[HN Gopher] Apple Maps on the web launches in beta
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Maps on the web launches in beta
Author : ingve
Score : 394 points
Date : 2024-07-25 06:26 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Apple launching web apps? And Maps of all things? Suppose that's
| the logical order. (Should it have been mail first? Or a search
| engine?)
|
| What year is it?
|
| What's with the browser restrictions too?
| nurumaik wrote:
| Mail was always available through icloud.com though
| kalleboo wrote:
| It even predates iCloud, web mail launched with MobileMe.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Apple Music has had an excellent web app for a while
| porphyra wrote:
| I just wish that Apple Music Classical would get a web app.
| That's the only reason why I'm paying $12 per month. Although
| I suppose most of the classical pieces are available on
| regular Apple Music as well...
| dewey wrote:
| Excellent is something I haven't heard anyone say about Music
| App related things, ever.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Genuinely curious, what do most people say about it? I use
| Apple Music near daily and I'm pretty satisfied
| esskay wrote:
| I use it too...but it's a really poor app. Search is
| incredibly slow and clunky, discovery is nonexistant,
| they've still got the same shuffle logic bugs they had in
| iTunes, etc.
|
| The most annoying part is they CDN from California for
| UK/EU users. Start playing something not downloaded, hit
| skip a couple of times and enjoy 10 seconds of buffering.
| pacifika wrote:
| Oh that's what it is. That's why I unsubscribed there's a
| lag playing anything.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Woah, that's bad. I live on the same coast so I've never
| experienced that. They've gotten better at discovery, but
| it's far from what Spotify has.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Is it better than the native Apple Music?
| superb_dev wrote:
| Not really, I haven't noticed much of a difference to begin
| with. I only use the web app sparingly
| rendaw wrote:
| The Apple Music web app is so terrible it made me doubt the
| engineering ability of the whole company. Can't sort
| collections, can't edit playlists, songs randomly getting
| skipped, etc. etc. It was like they actively hated the users
| and wanted to punish them for using the web app.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Just a theory. But I think they are preparing for the notion
| that there's a growing number of PWAs in their app stores. And
| most of those would be using things like maplibre or Google
| Maps. So, to address that (given that they can't really stop
| PWAs), it makes sense to make Apple Maps usable outside of the
| Apple platforms. This way, people can develop PWA apps and have
| some level of integration with Apple maps on IOS. Just a
| theory.
|
| The browser restrictions are probably because developing
| hardware accelerated map rendering engines for the web is a bit
| of a project and the support for things like WASM and Web GPU
| in Safari is probably requiring dealing with some Apple
| specific quirks. Maybe they'll get around to that eventually. I
| think for most web developers, no Firefox support would be a
| show stopper. There's no point to this strategy unless they
| address that.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| They already had MapKit.js as a mapping SDK available across
| various browsers, off their own hardware. It's been available
| on a variety of browsers, _even Firefox_ , this is just a
| beta that doesn't support it.
| Someone wrote:
| > Apple launching web apps?
|
| KeyNote, Mail, Numbers, Pages and Photos have been available as
| web apps for years (and minor ones such as Notes and Reminders)
| tnzk wrote:
| Do you regularly use one of them? I've been aware of them for
| years but I've been never motivated to activity use them due
| to overall poor UX. Sign-in is already a hassle there. Yet I
| appreciate them maintaining them because I once had recovered
| my access to my devices when I was almost locked out of Apple
| ID (don't quite remember the detail though).
| Someone wrote:
| I haven't used them much, but when I did, I found them
| quite usable.
|
| I think a main reason Keynote, Numbers and Pages web apps
| exist is for sharing with non-Mac users.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| As others have said, they already have a few (Mail, Music,
| iWork, FaceTime, etc). Like FaceTime coming to browser, and
| apple music going to android, this is probably an attempt to
| cast a wider net for their ecosystem. Also the EU DMA law is
| could be causing some strange behavior here.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised to see apple try and release some
| expanded subscription that includes mapping features. Not sure
| what TBH and there have been no leaks, but they're searching
| for revenue streams, and the App Store is getting eyed by
| regulators.
|
| Oh and the browser restriction is probably temporary -
| MapKit.js works on all major platforms, even Firefox, so its
| safe to assume this will get there too.
| veunes wrote:
| Mail might not have been a top priority given the existing
| solutions like iCloud.com
| keepamovin wrote:
| So weird! I was just looking for this 2 days ago, and was like,
| "Huh, I thought they had a web app??" Turns out it was always for
| devices native only. I had no idea this was coming but 2 days ago
| was the first time I was looking for a web version! Hahaha! :)
|
| _edit:_ Just tested it. Nice! Faster than Google Maps in my
| estimation. (panning and zooming the map builds and focuses
| faster). Google, please don 't delete my account for criticism!
| hahaha! :)
| Kelteseth wrote:
| > Your current browser isn't supported
|
| Supported on your Windows PC: Edge Chrome
| slekker wrote:
| Same for me, and I am using an iPhone X with Safari
| scosman wrote:
| Ditto on Safari iPhone 15.
| infotainment wrote:
| Sadly the best feature of Apple Maps, the excellent transit
| overlay, doesn't seem to be available on this web version yet.
| obnauticus wrote:
| I noticed this too and I am afraid they wont ever release this
| on the web app since they seem to have the best lane and road
| mapping data.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Google Maps also transit overlay. Is it measurably worse that
| Apple Maps? It seems fine to me.
| simondotau wrote:
| Transit data on Google Maps in Sydney Australia has been
| broken for ages. It's correct (and more clearly illustrated)
| in Apple Maps.
|
| https://x.com/jxeeno/status/1814975093380116783
| koyote wrote:
| What's broken with it? Seems to be working fine here.
|
| What I have noticed is that the satellite view for Sydney
| is over 3 years old.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Apple Maps transit is easier to read when zoomed out IMO.
| infotainment wrote:
| This -- Apple highlights rail lines in their appropriate
| colors, which is an amazing way to visualize how lines are
| routed. Google's is kind of half-baked in comparison, IMO.
| simonw wrote:
| It's weird that this doesn't work in Mobile Safari - and
| disappointing that it doesn't work in Firefox.
| shellac wrote:
| Worked fine on an iPad, or is that not Mobile Safari?
