Apple Maps is finally usable

304 words, 2 minutes.

When Apple Maps was first released it was terrible. Over the following years it steadily got better, but was mostly still inferior to Google Maps. The gap is now pretty small though. Enough to start using it over Google maps?

On a recent road trip holiday (the north of England to Sweden, 2,800 miles, since you ask) I decided to try and do all navigation with Apple Maps rather than Waze or Google.

If a route ended up deep into a city, I’d compare notes with Waze, and pretty much Apple Maps would always mirror the same route. So I stuck with it. And I’ll admit, it never let us down.

Apple Maps has long since had a stunning 3d view, that shadows anything the default Google Maps can offer (Earth is a different story, but we’ll ignore that for now as it’s not so readily accessible), and I find Apple’s street view far clearer in its indication of which way you’re facing:

Compared to Google Maps’ little arrow:

I tend to couple it up with what3words (which I’m a massive fan of) for the final destination — finding where I want to go with w3w, and sending it to Apple Maps for navigation. This works well for navigating directly to, say, a hotel car park entrance that may not be the same spot as the hotel address.

The only negative left, I’ve found, is searching for a type of business versus a name. For example, searching for ‘specialty coffee shop’ on Google Maps will find you really good coffee shops. Try that on Apple Maps and it will look for a business called “Specialty Coffee” 🙄

Still, that’s a small negative to have to jump back into Google Maps for. And it’s yet another nail being hammered into Google’s coffin. No bad thing.