Filip Novotny At the end of last year, Apple decided to replace Google's maps with its own solution and created a serious problem. The Californian company has come under fire from customers and the media for them; Apple's maps contained a lot of obvious errors in the background at the time of release. In addition, especially outside the United States, we can find only a fraction of the places in them compared to the competition. Still, some cannot praise apple maps - they are iOS developers.
Although customers complain that Apple did not spend enough time debugging errors and inaccuracies, developers paradoxically value "maturity" in maps. This refers to the quality of the SDK (software developer kit), as the set of tools is called, thanks to which software creators can, for example, use the built-in functions of the operating system - in our case, maps.
But how is that possible? How advanced can Apple Maps be when they've only been around for a few months? This is so because, despite the change of documents, the very basics of the application remained the same even after five years. On the contrary, Apple could add even more functions to them, which could not be implemented during the cooperation with Google. Developers have therefore accepted this change with the expectation of how they can further improve their applications.
Google, on the other hand, found itself without a map solution for the iOS system, and thus understandably had nothing to offer even developers. Nevertheless, a new map application and API (interface for connecting to Google servers and using their maps) were released within a matter of weeks. In this case, unlike Apple, the application itself was met with more enthusiasm than the API offered.
The developers themselves according to news Fast Company they recognize that the Google Maps API has certain advantages – better quality documents, 3D support or the possibility to use the same service across different platforms. On the other hand, they also mention a number of shortcomings.
According to them, Apple offers more opportunities to use its maps, however poor quality they are according to users. The built-in SDK includes support for markers, layering, and polylines. As Fast Company points out, "layering is very common for applications that need to display certain information, such as weather, crime rates, even earthquake data, as a layer over the map itself."
How far the capabilities of Apple's map SDK go, explains Lee Armstrong, the developer of the application Plan Finder. “We can use advanced features like gradient polylines, layering or smooth animations of moving planes,” he points to maps with complex layering and lots of added information. "With the Google Maps SDK, this is simply not possible at the moment," he adds. He explains why he prefers Apple's maps, even though his app supports both solutions.
Maps from Apple were also chosen by the creators of the application Tube Tamer, which helps Londoners with timetables. Its creator, Bryce McKinlay, especially praises the possibility of creating animated marks, which users can also move freely. A similar thing is not possible with the competition. As another advantage, the British developer mentions the speed of the maps, which do not deviate from the iOS standard. Google, on the other hand, achieves a maximum of 30 fps (frames per second). "Rendering labels and points of interest sometimes gets stuck, even on a fast device like the iPhone 5," notes McKinlay.
He also explains what he considers to be the biggest downside of the Google Maps API. According to him, the proverbial stumbling block is the introduction of quotas. Each application can mediate 100 accesses per day. According to McKinlay, this limitation poses a significant risk to developers. “At first glance, 000 hits seems like a reasonable number, but each user can generate a lot of such hits. Some types of requests can be counted as up to ten accesses, and therefore the quota can be used up pretty quickly," he explains.
At the same time, the creators of free applications clearly need their product to be used by as many users as possible on a daily basis, otherwise they simply cannot make a living. "When you hit your quota, they start rejecting all your requests for the rest of the day, which makes your app stop working and users start getting angry," adds McKinlay. Understandably, developers do not have to solve these problems if they prefer to use the built-in SDK from Apple.
So, as surprising as it may be to us users, the developers are more or less happy with the new maps. Thanks to its long history, Apple's SDK has a number of useful features and a large community of experienced programmers. Despite the faulty map background and the low number of locations, Apple's maps stand on a very good basis, which is the exact opposite of what Google offers. The latter has been offering great maps for years, but its new API is not yet sufficient for advanced developers. So it seems that experience plays a vital role in the complex map business. In this case, both Apple and Google share the success (or failure).
I currently use apple maps more than google, apple has a better voice navigation online, but it's super fast for free.
I use them more too. They are faster for mobile data and do not take up as much memory. The navigation also works decently and is nicely processed. But the search on the map is in its infancy.
So, I use Apple maps for navigation, Google maps for searching.
I have been spreading this opinion since the launch of Apple Maps. A better, more crumpled foundation that will work much better as a whole after catching the bugs, and Apple users won't even sigh for Google Maps. With iOS7, we will probably feel it a little more again. This just confirmed to me that Apple is going in the right direction and that, as always, it has thought first.