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Probably they are referring to iOS, which it doesn't appear
| to work on either the latest (17.5.1) or 18 beta as of the
| time of writing this post.
| simonw wrote:
| Sorry I should have said iPhone Mobile Safari.
| ksec wrote:
| Seems strange Apple offering this for free for other platform
| users.
|
| This also makes me wonder how much does it cost to run a Map
| services. I assume the actual server and bandwidth cost are
| negligible. But the updating and Data would be the most expensive
| part. But what incentive does Apple have to open this up?
| ikawe wrote:
| One probably small thing: Having a cohesive ecosystem where you
| can share links makes a map app more useful.
| andoma wrote:
| I'm on both iOS, macOS and Linux. One thing that's keeping me
| using Google Maps is not having Apple Maps in the browser (on
| Linux). This definitely could lower the switching threshold.
| ksec wrote:
| This actually makes much more sense. Having Apple Maps as
| bait to potential switchers.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> But the updating and Data would be the most expensive part.
| But what incentive does Apple have to open this up?_
|
| Seems you already figured it out: Access to more data /
| updates. Hence the "Have a Business on Maps?" being a prominent
| feature.
| InvisibleToast wrote:
| I was also surprised to see that there is no cost for using
| Apple Maps (maybe because it's a beta?). How will this affect
| services like Google Maps, Mapbox, and similar providers?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Protomaps makes hosting maps pretty cheap for open streetmap
| vector tiles. Most of the cost is actually the CDN bandwidth.
| It's not going to be nothing depending on the number of users
| but it shouldn't break the bank for Apple and probably is
| relatively low to other content they distribute (e.g. Apple TV)
| or OS updates.
|
| The way protomaps does this is by serving a single large file
| with all the map data via bucket storage and then using lambda
| functions + CDNs to extract tiles from there on demand. So,
| they don't pre-calculate the tile files and this simplifies the
| update process to replacing a single file. The CDN caches the
| extracted tiles so this is relatively cheap and doable even for
| small startups. So, this minimizes compute and storage.
|
| Generating the map tiles requires a bit of compute obviously
| but it's a constant overhead; and they have to do this anyway
| for their native apps.
|
| Probably the hardest part for them was building a hardware
| accelerated render engine for the web. Similar to Maplibre,
| Google Maps, etc. That would explain why it doesn't work on
| Firefox as well. And obviously Safari is a bit lagging with
| things like web GPU and WASM that I imagine would be useful for
| this.
| karussell wrote:
| It works on Firefox but you have to fake the user agent :)
| IshKebab wrote:
| Probably to try to get reviews. I would think that is Google
| Maps' biggest moat.
| bouncing wrote:
| Apple's been kicking around the idea of adding ads to maps:
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/08/21/apple-maps-could-...
|
| Makes more sense if you consider that.
| pndy wrote:
| Yep; considering news from 17 days ago [1], I wouldn't be
| surprised that Apple is trying to have own slice of ads
| revenue/data from maps segment
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40908310
| karussell wrote:
| I fear running all these services is expensive too - not just
| the data & updates.
|
| You need quite a lot of infrastructure:
|
| 1. map tiles
|
| 2. satellite view
|
| 3. geocoding. Where you have several services like forward,
| reverse, IP2coord. Likely also different services for different
| countries.
|
| 4. A-B routing. Again with several services like car, bike,
| walking and transit. Especially transit is a completely
| different thing. Also traffic data requires a different data
| pipeline.
|
| 5. ratings / reviews
|
| 6. user data (when logged in) for preferences etc
| ProfessorZoom wrote:
| well it's not like all of this is brand new, they are already
| updating the data for iphones ... ipads ... macs ... vision
| pros ...
| zeagle wrote:
| A positive association with Apple would make me slightly more
| likely to switch to iPhone next upgrade cycle with frustrations
| with my Pixel.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Um, I'm confused. I didn't think Apple treated Web as a
| significant part of their strategy.
| randomdata wrote:
| Does this in some way imply that the web is a significant part
| of their strategy?
|
| The button in the bottom left explains why this exists: It's a
| gateway to get more information about businesses and other
| attractions from entities out there in the world that don't
| live in the Apple ecosystem. Apple Maps ultimately needs a
| direct line to the real world to be maximally useful,
| especially against its competitors, and this is their attempt
| to build that bridge.
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| Hasn't Kagi been using this for their maps offering for a while
| now?
| infotainment wrote:
| Web embedding for Apple Maps (via MapKit JS) has been around
| for a while now, but this standalone product is new.
| Tepix wrote:
| I know that DuckduckGo has been using it.
| vzaliva wrote:
| Firefox is not supported. Move along. Nothing to see there.
| drooopy wrote:
| Pretty much. Even as a disillusioned mac user I wouldn't rely
| on their maps app but no compatibility with my browser of
| choice means that I'll never bother using their product under
| any circumstances.
| r-spaghetti wrote:
| Ha ha ha Apple still thinks 'the web' is Apple or Microsoft
| (https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585) and Firefox is not
| supported at all. It's time to shake the last rotten apple from
| the tree.
| porphyra wrote:
| Even Chrome on Linux isn't supported.
| benjiweber wrote:
| Works fine on Linux if you set useragent to Chrome on Mac.
| rob74 wrote:
| ...which only underscores how pointless this is: if it
| works in Chrome on MacOS and Windows
| (https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585), it will also work
| on Linux, so why exclude Linux?!
| oaiey wrote:
| Chrome on Android is not supported.
