This week Apple brought Apple Maps to the online in beta, bringing it one step nearer to parity with Google Maps, which has lengthy been obtainable through internet browsers.
After all, iPhone homeowners will nonetheless flip to the app variations of their most well-liked mapping service when away from the desktop. Each the Apple Maps app and Google Maps app have all the time had their strengths and weaknesses, however lately the 2 apps have continued to borrow the best features and parts from one another.
So the query is, in 2024, is one mapping app on the iPhone higher than the opposite? Let’s discover this based mostly on the 4 crucial parts of any mapping app: consumer interface, map design, instructions, and institution data.
Apple Maps vs. Google Maps: Consumer interface
First up is the consumer interface of each apps. The UI consists of all the weather on the display screen that aren’t the map—so, the search subject, present location button, and extra. Typically, the much less cluttered the UI, the simpler it’s to make use of an app.
By this metric, Apple Maps wins by a protracted shot. Launch Apple Maps and also you’ll see that the display screen is essentially freed from any extraneous UI parts. There’s the search subject, the present location button, the map kind toggle button, and a small climate field. However launch Google Maps, and also you’ll see the UI is extra cluttered. Along with the above, Google Maps shows a hovering row of horizontal class buttons on the high of the display screen and a number of toolbar buttons on the backside of the display screen.
The extra buttons there are protecting the display screen, the extra they take away from what you’re there to have a look at: the map. However litter apart, there’s additionally another excuse many discover the UI of Apple Maps to be higher—Apple places the search subject on the backside of the display screen, inside simple attain of our thumbs. The search subject might be probably the most often used component of any mapping app and it’s all the time felt inconveniently situated being on the high of the display screen in Google Maps.
Winner: Apple Maps
Apple Maps vs. Google Maps: Map design
Map design refers back to the design of the map itself, which incorporates all the pieces from how roads are exhibited to the look of icons on the map.
In terms of Apple Maps and Google Maps, it’s arduous to determine who wins right here as a result of each maps now look so comparable. Final 12 months, Google Maps rolled out a completely new colour scheme for its maps—one which mirrored the colour scheme of Apple Maps almost identically.
Now, in each apps, main roads are grey, and the lighter grey a street is, the extra minor it’s. For instance, highways seem the darkest grey on a map whereas main streets and avenues seem a bit lighter, whereas even smaller streets seem even lighter. Apple Maps and Google Maps additionally spotlight busy areas of a metropolis in a golden-yellow, so it’s simple to inform what elements of a metropolis have plenty of sights based mostly on only a look.
However on the subject of the way in which icons for factors of curiosity are displayed on the map, Apple once more pulls forward. That’s as a result of Apple’s icons are much less intrusive— the corporate doesn’t flood the map with sponsored pins which may be utterly irrelevant to you (like pins for lodges within the metropolis you already stay in). So, sure, on the subject of evaluating the maps portion of Apple Maps and Google Maps, Google Maps is still a bit of an eyesore.
Winner: Apple Maps
Apple Maps vs. Google Maps: Instructions
In terms of precise instructions, you’d be hard-pressed to search out a lot of a distinction between Apple Maps and Google Maps––a minimum of in a big metropolis like New York. Each apps carry out exceptionally nicely on the subject of telling you the way to get from level A to level B, whether or not you’re on the lookout for instructions through automobile, foot, or public transit.
However in the event you stay in a spot the place you virtually completely use public transport, it’s pretty apparent that Google Maps has the sting. It’s because Google Maps’s method of displaying public transit particulars—together with the steps it’s good to take between interchanges—is simply simpler to learn and observe than Apple Maps’. Relying on the kind of public transportation you’re taking, Google Maps will even inform you if the service is crowded or much less busy than traditional—useful when you’re in a rush or hoping for a seat.
It’s these little touches of added particulars that make the instructions expertise in Google Maps higher than in Apple Maps.
Winner: Google Maps.
Apple Maps vs. Google Maps: Institution Data
Now we come to institution data (also referred to as point-of-interest, or POI, data). That is the data every app lists about an institution, whether or not or not it’s a restaurant, health club, college, or hospital.
And right here there isn’t a query: Google Maps nonetheless blows Apple Maps away on the subject of details about institutions. Faucet on the identical institution in Apple Maps and Google Maps and you will notice that the data Apple Maps offers is way inferior to what Google Maps offers.
Apple Maps offers you the fundamentals: tackle, telephone quantity, hours of operation, an outline, and a few pictures. However Google Maps? It offers you almost all the pieces you might ever wish to know, together with all the above plus common instances, stay foot site visitors, generally requested questions concerning the institution with solutions, a wealth of up-to-date evaluations, and, within the case of meals purveyors, even pictures of the menus and the person dishes on the menu.
Google Maps can provide all this as a result of it isn’t only a mapping service—it’s a social community of types, powered by tens of thousands and thousands of customers who always contribute photos, solutions, evaluations, and different data. Apple Maps doesn’t have such a engaged consumer base, neither is it designed to be any kind of social platform like Google Maps. And due to that, Google Maps will all the time provide superior institution data.
Winner: Google Maps.
Apple Maps vs. Google Maps: The winner is . . .
So who wins—Apple Maps or Google Maps? Primarily based on the 4 metrics above, it’s technically a draw.
However I’m going to name it in Google’s favor for one major motive: in 2024, mapping apps are not nearly getting instructions. 9 instances out of ten, once I open a mapping app, I already know the way to get to the place I wish to go.
I’m not opening the app to get instructions to my vacation spot, I’m opening the app to get data about my vacation spot. I flip to a maps app to learn the way a lot admission is to a vacationer attraction, how busy a neighborhood cafe is, or whether or not the restaurant has one thing I like on the menu.
And due to that, I most frequently flip to Google Maps. Till Apple Maps’ can provide the wealth of multinational data that Google Maps can, Google Maps will stay the map app king.