I never understood the value proposition of Apple Maps. Can you imagine being the executive, deciding to create Apple Maps? "Ok, how much does it cost to build and maintain? $BIG NUMBER. What? No way. We'll never make it back by selling adverts on the map." And, still, they built it. We have heard many times on HN that Google Maps (virtually) throws money out the window to keep it running so smoothly. Just keeping all the transit info correct for suggesting routes must be a nightmare.
Maps is table stakes for a smartphone, and having such a key feature provided by your main competitor is a huge risk. So purely on that basis, it could be worth it.
Then, on top of that, there is value in the data you're able to collect. Traffic data is really valuable. Tracking the movement of vehicles and pedestrians lets you create very accurate maps based on "real world" data, you could use it to figure out really specific things like traffic light timings, diversions, pedestrian crossings, parking space, layout of private roads...
At one point, Apple was working on a car, if you were making a self driving car, all that data would be useful for you, and beacuse of the value of it, competitors may not even sell it to you. So your only option is to generate it yourself.
As for transit data, that is fairly simple, most transit agencies will publish their timetables in GTFS format, there are tools to automatically export this in scheduling software. That will probably get your 90% of the way there, so you might have a few on the groud people in major cities to tweak and make it more accurate, which is nothing for a company on the scale of Apple.
Back in the days Google notoriously launched turn-by-turn navigation on Android only. They bet on this being a big enough differentiator for people to use Android over iPhones.
Apple then launched Apple maps - which at some point became quite good. Google quickly learned that they can't afford to make Android specific features in their apps or they risk losing large percentage of iOS users if Apple makes a competing product
If Apple didn't respond with making their own maps, then maybe we would see more and more Android specific features, to the point where Android would become the dominating platform
But this is also exactly the same game Apple plays against Android users. It's the same reason why iMessage bubbles are green for Android. Google won the maps round, but such wins are vanishingly rare against Apple.
There are non-Android devices that can send texts as well; they also appear as green. It's probably more accurate to say that encrypted messages are blue and unencrypted are green. Look at the recent AT&T hack to see why the difference matters.
Even if that was more accurate (I don't think it is), it's certainly not the way users see it.
In fact that's NOT the way Apple describes it, either (see the Apple article cited above), because Apple doesn't actually want to enable E2EE -- it only wants to be able to say it offers it.
In practice, ensuring that other users are pressured into choosing iMessage on iPhone is the only thing that matters to Apple.
And, this very simple trick works extremely well: at least 87% of teenagers in the U.S. (https://mashable.com/article/apple-messages-green-doj) are pre-programmed to buy an iPhone, even though they have the lowest disposable income of all. Meanwhile, less than a third of the overall global population owns an iPhone.
Is that because iPhones are better? As an owner of both a recent Pro Max and Pixel Pro, I can unequivocally answer, "no", but I do find all of the annoyances between cross-device communication accrue to the point of just wanting to switch to my iPhone full-time, even though it's arguably a worse experience in many ways.
and services like e.g. SMS text reminders from Internet services do no run on Android. The green is not a signifier of Android, just of non-encrypted. Or non-Apple, if you want to be less precise. (Apple devices where encryption is disabled also appear as green.)
> Then, on top of that, there is value in the data you're able to collect. Traffic data is really valuable. Tracking the movement of vehicles and pedestrians [...]
...but then they decided to market themselves as "privacy-focused", so they can't really do that, right? Or are they actually doing it?
> At one point, Apple was working on a car
...but then they killed the car project, so that goes out of the window too.
Collecting dots/vectors on a map doesn't necessarily invade my privacy. The problem comes with linking that dot with a person. As long as that link is lost and unrecoverable, I have no problem with Apple (or anyone) collecting it. The second problem is actually ensuring that.
The main problem with this is that the data is naturally linked to your phone, and you have to trust the provider to anonymize it. I suspect that's at least part of the reason for Apple painting itself as privacy-friendly: building trust with its users that they won't misuse their data.
I mean most of those vectors will converge on my home dot; with time data any vector intersecting with my home can tell a lot about my life. Additionally, is it anonymized per user (ie all my vectors are still a set just not identified as me) or each vector is an individual product unliked from all other vectors and user data.
> Additionally, when you use Maps to make a navigation or directions request, details about your route are sent to Apple, including:
> [...]