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| I'm impressed with how well they've enforced that as well. I
| tried spoofing my UA to be safari (which I fully expected to
| not work), but it also didn't accept when I set my UA to
| Chrome.
|
| What's especially odd is that Apple acknowledges Firefox's
| existence in their WWDC videos about web features, when they
| mention browser compatibility or who they're working with.
| dewey wrote:
| To be fair, it's a beta version and browser compatibility
| could be something for the launch.
|
| I'm a disappointed Firefox user but I also know what Beta
| means.
| troupo wrote:
| > it's a beta version and browser compatibility could be
| something for the launch.
|
| It's extremely hard to retrofit compatibility onto
| products. Case in point: all the "we only work in Chrome"
| sites that use Chrome-only APIs.
| randomdata wrote:
| Like others have pointed out, it seems to work fine in
| other browsers once you trick it into letting you in.
| General compatibility doesn't seem to be an issue. So,
| what is it that Firefox and Chrome on Linux (and only on
| Linux) don't support?
|
| H.265 is what they don't support. I'm not an avid enough
| user to know where Apple Maps makes use of media, but the
| source code contains media player controls, so it must
| somewhere. Retrofitting compatibility by launch may be as
| simple as re-encoding the H.265 content. Not at all worth
| the effort for beta 1, but with an obvious path forward.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > So, what is it that Firefox and Chrome on Linux (and
| only on Linux) don't support? H.265 is what they don't
| support.
|
| Do codecs need to be supported by the browser itself? I
| thought this was unloaded to some media decoding
| framework. Linux does have h.265 support at least in mpv.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Do codecs need to be supported by the browser itself?_
|
| Not necessarily. The browser could defer to licensing
| established by the operating system vendor, but Firefox
| places the expectation upon itself to have parity across
| platforms and to not support encumbered technologies.
|
| _> Linux does have h.265 support at least in mpv._
|
| And if you've negotiated the licensing fees you can even
| use it, but chances are... Microsoft and Apple have dealt
| with the licensing for you on their platforms, so the
| ballgame is different there.
| ralfd wrote:
| They to promise addtional browser support though:
|
| > To start, Maps on the web is available only in English.
| Maps on the web will be available for additional
| browsers, platforms, and languages soon. Published Date:
| July 24, 2024
| lucideer wrote:
| > _browser compatibility could be something for the launch_
|
| This is indeed how many bad/junior engineers approach this
| issue but it's backward - anyone with any experience doing
| launch QA knows well that browser compat needs to be built
| in from Day 1 - retrofitting it is disastrously expensive
| from a launch-delays perspective.
| ho_schi wrote:
| You cannot fix bugs if you don't collect them. Neither
| Mozilla. If you have not enough resources, just collect and
| track. Fix them when more people are available.
|
| Same for native application ports, ship them as early as
| possible. Just mark them _beta_ or _alpha_. At least you
| collect bugs. Bonus, you filter which are generic issues
| and which are platform dependent issues.
| arcticbull wrote:
| You don't have to get them from users by giving them a
| bad experience, though. You can get them in-house.
| ho_schi wrote:
| If it is in such immature condition it should be kept
| internal.
|
| If it doesn't work at all in a web-browser which handles
| HTML5 and modern CS it is probably not a website - but a
| proprietary protocol which needs a special client-
| application.
| cornedor wrote:
| Works fine here with a Chrome User-Agent in Firefox
|
| https://imgur.com/LtS3jXD
| freehorse wrote:
| It works fine on firefox with a safari UA; but not if I turn
| the resist fingerprinting setting on. Maybe that is your
| issue too?
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| I thought the same, until I realised I still had
| `/unsupported` in the URL. Spoofing a Chrome UA and dropping
| that path from the URL let me load (and use) Apple Maps fine
| under Firefox.
| SirHound wrote:
| 1-2% browser share is a common cutoff for support and Firefox
| is hurdling towards it. Maybe they're looking ahead just a few
| months.
| donbrae wrote:
| I normally find that stuff I build for the web just works in
| Chrome and Firefox and it's Safari that requires hacks and
| workarounds, even when I'm using standard APIs that are widely
| supported. I'd have to go out of my way to have something work
| in Chrome but not Firefox.
| sn0wleppard wrote:
| For a while apple.com itself had a hack to force a DOM re-
| render because of a Safari bug
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Apple says that MapKit.JS works on Firefox, so this beta web
| page is probably just working out bugs before they release for
| FF. Perhaps a rendering issue?
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mapkitjs/
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Odd, since the underlying MapKit JS supports Firefox.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mapkitjs/
| xrobotears wrote:
| And even in their supported browsers (Chrome at least) I got
| the "unsupported browser" on Fedora Linux.. Wonder what makes a
| online map need such a specific (even if its widely used)
| setup.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Firefox only has a marginal market share, so I can understand
| it's not a high priority target platform.
| n3m4c wrote:
| Everything works if you use User-Agent switcher extension. So
| they went through the trouble of making an "unsupported" page
| and redirecting you to that page instead of doing nothing
| steve1977 wrote:
| This is Apple. They don't expect their users to know what a
| User-Agent is (and even less how to install a User-Agent
| switcher extension).
| veunes wrote:
| Yep, and this philosophy has been a significant factor in
| Apple's widespread success
| pcardoso wrote:
| To be fair, Safari has a user-agent switcher built-in.
| Just enable the developer tools.
|
| Not all Apple users are clueless.
| steve1977 wrote:
| It's called Developer Tools and not User Tools for a
| reason
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| What do you think Firefox calls it?
| steve1977 wrote:
| The same, for the same reason
| pcardoso wrote:
| Isn't it just a name?
|
| A user can easily enable the developer tools if needed,
| same way I'm not a mechanic but can open the hood of my
| car.
| steve1977 wrote:
| You can open the hood of your car, but there's probably
| not much you can do there.
| pcardoso wrote:
| Of course I can. Add cleaning water, check oil levels,
| replace a light bulb. No much else I can do, but others
| may, and other won't even do any of this.
|
| Point is, this is not a binary choice. Between user and
| developer there are many people with varying skills that
| will use a user-agent switcher if needed.
| philistine wrote:
| It's not about capability, it's about interest.
|
| Most people could do a bit under the hood of a car, but
| they simply _don't care_.
|
| It's the same thing with computers. Most users are savvy.
| They just don't care.
