over the speed limit, it changes color again and the speed limit is displayed as well. There’s really no competition to Waze for driving. What I don’t understand is why Google doesn’t merge Waze with Google Maps (which is way better if you’re walking or biking). In any case, Apple Maps just doesn’t cut it for me…
Based upon your comments, I don’t think you have ever tried to use Waze to navigate through a complex road system like the interstate highways through downtown Chicago. The map is hopelessly cluttered by those little smiling Waze-mobiles and pop-ups all competing for the iPhone screen real estate and obscuring the roadway which you are trying to view while driving 55 mph on a six late road with multiple exists and merging traffic. After about three trips through the city, I ditched Waze for Apple Maps and have been a much less stressed out driver.
I live in the Portland Maine area , the largest city in the state, and I don’t notice any difference. My map looks like the “before” image in the graphic…
Amazing that Apple’s home state wasn’t first. Oh well.
Best to be fair and not always let California get the first bite of the Apple. FYI – I live in Calif.
Haha. Good one. 😎
Find my Friends app
Apple Maps is the map used in Find my Friends app.
Find my Friends app is a convenient and useful app to see where your children, friends, relatives are and let them to see where you are.
But when clouds cover the area, they also blind the Find my Friends map, making it impossible too see where your children are. You don’t see the houses, you don’t see the streets, you don’t see the names of the streets, making the app useless because at light years of the reason whose it was aimed at.
In addition, this app allows you to arrange a meeting with your friends by using the numerous available symbols of restaurants, shops, hotels, supermarkets, hospitals, etc.
But there are two big problems.
One is that there is no simple way, for example a button, to instantly get the address where you or your children or your friends are.
The second problem seems to indicate that no one at Apple use this app, because the numerous and useful symbols you see everywhere in the map, simply don’t work. They are inactive, not responding to when you select them.
I’m curious to know why at Apple, they consider it is nice to show the symbols in this app and at the same time, they think it is very important that those symbols stay inactive and useless.