Official Apple Thread

[Frogacuda]

The new maps looked good enough to me. It HAS to be better than the shitty thing they had before. What's wrong with it?

[dave is ok]

The new maps looked good enough to me. It HAS to be better than the shitty thing they had before. What's wrong with it?

It's just not as good.

[Diff-chan]

I think it's good around me, and the business listings are better than what I got from the old app. Turn-by-turn also worked flawlessly when I tried it out this morning.

From what I can tell, though, the international stuff is pretty shoddy. Apple's basically in the same position as MS with WP7 or every MMO developer, they need to do in one year what another company has iterated on over 5+.

[FirstBlood]

Yeah, I just did turn by turn and it was really really good.

Aaaand right after posting that, the map can't figure out where I am as I sit at a bar in a busy part of Philly.

[Opaque]

Oh yeah that App is so good.

Click for full size

[Frogacuda]

From what I can tell, though, the international stuff is pretty shoddy. Apple's basically in the same position as MS with WP7 or every MMO developer, they need to do in one year what another company has iterated on over 5+.

Aren't they partnering with Tom Tom? I'm pretty sure they've been in this game for a little while.

This might not get them up to snuff with Android Google Maps, but it looks better than the crippled version of Google Maps they had before. Turn by Turn is a hugely important feature that Apple badly needed and Google wasn't willing to provide to them.

[MarkRyan]

The new maps looked good enough to me. It HAS to be better than the shitty thing they had before. What's wrong with it?

Less detail
No Street View
No terrain view
No public transit directions
Slower

Oh but it has a totally useless feature that lets you view some cities in 3D from the sky!

Definitely a major downgrade. I don't even get turn-by-turn nav on my iPhone 4.

[epmode]

Turn by Turn is pretty much the only thing the new app has over the old one. And that's only when it works.

Even when everything is working properly, I much prefer the detailed Google maps to the sparse Apple setup.

[TODE]

I agree.

Siri speaks much more naturally when navigating compared to my other navigation app, Waze. But part of the data comes from Waze so she still makes mistakes in pronouncing names and recommendations such a one-mile u-turn vs a simple left turn (it's part of my route to work).

I really like Google's YouTube app and I really hope they soup up Maps for a standalone app.

[Frogacuda]

Less detail
No Street View
No terrain view
No public transit directions
Slower

Oh but it has a totally useless feature that lets you view some cities in 3D from the sky!

Definitely a major downgrade. I don't even get turn-by-turn nav on my iPhone 4.

Did the old Google Maps app do anything you can't do by just going to Google Maps in your Safari, though? My impression of the old Google Maps app was that it had all the advanced features removed anyway and wasn't much better than the browser version.

I really like Google's YouTube app and I really hope they soup up Maps for a standalone app.

I was always under the impression that Google was intentionally giving Apple shittier versions of Maps and Youtube to leverage Android, but now the iPhone Youtube app looks pretty close to the Android version, so maybe it was Apple holding things back all along. Although I can't imagine why that would be.