| steve1977 wrote:
| In my experience (systems engineer/devops for both
| Windows and Linux for more than 25 years), very few users
| are actually savvy. Even those working in tech.
| philistine wrote:
| Our definition of savvy probably differs.
| roshankhan28 wrote:
| there is a good reason that most of the people prefer
| apple for its simplicity, its because apple only shows
| you what is required. i agree with you there.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Extremely frustrating. If a user is smart enough to use
| Firefox, they're probably also smart enough to open another
| browser if a site does not happen to work on Firefox.
| (Which I haven't experienced for a while, except when using
| ESPHome which requires WebSerial)
| mr_toad wrote:
| "We're not sure if this will work or not, and we don't want
| to deal with you if it doesn't, so we're not even going to
| let you try."
| PlutoIsAPlanet wrote:
| The point of "standards" is that you don't need to target
| platforms.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Google maps works fine.
| botanical wrote:
| That's still around 200 million people using Firefox.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I guess the interesting metric for Apple is how many of
| those are current or potential customers.
| ho_schi wrote:
| _Blocks_ deliberately: * Epiphany with
| WebKit2-Renderengine. The literally block their own engine.
| * Firefox with Gecko.
|
| What year is it? 2001?
|
| No web developer should be allowed to "block" webbrowser. Test
| for features and say "this thing doesn't work because of and I
| don't care about another solution". Same shitty experience with
| _Microsoft Teams_ which blocked - at least some months ago -
| the call buttons for Firefox, despite everything works fine.
| And Confluence which claims they don't block but started,
| Epipany is now hiding as Safari and...surprise...everything
| works.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Interestingly it works on Opera although the colours are weird
| (lots of dark greens and blues). On both versions (Edge and
| Opera), my local bakery is mis-located (by hundreds of yards)
| compared with its (correctly) reported location on an iPhone.
| infotapeworm wrote:
| Strange, I can't get it to work on any Chromium offshoot.
| I've tried 3 variants including vanilla Chromium.
| wrasee wrote:
| From the announcement
|
| > Support for additional languages, browsers, and platforms
| will be expanded over time.
|
| This is a beta. You have to start somewhere.
| reustle wrote:
| Then why why not an "I understand, continue anyway" button?
| Hide the feedback button for those users, if you must.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why not an "I understand, continue anyway" button?_
|
| You don't want broken screenshots shared. Also, people will
| click through and still open support tickets.
| wrasee wrote:
| Because Apple: Something either just works or it's not a
| thing. They don't do 'maybe works'.
| tapoxi wrote:
| It's not financially worth supporting, Firefox has 6.53% of
| desktop and 0.53% of mobile marketshare (Statcounter), with a
| switching cost of zero if users encounter a breaking issue.
|
| Not surprising it got to this point, Mozilla has been stagnant
| on features most users care about and catered exclusively to
| the privacy crowd for years - which isn't a large group and
| competes with Chromium offshoots (giving it a smaller niche,
| privacy but demanding an alternative rendering engine).
| andybak wrote:
| It's a non-zero switching cost for me. Every site that
| doesn't work in Firefox is a pain to use and I mostly don't
| bother.
| xvector wrote:
| Most normal users will simply switch away from Firefox,
| often permanently, if things break in Firefox.
| loudmax wrote:
| Most normal users aren't technology experts. This makes
| supporting the free web that much more important for
| those in a position to know better.
| tapoxi wrote:
| Sure, but the QA cost to support Firefox is significantly
| higher than the small fraction of people that will refuse
| to use a site that doesn't support it when they encounter
| an issue.
| jorvi wrote:
| > catered exclusively to the privacy crowd for years
|
| Not even that. Firefox on iOS doesn't have an integrated
| adblocker. It's been requested for years at this point, and
| browsers like Brave do have one. Pure unwillingness. It's why
| I got all my non-techie family and friends to switch to
| Brave.
| nutrie wrote:
| The iCloud web apps work just fine in Firefox, I use them all
| the time on Linux. They'll get there.
| sixtyj wrote:
| Beta version supports Mac, iPad or Windows.
|
| So you cannot view maps from Safari browser on iPhone.
|
| I am curious what they use that Firefox is not supported...
| infotapeworm wrote:
| Not only does it not support Firefox, but all Chromium variants
| are broken.. it only supports the Chrome spyware browser
| usui wrote:
| Seems like a baseless restriction. I can't find anything wrong
| with Firefox support itself as I changed my user agent under
| Firefox and Apple Maps works fine.
|
| It sucks when companies restrict normal access to a website
| when it's uncalled for. It's not the first time I've gotten
| "Use Google Chrome" for no reason.
| pjmlp wrote:
| We only support Firefox, because people on the team care to
| spend some extra cycles.
|
| Its dwilling 3% market share means it no longer makes into
| project delivery acceptance browser matrices.
|
| It is the good will of some that keeps it around.
| henryackerman wrote:
| Weird. They claim Firefox is not supported, but with some user-
| agent switcharoo it seems to work fine.
|
| Ugh.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| "Works through hacking" is not the same as being supported. See
| Hackintosh.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Well isn't that exactly what "supported" means?
|
| It may or may not work, but since that is a bad user
| experience, they disable it.
| arghwhat wrote:
| "Not supported" on its own does not mean "actively
| blocked/disabled", which is what this is.
|
| "Supported" means that they provide a certain effort for make
| the configuration operational for their users, by designing
| said support if needed and providing assistance as required.
| Dudhbbh3343 wrote:
| That's a stupid reason to block a user. Just show a warning
| that your browser is not yet tested.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Yeah they are just being lazy and not testing it... so rather
| than verify it works and fix bugs, they just check your browser
| agent and redirect you if you aren't using Chrome or Safari. So
| ghetto! Reeks of the late-90s/early-2000s "Use IE6" messages
| that companies used to put out when they built a site using
| Microsoft web components or proprietary APIs.
|
| "Hey look, I can save my PowerPoint as a web page! And it even
| has the animations!" Except it's 2024, and we have standards,
| and for them to say, "Oh we don't adhere to the standards" is
| shockingly bad.
