Apple rolls out all-new Maps across the UK and Ireland

Today, users in the UK and Ireland can experience the new Apple Maps, with faster and more accurate navigation, and comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls, and more, making it easier and more enjoyable to map out any journey.

“Apple Maps is the best way to explore and navigate the world — all while protecting your privacy — and we’re excited to bring the new map to our users in the UK and Ireland,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “We have rebuilt the map from the ground up, with better navigation, richer detail, more accurate information for places, and incredible features like Look Around, cycling directions, and curated Guides from trusted resources. We’ve reimagined how Maps can help users find the places they love and get to where they’re going even faster and easier.”

Maps helps hundreds of millions of people in over 200 countries and territories navigate and explore the world. Privacy is central to the Maps experience, offering personalised features created using on-device intelligence, and it’s everywhere customers are: at home, in the office, on the go on users’ iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, and in the car with CarPlay. Maps is deeply integrated into the most popular apps customers use every day, including Photos, Messages, Calendar, Weather, and more. With MapKit and MapKit JS, Maps is also the foundation for many popular third-party apps and services like Instagram, Bank of America, and Nike Run Club.
Building on the new map, there are many features that help users navigate and explore the world with a simple tap.

Explore Major Cities with Look Around

Maps offers interactive street-level imagery with high-resolution, 3D photography and smooth and seamless transitions through major cities with Look Around. Customers from anywhere in the world can navigate through London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, with many more places to come.

Discover More Places with Guides

Guides provide a curated list of interesting places to visit in a city, created by a selection of trusted resources including Time Out Group, Lonely Planet, and The Evening Standard. Guides are a great way to find popular attractions, discover restaurants, and explore new recommendations from respected brands.

Greener Ways to Explore

With iOS 14, Maps makes it easier than ever to navigate and explore in greener ways. With new cycling directions, users can see elevation for a ride, check how busy a street is, and whether there are stairs along the route. Electric vehicle routing adds charging stops along a planned route based on current vehicle charge and charger types. Major cities around the world use congestion zones to help reduce traffic in dense areas, and now Maps lets users see these zones on the map and route around them when they are active.

Additional features in Maps include:

• Real-time transit information gives detailed transit schedules, live departure times, arrival times, the current location of a bus or train en route, and system connections to help plan a journey. Maps also includes important real-time information like outages. Real-time transit is available in many cities across the world.

• Speed cameras will let users know when approaching speed and red light cameras along a route, with the added ability to see where they are located on the map.

• Share ETA sends an estimated time of arrival to family, friends, or coworkers with a simple tap. The receiver can follow along on the journey, and Maps will even update them with a revised estimate for when the traveler is arriving if a significant delay occurs.

• Favourites provides one-tap navigation to frequent places. Whether it’s home, work, the gym, or school, users can simply tap and go once it’s in Favourites on the launch screen.

• Siri Natural Language Guidance provides more natural-sounding directions that are even easier to follow, such as “At the next traffic light, turn left.”

• Flyover offers a way to see select major metro areas with photo-realistic, immersive 3D views. Users can move their device through space to experience a city from above, or explore in high resolution as they zoom, pan, tilt, and rotate around the city and its landmarks.

• Flight status uses on-device Siri intelligence to scan for information stored in Mail, Calendar, or Wallet, and proactively serves flight information for terminals, gate locations, and departure times, as well as flight changes or cancellations for upcoming travel.

• Indoor Maps for airports and malls makes it possible for users to simply open the Maps app and see what level they’re on, restroom locations, and even which stores and restaurants are open.

Maps and Privacy

Apple is committed to keeping personal information safe and has built privacy into the core of Maps. With Maps, no sign-in is required and it is not connected to an Apple ID in any way. Personalised features, such as suggesting departure time to make the next appointment, are created using on-device intelligence. Any data collected by Maps while using the app, like search terms, navigation routing, and traffic information, is associated with random identifiers that continually reset to ensure the best possible experience and to improve Maps. Maps goes even further to obscure a user’s location on Apple servers when searching for a location through a process called “fuzzing.” Maps converts the precise location where the search originated to a less-exact one after 24 hours and does not retain a history of what has been searched or where a user has been.

MacDailyNews Take: Congrats, Apple Maps users in the UK and Ireland!