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A YEAR OF GOOGLE and APPLE MAPS

18 points| julianozen | 8 years ago |justinobeirne.com | reply

5 comments

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[+] throwaway40483|8 years ago|reply
This is really a nice visual comparison of Google Maps and Apple Maps over the years.

The gist of the article is that Google has deemphasized roads in favor of showing places, e.g. bars, restaurants, shops, etc.

[+] tinus_hn|8 years ago|reply
When you are just looking at the map, chances are you are looking to go somewhere so the focus is on the places. When you've planned a route you're interested in the roads so the labels disappear.

I think this is just the dynamics that are enabled by transitioning from bitmap tiles to vector data.

[+] brudgers|8 years ago|reply
So I was curious what the OpenStreetMaps version of Patricia's Green looked like:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=patricia%27s%20gr...

Partially because Google and Apple maps are proprietary and partially because mapping things like foot paths are more amenable to community involvement and Google and Apple maps are built in ways that do not strongly facilitate it. And partly because treating Google and Apple maps as the important alternatives seems to be a bit of Silicon Valley shaped world view.

[+] jrnichols|8 years ago|reply
I wonder what would happen if the author went to the places he noted Apple had on top of each other and did the "Move Pin" thing. I wonder if the changes would show up.

How long does it take Apple to trust users that submit corrections? Or, do they do such a thing?