| Humphrey wrote:
| > Your browser [Firefox] is not supported. See supported browsers
|
| Welcome to 2007 I guess!
| ahahahahah wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think you should expect people to support every
| niche browser.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| I think you should expect Apple to follow web standards.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Ironic, considering that Safari is typically the odd one out
| that sites choose to ignore.
| reddalo wrote:
| Not only Firefox is not supported, but even Chrome on Linux
| doesn't work. It's embarrassing for a company such as Apple.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Not only Firefox is not supported, but even Chrome on
| Linux doesn 't work._
|
| Which strongly suggests that it makes use of H.265 content
| somewhere (the source code corroborates such functionality),
| likely as a carry over from content created for the iOS/macOS
| versions of Apple Maps where support is granted.
|
| _> It 's embarrassing for a company such as Apple._
|
| To be fair, it is still in beta. There is still plenty of
| time for them to recreate the content in a format with wider
| support before release.
|
| Much more embarrassing is that _we_ enable this state of
| affairs. The situation that keeps Firefox and Linux from
| jumping all over H.265 is not some natural property of the
| universe, it 's just a social construct that we uphold by
| willing choice.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > The situation that keeps Firefox and Linux from jumping
| all over H.265 is not some natural property of the
| universe, it's just a social construct that we uphold by
| willing choice.
|
| Can you elaborate and/or link me to anything related to
| this?
| randomdata wrote:
| No. I'm good. Thanks for asking, though.
| vetinari wrote:
| Patents. To distribute the codec itself or content, you
| might have to pay patent fees.
|
| For codecs, they are not flat fee[1], but per piece
| shipped. Which obviously, presents a problem for linux
| distributions. Even if they had money, they cannot count
| how many instances there are.
|
| [1] Well, there is a ceiling, if you ship a insanely huge
| number of them. Linux isn't it. Cisco is, which is why we
| have openh264 binaries by them.
| echoangle wrote:
| I think this has some info:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332136
|
| Basically, H.265 is based on some patents and you would
| have to license them to be allowed to implement the
| Codec. Mozilla categorically doesn't want to do that
| until they can implement it without any patents.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Embarrassing to not support something on day one of a beta? I
| wouldn't feel any.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| How is Chrome on Linux different than Chrome on Windows or
| macOS?
| plingbang wrote:
| I understand they "cannot test every possible browser" and that
| "users may get subpar experience".
|
| I don't understand why there isn't "continue at your own risk"
| button. Maybe with a scary warning. It's kind of stupid that I
| have to spoof UA for a website to let me in. And in most cases,
| everything just works fine.
|
| Maybe one day I'll create a website to inform about the issue.
| veunes wrote:
| Firefox, while still significant, represents a smaller portion
| of users. But I think that the absence of initial support for
| Firefox doesn't necessarily mean it won't be supported in the
| future. Yet I hope so.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| 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.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I guess it gives them leverage vis a vis Google?
|
| I like that it tells me what lane to be in, so it's my main
| mapping app. Also presumably better privacy than Google Maps.
| jen729w wrote:
| > Also presumably better privacy than Google Maps.
|
| Yeah you might say that.
|
| My Android-owning Irish mate got hammered one night. Had no
| idea where he'd been.
|
| We launched Google Maps and it had a GPS track of his entire
| night. Like a dotted map with every step he'd taken.
| sofixa wrote:
| 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.
| saagarjha wrote:
| iPhone does this too, though the location data doesn't
| leave your phone unless you share it with an app that does
| that.
| nytesky wrote:
| 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.
| em500 wrote:
| Google intends to do the same by end of this year:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/5/24172204/google-maps-
| delet...
| sofixa wrote:
| > I like that it tells me what lane to be in, so it's my main
| mapping app.
|
| Google maps does that too.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| I'm guessing they want to give people an advert-free experience
| for such a basic function as finding directions and driving a
| route:
|
| https://www.androidauthority.com/google-maps-pop-up-ad-34581...
| h2onock wrote:
| 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).
| systemtest wrote:
| Have a look at TomTom for iOS. It's paid but in my opinion
| far superior to Google Maps and Waze.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| 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.
| InvisibleToast wrote:
| > 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?).
| kalleboo wrote:
| 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.
| ein0p wrote:
| 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.
| sksksk wrote:
| 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _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.
| sksksk wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/03/13/apple-maps-
| navigati...
| the-rc wrote:
| 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)
| sureIy wrote:
| 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| 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.
| nytesky wrote:
| 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.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-maps/
| > 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
| freedomben wrote:
| > 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.
| pgalvin wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_
| White_P...
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| You are implying that E2EE is "on everything" without
| mentioning that it's very far from being the default.
| freedomben wrote:
| 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.
| dktp wrote:
| 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
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Not to put too fine a point on it, but Android _is_ the
| dominating platform, except in the U.S.:
|
| https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users
|
| 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.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/105087
| runako wrote:
| > iMessage bubbles are green for Android
|
| 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.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241443505/green-bubble-
| shami...
|
| 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.
| runako wrote:
| You're addressing a lot more than I even attempted to
| address.
|
| I was really just pointing out that devices like this:
|
| https://www.hmd.com/en_us/nokia-2780-flip?sku=16WNDL11A01
|
| 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.)
| robertoandred wrote:
| iMessage doesn't support Android.
|
| SMS messages are green, no matter if it's sent from an
| Android phone or an iPhone or an authentication service
| or a marketing service, etc.
| zeagle wrote:
| I'm surprised they didn't launch earlier to ride the
| sentiment of avoiding Google services.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "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
| asddubs wrote:
| pedantic comment, but IIRC he actually asks if it's zune
| bad and gets told it's apple maps bad
| dylan604 wrote:
| you are correct
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVq1wgIN62E
| sorrythanks wrote:
| Apple's income doesn't come from adverts, it comes from selling
| iPhones
| veunes wrote:
| Yet Apple Maps and other services play a crucial role in
| enhancing the value of Apple's ecosystem
| sorrythanks wrote:
| Right, exactly! Improving Apple Maps is a good investment
| because it makes you:
|
| 1. less reliant on your worst competitor
|
| 2. get to give _your_ users something everyone else has to
| pay for (with money or data)
| talldayo wrote:
| Apple's income _does_ come from advertising:
| https://searchads.apple.com/
|
| Not all of it, but it's disingenuous to say Apple doesn't
| make money from ads.
