Wishes for the new Apple Maps

Jul 17, 2018

As you might know by now thanks to this extensively linked article by Matthew Panzarino, Apple is rebuilding its own Maps.
The essence of the article is that when they first shipped, Apple Maps were leveraging on existing maps (TomTom and OpenStreetMap), since having the whole world mapped would have taken them years.
Now years have indeed passed and Apple is building its own Maps - a step that allows them to do things they previously couldn't.

The new frameworks Maps is built on will allow Apple to make changes quicker, and this news is the one I hoped for the most.
Apple Maps have always been kind of slow in acknowledging big road changes. Address labels or business infos get updates rather quickly upon signaling, but not so for infrastructure's big changes.
Two examples: close to where I live, in the past year, the municipality built a new big roundabout in place of an intersection with traffic light. This happened last september and I promptly signaled it via Maps problem reporting. To this day, Maps still has the old road layout: Google Maps has the right one and even OperStreet Map has, but Maps has not and apart from the map inaccuracy, this yields problems with navigation too.
The same issue has affected a new underpass they built in place of an old road a few hundreds of meters away. To this day, Maps still doesn't have it, so it happens that when I pass through it, Maps tracks me going at normal speed on fields and through a railway without a catch or the faintest slowdown.
The new Maps will allow Apple to deploy map changes quicker upon issue reporting. Moreover, they are using a technology that leverages on its users' GPS live tracking while in navigation mode to improve the accuracy of its mapping data and navigation system. All completely anonymized and randomly shuffled to the highest privacy standards.

Live traffic will be improved too by taking the location input of all other iPhones in use in that location. This is a welcome improvement too, as often while driving Maps would signal slowdowns while roads were completely free. I suspect this has to do with some partner's incorrect data, nonetheless is nice too see it fixed. Same issue happens sometimes with work-in-progress and danger-ahead alerts that aren't present at all.

Similarly, I'd love to see Maps using many more infos from the way I drive to collect data on traffic conditions and road changes. If it is alerting me of heavy slowdowns, and I drive through them without slowing down, I'm either flying or the slowdown is not there anymore. Or if everyone is not following a specific direction through a road, maybe that one is temporarily closed. I can see big room for AI here.

All this said, it's nice to read Apple hasn't staled on Maps. iOS 12 will finally allow third party navigation apps on its CarPlay system too, and a little competition won't hurt in rivalling for the mapping app of choice when driving.
Maybe the next step will be Apple Maps for the web, so that anyone will be able to contribute and report missing informations. The technology is already there…

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