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Apple Maps updated for more detail

When it comes to Apple Maps, it’s like a big fight
between Google an Apple of who has the better
Maps app. For now, Google still leads the race due
to it’s early start and implementation of new features.

But it seems as if Apple is going to change the game here. New Maps look way more detailed and put 3D buildings to convenient discovery of landmarks and to orientate oneself better looking for striking buildings.

This is how the overview will change:

As you can see the old classic road network view will receive buildings at the end, making it more look like a 3D city map instead.

Apple’s Lookaround is what Google calls StreetView allowing people to browse larger cities in a StreetView fashion like they used to do in Google Maps already. So nothing much new here.

While this feature is available in the USA already, Aple also plans to bring it to Europe as well. However we doubt that in Germany you’ll have a much more detailed street view than in Google StreetView where entire roads are either not available or blurred out. It looks something like this:

Not much appealing, huh? This is a spot in Munich (near Harras) and as you can see, the house to the right is blurred. Almost 40% of the street view is!

And if you think now “Hey but we have Bing and it’s street view feature”, then have a look at this:

This is a s close as you get to it and note that you can’t rotate the view at all. What you see is what you get and virtually walking through the street (same location) is impossible as the option “view streetside” is simply grayed out. A digital “Fuck you” from Munich (and many, MANY other places in german cities!”

And how does it look like in Bern, Switzerland?

Clear view here without any blurred houses or impassable roads.

So what about Microsoft. Can we do more here as well?

Well, although you still cannot use the “view streetside” feature here, at least you can rotate the map in four angles. So even Bing Maps is more convenient to use in Switzerland.

Let’s have a look at Austria – We like Vienna, so let’s pick out a random address somewhere in one of it’s boroughs:

What do you know. A clear, untainted view like we used to know from Google StreetView in the USA.

And Microsoft’s Bing Maps?

Well, no luck either with streetside view but at least again the view can be rotated in four angles.

So let’s see what a typical street view in the USA looks like on both services:

Yepp… the classic Google StreetView scenery. Untainted as well… naturally!

And Microsoft’s Bing Maps? do we finally see some streetside view here?

Guess what… no, we don’t! We also tried Chicago in order to find a streetside view but even there we were unable to dive further into the city view. So wherever Microsoft has hid the streetside views or where they are available (you don’t have such a nice little man icon to drag around and see blue lines where Street view is available), we weren’t successful to show you any “Street View”-like city scene in Microsoft’s Bing maps.

Okay but enough babbling and comparing. As soon as Apple’s map service gets it’s updates worldwide and you can travel though an european city like you can with Google Street view, then we’ll have another look at it.

For now Google Maps still offers the best virtual city sightseeing experience even though it is quite shitty in Germany due to some shizophrenic views of some privacy groups there. As long as only public areas are mapped and persons blurred out, there’s absolutely no sense in blurring out so much like it is in Germany.

Oh and if you ask yourself how the StreetView coverage in Germany in general is compared to the rest of Europe, well, have one final look at this:

Well, you can see that Germany is one dull white sport with some cities covered so-so. Also Austria seems to have just mediocre coverage. But almost EVERY OTHER country around those two special candidates seem to have a great coverage of StreetView which makes them a virtual travel adventure.

Yes, we’re aware that Ukraine and Russia arent that much covered as well but hey, that’s due to the fact that they don’t trust american companies much and it must have been a real challenge for Google to even set foot there in order to show you some streetviews at all.

And what about the future of all these services? Well, we don’t know how Google will go on with this but there’s still some bitchin’ around in Germany so we don’t expect the image to change there any soon. Same for Austria. But for the rest, well, it could get better by time as Google sometimes updates it’s StreetView images to keep them up to date. And about Microsoft… well… there’s no reliable information available if Microsoft is going to expand their Big Maps Services any further. Their basic Maps service is okay and sometimes the Birdview images are more up to date but other than that there’s not much Streetside view to be found. Or it’s hidden quite well… we don’t know.

And about Apple? Well, since we do indeed own Apple devices throughout the team, we’d appreciate to once more use an Apple-internal service which doesn’t mean we hate Google! Google does it’s job great, yes but by time, Google Maps App get’s quite consuming on your data plan. Maybe Apple will use HEIC images and make their Street View much more efficient to use.


February 4, 2020 Netspark - 1594 posts - Member since: May 9th, 2011 No Comments »

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