| sorrythanks wrote:
| 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.
| matwood wrote:
| "Not all of it" is doing a lot of work. It's estimated that
| Apple ad revenue will be ~2-3% of total revenue in 2024.
| Timshel wrote:
| Because it's like one of the most important app on your phone ?
|
| How many people would still buy an iPhone without Apple or
| Google maps ?
| whatjadat2 wrote:
| Your not being serious? It's a core app, and the amount of data
| they get out of it, makes it worth it.
| andruby wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I was wondering what the fallout would be if businesses had
| to pay Google to include their business on Google Maps.
|
| Like, if McDonalds didn't pony up every year, they drop out
| of the list for Fast Food searches.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > 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.
| jon-wood wrote:
| > Apple doesn't make money with the Email app directly, but
| its existence likely improves how users perceive iOS.
|
| I dunno, have you actually used Apple Mail?
| askafriend wrote:
| Yes and I prefer it over any other mail app.
| yokoprime wrote:
| 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
| e40 wrote:
| 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).
| klausa wrote:
| 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.
| latexr wrote:
| 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).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps#Initial_release
|
| Becoming independent from Google for such a core feature was an
| important move.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not being dependent on Google for such a core feature in their
| phones makes it worth it for Apple.
| danbee wrote:
| 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.
| rockyj wrote:
| No support for any browser on Linux. Yeah, goodbye.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Out of curiosity, I removed "beta." part and see how it goes
| (using Chrome + Windows).
|
| So apparently, any URL _with a query parameter_ (e.g.
| https://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365... )
| will redirect you to ... their competitor,
| https://www.google.com/maps . I have no idea why.
| mpweiher wrote:
| On my Mac, that (first) link takes me straight to the Apple
| Maps app.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > will redirect you to ... their competitor
|
| For me, it triggered the opening of the (Apple) Maps.app
| desktop application. Which makes a lot more sense. On safari
| and chrome.
| aembleton wrote:
| Also does that on Firefox on macOS
| thunderbong wrote:
| I'm guessing that's Chrome going to Google maps site. I recall
| a setting being there to disable this.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Based on other comments, it's more likely due to being on
| Windows.
| ta1243 wrote:
| $ curl -v "https://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-12
| 2.51487365..."
|
| .... < HTTP/2 302 < server:
| AkamaiGHost < content-length: 0 < location: h
| ttps://maps.google.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.514873651
| 32222&spn=0.04999999999999005%2C0.11502863436983546 <
| expires: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:58:00 GMT < cache-
| control: max-age=0, no-cache, no-store
|
| That's on my linux laptop, but I'm in the UK, I suspect geo
| and akami makes a difference
| lancebeet wrote:
| Seems to be user agent.
|
| ~$ curl -v -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_5_1
| like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko)
| Version/17.5 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1" "https://maps.appl
| e.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365..."
|
| ... < HTTP/2 302 < server:
| AkamaiGHost < content-length: 0 < location: map
| s://maps.apple.com/?ll=41.77708546284588%2C-122.51487365132
| 222&spn=0.04999999999999005%2C0.11502863436983546 <
| expires: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 21:08:46 GMT < cache-
| control: max-age=0, no-cache, no-store
| SushiHippie wrote:
| I checked with curl and no matter the user agent it will answer
| with a 302 to google maps, I don't know how it works that
| others say it will redirect them to the Apple Maps App.
| furyofantares wrote:
| That is not what https://httpstatus.io/ sees
|
| With no query param it redirects to Apple sites. With query
| param, "Invalid protocol: maps:"
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Probably because you're on Mac/Safari.
|
| It shows 302 to maps.google.com here even using the website
| you give: https://i.imgur.com/y4jUdOn.png
| furyofantares wrote:
| Yeah what it's showing is that on iOS/Safari (user agent)
| it returns a maps:// protocol address. This makes sense
| of all the reports here - it's trying to direct you to
| whatever maps app you've selected. Redirecting to google
| maps makes sense if the server doesn't think the maps://
| result will do that.
| ProfessorZoom wrote:
| no, it takes you to whatever defaults to your maps
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| No, my default app for maps is built-in app, Maps.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| That's crazy!
| dwaite wrote:
| Yes, that is the production behavior.
|
| If you have a link to maps.apple.com on a platform with app
| links (or claimed HTTPS URLs on android platforms), a native
| Apple Maps app can display the results. Otherwise, they haven't
| had a web version, so they would change it to a redirect to
| Google Maps.
|
| I can't speak as to whether Chrome or Firefox on Mac, or
| alternate browsers on iOS, support this OS feature to launch
| native apps which have claimed a URL path.
|
| The defacto query parameters from Google Maps (at least
| historically) are supported by Apple Maps as well.
|
| This made migration to Apple Maps easy when it launched - you
| can just change the domain in the URL and prefer the native
| experience, knowing it will fall back to Google Maps in other
| cases.
|
| Once Apple's web experience is finished, I imagine they will
| stop redirecting to Google Maps. Google has somewhat
| compromised the privacy posture of Google Maps, which may very
| well be how Apple internally justified building a web
| experience.
| Tepix wrote:
| Firefox users are being marginalized within a few days by X and
| now by Apple. A sign of things to come?