> A random identifier, which is created when you ask for directions and exists for the duration of your navigation session
That’s just because your phone sends it, but your phone also has a list of “significant locations,” around which it could avoid sending data for a mile or less.
> but then they decided to market themselves as "privacy-focused", so they can't really do that, right? Or are they actually doing it?
Here's the genius behind Apple's marketing: when they say "privacy" they (mostly) don't mean from them! They are mainly talking about third parties. Apple collects a ton of first-party data, and nobody seems to be concerned about that. I also the pond Apple swims in (big tech) is so disgusting and polluted that even their minor effort at cleanliness seems pretty good.
Apple has a lot of technical solutions that mean data is collected, but is never associated with a particular user.
As an example, location data is shared with Apple, but it’s associated with a random unique identifier rather than your account. When your trip ends, your device switches to a new identifier. Traffic information is only shared if a certain threshold of users travel on a route [1].
Other examples include the entirely on-device photo scanning, the same rotating identifier system for transcripts of Siri interactions, etc. and, of course, being the only major cloud provider to offer E2EE on everything.
Not perfect, but a huge difference from their competitors.
I do appreciate their sharing that, but I hate that it requires entirely just trusting them. They've so locked the user out of the device that it's difficult or impossible to verify anything for yourself, and even if you did, they could trivially push a change at any time because they have ultimate control over the device.
On the flip side, I tend to think a company so large would have at least one whistleblower or something on the inside, and/or would be so concerned about legal fallout that they wouldn't risk it.
On the flip side of the flip side, Apple is notoriously secretive (even among insiders) and very tight-fisted around employees sharing/leaking information. They also have some of the best lawyers in the world and a near infinite ability to fund any legal action, so may feel (and in fact, be) untouchable. And should Apple go evil, there aren't really great alternatives anyway for the average person, and they're generally so invested in the walled garden that walking away would entail a major disruption to their life.
I agree though, while not perfect, they are certainly much better than their competitors (not counting small players, e.g. GrapheneOS), and I'm grateful that at least they keep privacy at the forefront of conversation. If they abandoned it, there'd be nobody to pick up the mantle.
Allegedly, Apple have built in privacy features so they can't associate individual users with routes, or know what the entire route is[1]. Apple does show traffic data in the app, so they obviously do collect the data somehow.
When Apple built maps, the car project was still alive, so it would have been a factor in deciding on the investment. They could still partner with a car manufacturer and use the data.
I do suspect that my first point was key in green lighting Apple Maps. Google could have asked for more and more money to provide maps for Apple, or they could pull out completely, and force users to use the App Store app, which would have left the product direction of Maps completely out of Apple's hands.
I haven't been an employee since 2015, but by then Google had already been doing the route trimming and splicing for live traffic data. (If you had location history enabled, some of that same data at lower granularity was stored in another service, of course)
"Is it Apple Maps bad?" --Gavin Belson, Silicon Valley
After the fiasco from their initial app launch, I'm sure they would have preferred not to be a meme in a sitcom if possible on this go round. It is possible to release too early
The Maps application on iOS used to use Google Maps. But then Google started to collect too much user data and withholding features like turn-by-turn navigation (while making it available on Android).
It's defensive, (and it was built at a time when money was free).
The iPhone launched with Google Maps. Then Google decided to push feature updates skewed towards android phones, leaving iPhone users behind. Apple saw that a vendor could screw their users over (and potentially cause defectors), and decided to invest to ensure they don't have a dependancy.
The best part is that they can now offer it to App Store developers as a free iOS SDK (and paid API on web). Meanwhile the same developers would have to pay an exorbitant cost to use Google Maps. It's part of the moat that makes iOS the more profitable platform to develop for. You can also see this playbook with the release of free Weather APIs.
Yea Apple/Google maps has to be expensive to build and maintain, but at least for apple, they were able to buy their way to bootstrapping the map. What's impressed me is all the fly-over and custom 3D modeling they've done. It does really feel like they just wanted to make a good map at some point, even beyond what people needed or expected. That said, mapping products probably has good caching and fault tolerance you can design in to reduce cost - maps don't go out of sync that fast (for caching) and you'd never know if their "suggested routes" data was out of date occasionally, because you can never drive both routes at once.
