Was looking for a (hopefully) updated street view of a particular business location (Yuma, AZ) - The satellite view and street view seem to be a few years old in Google Maps, but they indicated a building in the plain map layer. So I checked Apple Maps.
Look Around (their version of Street View) NOT AVAILABLE - at all.
I was a bit surprised at this complete lack of data, so did some reading. This link (from a year ago) goes into an insane level of detail about the timeline between Google and Apple map data and rollouts. Even just skimming it you can see that Apple basically trashed most of their early data and started over in 2018. Not only do they collect data slower than Google, but they roll it out even slower.
This is all separate from performance issues, GPS lag, turn-by-turn issues, etc.
Any way, if you’re not in a top-10 or -25 major metro area, of if you’re driving between them, you should probably just stick to Google Maps.
I like Apple Maps. But telling me to “Turn Right” when I’m fifty feet away driving 45 mph isn’t helpful.
And why, when my destination is to the South, Maps always directs me to turn North drive .7 miles and then reverse direction and drive South past my home. You are correct, I should . . .
I think it largely matters on the specific practices within locations. U.S. seems to take noticeably more time than European countries to roll out. Maybe there’s more fine tuning and/or collection of more advanced imagery (with LIDAR scans or something). For some reason they were able to complete image collection in Spain or Italy (which have noticeably more population and similar area) and roll out full maps with Look Around for virtually all roads in both of these countries yet the struggle with Yuma, AZ (which isn’t even that far from LA and is not a place in the Alaskan mountains with a grand total of 5 log cabins).
Perhaps time will tell. We’ll now for sure when the U.S. gets the next big thing for the maps and Europe doesn’t.
