Apple Maps has been updated with comprehensive transit data for Minnesota's twin cities Minneapolis and Saint Paul, enabling iPhone users in the metropolitan area to navigate using public transportation, including Metro Transit buses and trains.
Apple introduced Transit in Maps as part of iOS 9 in select cities around the world, including Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and over 300 cities in China. The feature has its own tab in Apple Maps on iOS 10 when entering directions.
Transit routing is now available in several other cities, including Atlanta, Columbus, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Honolulu, Kansas City, Melbourne, Miami, Montréal, Pittsburgh, Portland, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, and parts of British Columbia, Canada and New South Wales, Australia.
(Thanks, Larry!)
Top Rated Comments
I give the nod to Google in three key areas, "lane assist" where it shows you, Apple Maps just tells you, which lane to be in. In voice accuracy, where inn the car, Google maps hears me more accurately some of the time. Third, Google still has better verbal search and is able to find more obscure addresses than Siri. Oh, and street view is nice, though I seldom use it.
I expect/hope that Apple Maps will overtake Google Maps in 2017 when it completes its own base map. Apple has been working on its own base map, (all the different layers ) for several years. It's a multi billion dollar and multi year effort to build a base map, rather than rely on quilting together the myriad of pieces from other companies. This will enable great things, like their own, and much improved version of "street view."
Mapping is so integral to Apple's current and future plans is why they are adding an additional 4000 employees to the thousands already working on maps. This will be a map focused development center in India.
Lastly, competition between Apple and Google in maps is producing great products in both. Those of us who have an interest in privacy are rooting for Apple since Google keeps track of every where you drive, stop, visit, etc. forever, and adds it to your portfolio of what you post, write, read, watch, photograph, etc. Apple doesn't.
[doublepost=1480964318][/doublepost]You're right. Google doesn't sell this data, because then they would lose most of their company's value. They make more than 90% of their revenue from selling ads, so Google does compile a "dossier" on everyone that it can. They scan every email sent and received, they log every song you play, every movie you watch, every post you make, every appointment you make, everywhere you drive your car, every photo you've ever taken, every search you've ever made, etc. They do that because it's enormously valuable to advertisers to know everything about you, so they "give away" all their products to get people to use them and share everything about their lives. They "force" you to use a Google log in, which gives them access to your info from other people's products.
I know people will say "I don't care what Google knows about me. I have nothing to hide." and so on. But when you go through the list of things and show people how every aspect of their lives, and their family members' lives, often who don't have any choice, (it's also why their is a lawsuit about Google scanning every email sent to someone who has a gmail account as those senders never consented to Google storing every one of those emails forever), then many people react in surprise. Once that info is assembled by Google, it is available to law enforcement in the US and elsewhere. It is also available to hackers, intel agencies around the world, and of course, governments.
As one of our intel leaders experts once said, i"f Google didn't exist we would have to invent it." Thankfully, Tim Cook and Apple are trying to stem this tide and protect our privacy, and they haven't built a business model dependent on selling you to advertisers, e.g., Google, Facebook and others, who would go out of business if they ever stopped collecting your private information.
Google Maps knowing where you are is less about ads and more about mapping services. But let's look at the ad possibilities. Say you go to Chipotle for lunch 2x per week and Google knows. At some point during your web searches you see an ad for Chipotle or Moe's. Why you ask. Google sold your info to those companies? Negative. Google sold targeted ad space to those companies based on criteria like proximity, frequency, and other algorithmic voodoo. I know more about you than either of those companies. Literally.
You can opt out of targeted ads. So instead of seeing ads for Mexican food, you might see an ad for making $85/hr working from home. As you may already know, opting out of targeted ads doesn't mean you see fewer ads. BTW, everything I just wrote applies to Apple as well.
Can I get those extra points added to my XBox Live account? :D
Some may complain about the usefulness of Apple Maps but the fact is it's the 2nd most used mapping app out there. It may not be Google Maps but it's still used by millions every day.
When I tell Siri to give me directions, I shouldn't need to look at the screen and press buttons afterwards. Assumptions should be made and directions should begin immediately (or as close to immediately as technically possible). Often, I ask Siri for directions because I'm on the highway and I suddenly realize I'm lost (or I suddenly have an emergency and am not sure where exactly I'm going.)
This is one of the reasons I love Waze. On every screen, it has an assumption about what you want. It gives you around 10 seconds to hit a button, and if you press none, it'll pick the assumed default for you.