At the time, Google Maps on iOS was written by Apple, not Google, and Google was holding back API access for Street View until Apple sent back more location/tracking/demographic data on users that Google wanted.
Rather than sell out their users, Apple dropped Google Maps as the backend and launched their own maps, and then let Google write their own Maps app where they could do anything they wanted.
> The best part is that they can now offer it to App Store developers as a free SDK. Meanwhile the same developers would have to pay an exorbitant cost to use Google Maps.
Apple Mapkit is free up to 25K api call a day, after that you have to contact Apple for more (and pay I guess?).
At the time Apple Maps came out, Google Maps on iOS was limited to bitmap tiles and had no turn by turn directions, whereas Google Maps on Android had both dynamic vector based maps and turn by turn directions.
Apple Maps forced Google to improve Google Maps on iOS.
Apple Maps data was definitely substandard when it was released, but it has improved considerably since then. I vastly prefer it to Google Maps, especially for turn by turn directions when I'm driving.
Privacy and a vastly better navigation experience is what makes me prefer Apple Maps for turn by turn nav. For finding local businesses Google Maps is better
> I never understood the value proposition of Apple Maps.
They ship their operating systems with all the "common" apps pre-installed (e.g.: Email, Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Maps, etc). For the maps to work, they need some data source. That's what Apple Maps is.
Apple doesn't make money with the Email app directly, but its existence likely improves how users perceive iOS. This probably translates to return customers and more people recommending it.
On iPhone I only see Signifcant Locations; on my phone I only see a list of 3 places (despite 400 records). Compared to Google Timeline it’s much more curtailed function.
Yeah, it's a feature enabled by default outside of the EU (in the EU it asks you if you want to enable it). Makes for some fun stats/recaps, and is useful for tracing back steps (wait, where was that awesome store/restaurant/park/whatever we went to while on a trip to XYZ?) at the expense of Google knowing a lot about you.
Maps are core technology, which Apple prefers to own. Imagine wanting to release CarPlay (or a full blown car) and Google having you by the balls over maps and navigation. That wouldn't be a good situation. As to $BIG_NUMBER, they seem to be managing fine - Maps sucked pretty bad when it came out, but it doesn't suck now, I prefer it to Google Maps where I live.
Whilst I agree with what you say I'm so grateful for Apple Maps simply on the grounds that I try and use Google products as little as possible. Things like Apple Maps keep me in the Apple ecosystem as they add value to my life. I wouldn't use Apple CarPlay either if I had to use Google Maps (granted, I know Waze and others also exist).
Google Maps on iOS works terribly where I am. Current and previous phone. Going through the Caldecott tunnel would fast forward all the stops. Switched to Apple Maps and I’ve been very happy. Just a single glitch noticed (a light appears before a freeway onramp).
Sorry, i didn't mean to be disingenuous. i meant, ads are not the main source of its income.
And in this context, that's why it is not a foolish choice to spend money on something that it's hard to sell ads on as long as it helps sell more iPhones.
One of the selling points of Apple devices is that their software is [1] just _nice_ to use, letting you do what you need to do, without having to keep you in and monetize you otherwise.
Is Mail.app the most powerful client on earth? No; but it is Good Enough, and I don't have to download and pay for a third party app.
Is Weather.app the best weather app with all the bells and whistles possible? No; but I don't care about weather apps to download and trial fifteen other ones and It Just Works.
Maps are (orders of magnitude) more complicated; but arguably are also on the baseline level of functionality for a modern mobile OS.
And Maps.app is just so much _nicer_ to use than Google Maps. It has the same problems that all Apple products like it does (search is atrocious, POI db is bad); but it is just a much more pleasant product. It looks nicer, it _feels_ nicer, it has best-in-class transit directions, and doesn't shove ads in front of my face.
[1]: Arguably getting worse and worse at it every year; but still miles ahead of everyone else.
Google Maps had a total monopoly and Google could have leveraged that in the competition between Android and iOS. Maybe they even tried asking Apple for a lot of money to be able to use it on iOS.
It takes years, even a decade to get maps to a good quality (Apple maps launched in 2012). So I think it's a good thing that Apple started early enough. I'm sure it's crazy expensive to build and maintain. Apple can fund it from iPhone sales, and ensure that their ecosystem has an alternative for Google maps.
I don't think it's meant to turn a profit, I think it's meant as protection of their iPhone revenue.