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| The Advent is neigh.
| druskacik wrote:
| How were Firefox users marginalized by X?
| Tepix wrote:
| "X.com refuses to open with Firefox strict tracking
| protection enabled"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41022408
| machinekob wrote:
| Firefox is being marginalised mostly by Mozilla corporation
| others seem to just don't care much about dying browser, it is
| weird that it is broken on Safari with iOS for some folks as it
| is Apple product.
| Tepix wrote:
| it's also weird because Apple maps on the web have been
| available on Duckduckgo for months and it's worked just fine
| on Firefox.
| megapoliss wrote:
| Map looks terribly (like ~5y) outdated.
| s1mon wrote:
| You need to be specific. It's very much location based in terms
| of data quality and how current it is. It's great in the SF Bay
| Area, which isn't surprising given where Apple is based.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| First problem: the searchbox does not get focus upon opening.
| Looking for a place is the main thing you do. Why does it require
| mouse handling and handling at all?
|
| No keyboard response to Escape. It's basically the maps widget
| with a user unfriendly, but nice looking, drawer
|
| Same with the Contacts app on macos, it's slow, crashes, and I
| doubt anyone uses it
| albumen wrote:
| Contacts app: it's fine, doesn't crash for me, and I use it. So
| there go your assumptions about its entire userbase.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I get multi second(15sec) delays, the ui suddenly cancels
| edit mode. It's just one big abomination when they switched
| ui frameworks
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Other example: voice memos. Takes 20 seconds to start
| recording if you have a long list (30+) of recordings. It
| needs to find the next available file name. Instead of just
| listing them, it probably loads every files and tries to read
| some xml metadata instead.
| slashdave wrote:
| Wait, what? Do you enter all your email addresses by hand in
| your mail app? How do you add new addresses?
| joestrong wrote:
| If you put something random after the URL it seems to skip the
| browser checks: https://beta.maps.apple.com/bleh
| bambax wrote:
| True! That's quite funny and shows how utterly pointless
| browser restrictions are.
| aembleton wrote:
| They seem to have fixed that now. At least on Firefox on
| Android
| jcrash wrote:
| Still working for me - Firefox on Win10
| alistairSH wrote:
| Nope, still blocks my iPhone/Safari.
| tgott wrote:
| It appears to check viewport width alongside user agent.
| Shrinking my browser down in responsive mode results in the
| same "browser unsupported" screen.
| elcombato wrote:
| Interestingly, the web version uses newer satellite data than the
| app version, at least for some areas.
| sgammon wrote:
| Good job apple team! Very smooth experience. Fyi you may want to
| sanitize some of your response headers because one can easily
| tell Envoy is running at the edge. Upstream service latency looks
| healthy though :)
| bpbp-mango wrote:
| I much prefer Apple maps over google when I'm driving. Nice to
| see this. Shame I had to use a user-agent switcher though.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Why is that? Having Google's ability to navigate with live
| traffic data isn't a valuable feature to you? Apple's traffic-
| flow is mostly a joke to me, and I've never seen anyone trust
| it.
| balderdash wrote:
| Anecdotally: I use Apple Maps when I need directions (mostly
| because it's native/integrated and not google), for drives
| over an hour my experience is that the ETA time is +/- 5min
| even when there is lots of traffic.
|
| Except in one edge case where my girlfriend and I were doing
| a 7 hour drive traveling east late at night on an empty
| highway and our eta increased by an hour then a little while
| later another hour, we were so confused and thought we might
| be driving in the wrong direction! Until we figured out we
| had crossed a time zone and it was also day light savings!
| saagarjha wrote:
| (I live in the Bay Area) It's been mostly fine for me
| chomp wrote:
| It works fine, and I live in a city with some of the worst
| traffic in the US.
| swasheck wrote:
| my colloquial evidence ... apple maps is the most accurate in
| predicting time to destination and handles network
| instability in a way i prefer (keeps you on the track and
| just notifies you're in offline mode)
|
| google maps suggests more alternative routes that may save me
| time but their predictions are generally less accurate.
| network instability seems to cause the application to "panic"
| and it just starts spinning around - especially when walking
| through downtown areas
|
| while google has a sleeker presentation of traffic and shows
| the "red highlighter of misery and frustration" on my map
| more precisely, it's timing is generally wildly incorrect and
| apple has already routed me around the problem and with more
| accurate time to destination estimates
| randerson wrote:
| Apple gives better verbal instructions, e.g. "go past this
| light, then at the next, turn right" and it neatly shows
| which lane to be in. I can get where I am going even without
| looking at the map. Last time I used Google Maps it would
| give you no clues until it was basically "MAKE A HARD RIGHT
| NOW".
| dagmx wrote:
| I know people are complaining about lack of Firefox support, but
| the page also blocks Apple's own Safari browser on the latest iOS
| 18 beta.
|
| So I think it's more likely it's just beta bugs (site not OS) and
| reducing their support matrix down during that time.
| veunes wrote:
| Agree! The current limitations are more related to beta bugs
| and development constraints rather than deliberate exclusion of
| specific browsers.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| It's not just their beta iOS, I tried on 17.5.1 and I also get
| an unsupported browser error.
| fatfox wrote:
| I'd use Apple Maps more frequently, but business data and reviews
| are just not very helpful compared to Google Maps (at least where
| I am).
| fbn79 wrote:
| Google Chrome Linux in English Version 127.0.6533.72 (Official
| Build) (64-bit)
|
| Your current browser isn't supported
| paulmd wrote:
| I mean this seems like the same thing that happened to the rest
| of the market already... the consolidation is just happening
| within the chrome ecosystem rather than it happening to the
| alternatives.
|
| Almost as if it was a bad idea to kick away the last check
| against chrome monoculture. Maybe more mono than people
| anticipated.
| coldcode wrote:
| It's a early beta. It's not surprising to limit testing to what
| you know first.
| bambax wrote:
| There doesn't seem to be any reverse geocoding available.
| "Current location" puts me over 200 miles from where I am. You
| can't click anywhere on the map to get directions, you have to
| either click a location (already identified as such, with a name
| and icon) or type in an address. It's unclear that said locations
| are even clickable because the mouse icon doesn't change to a
| pointer. Directions are in miles only and I couldn't find an
| option to switch to metric; and they take a couple of seconds to
| be generated. No bike option. Many browsers aren't supported.
| (And of course no street view either).
|
| It looks more alpha than beta.
| karussell wrote:
| Current Location has nothing to do with their implementation or
| reverse geocoding and the browser does the work.
| bambax wrote:
| Google Maps in incognito says my position couldn't be
| determined. Apple Maps seems certain I'm where I'm not. Looks
| like a bug to me.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I would sooner attribute the former to "didn't work at all"
| than "was smart enough to cross check and be confident
| enough to figure out the location data was inaccurate and
| hide the result from the user".
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Good, this is one of the last reasons I used google as a default
| search engine. Hope we see it as an alternative in other search
| engines.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Interestingly it is user-agent blocked on Firefox, as noted in
| sibling comments. But Kagi (the search engine) has been using
| Apple Maps on their site (kagi.com/maps) for a good while now.
| aembleton wrote:
| So has DuckDuckGo (the search engine)
| https://duckduckgo.com/?iaxm=maps&q=Manchester
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed, I was surprised this was news because I'd been
| "using" Apple Maps on the web for quite some time through
| Kagi and DDG. I say "using" because as soon as I realize it
| is Apple maps I !gm to get to Google Maps instead, but I've
| gotten deep enough to know that it (at least seemed to) work.
| janfoeh wrote:
| Wow, after playing with it for a few minutes, I find it to
| actually be better than the horrible desktop version in Sonoma,
| where click-and-drag to move the map around inexplicably _drags
| place labels_ if you accidentally start the drag on one, and
| where clicking on a category search like "supermarkets - search
| nearby" always recenters around your current location instead of
| honoring your current map view.
| tempodox wrote:
| > ... is compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, as
| well as Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs.
|
| So Apple forces you into walled gardens and leaves you to be
| spied upon. So much for their pro-privacy stance. Firefox isn't
| just not supported, it is being actively blocked: "Your current
| browser isn't supported"!
|
| More evidence that the relationship between a user and a megacorp
| can only be adversarial (not that this is news).
| sureIy wrote:
| Apple: Launches beta product
|
| Hacker News users: _oh ma gad they can 't guarantee it works on
| my Netscape fork_
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| With all this front-end elaborate architectural smartassery,
| supporting Firefox is too difficult. Was it developed in Berlin?
| albertopv wrote:
| Very sad Firefox is not supported from day one, even in beta
| thih9 wrote:
| In my mobile Safari it doesn't work either.
|
| Edit: looks like iphone is not supported yet,
| https://support.apple.com/en-gb/120585
| agmater wrote:
| Agreed, but it was even more disappointing to also see the
| "unsupported browser" when I tried it in Safari.
| bauble wrote:
| That's downright ironic.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| if you go to something like https://beta.maps.apple.com/asd you
| bypass the browser check.
|
| works on firefox, but it's a big sluggish.
| metadat wrote:
| This doesn't work for Brave.
| gruez wrote:
| It works for a second, then I get redirected to the
| unsupported page.
| MaxGripe wrote:
| When I see the low level of support that Apple provides for
| various less popular web browsers, it reminds me of a certain
| story:
|
| A friend of mine once worked a long time ago at an IT company
| that was building an online store. He wrote a script there that
| displayed a message whenever someone accessed the site using
| Netscape "Get lost, jerk, with that Netscape and go straighten
| bananas on a tree".
|
| The company was quite popular in my country, and that message
| caused a lot of outrage on Usenet groups.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The way I see it--and I mean this in a non-pejorative way--Apple
| as a company has autism. Google has ADHD.
|
| Apple Maps launched in 2012. That's 12 years that Apple has been
| plugging away at this. I think we've seen just how much effort is
| required to catch up to Google Maps. Google actually does a ton
| to clean up and integrate data from different sources. It adds
| up.
|
| Apple sticks with things they start for the most part (Ping
| anyone?). Apple Pay is the poster child for this. Every week
| there's an announcement where some bank in Estonia has been
| added. They've slowly built out an ecosystem.
|
| That's what I mean by autism.
|
| Google OTOH has ADHD. If something doesn't immediately work, they
| lose interest and it gets cancelled. They've reached a point
| where doing anything requires commitment.
|
| Most of Google's successful products are acquisitions. Android,
| Maps, Docs, Youtube are obvious examples. Exceptions include
| search (obviously), Chrome and Gmail.
|
| There are areas where it's almost a joke how many variants of a
| product have existed and been shuttered over the years. Payments
| and messaging springs to mind.
|
| Apparently Apple has decided that Maps is core to their business
| and they've stuck to it. I don't disagree. Good for them. Still,
| not supporting Firefox? Hopefully that's temporary.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > Your current browser isn't supported
|
| From the "Supported Browsers" section, they only seem to support
| macOS and Windows. Somehow I suspect that this is overzealous
| User-Agent sniffing.
| dzonga wrote:
| assuming apple maps was written in Swift or objective-C. you
| would think with the resources Apple have - it would have ported
| majority of their apps to the browser.
|
| since the languages they use easily compile to wasm. just like
| how google earth uses c++ etc.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I haven't looked at these closely but Apple has some
| WebAssembly powering some of their iWork on web stuff
| rcarmo wrote:
| I'm quite happy to see this, since a long time ago I worked with
| various mapping providers (back when telcos had their own map and
| driving apps). One of the folk I worked with went to Apple, and I
| suspect this is their work :)
| loudmax wrote:
| On one hand, this is a beta product, so perhaps understandable
| that they're not supporting all platforms out of the gate.
|
| On the other hand, if you're serious about getting your
| application tested, people running open source browsers and
| operating systems are going to provide the most thorough testing
| and detailed problem reports.
| leptons wrote:
| Even for a beta this is clunky and practically unusable
| compared to Google Maps. It's pretty obvious that Apple _still
| has a very long way to go_ to offer a competitive maps product.
| Google is just so far ahead of whatever this beta is.
|
| For example, I centered the map on my location in Los Angeles,
| CA and then clicked search for "Gas Stations", and it promptly
| reposition the map and gave me all the gas stations in San
| Jose, CA, a city hundreds of miles away. WTF? This is probably
| one of the most common use cases and they can't get it right.
|
| I managed to drop a pin somehow, not sure, and now I can't
| remove it and the map is stuck focusing on this random pin
| point. I don't see any UI for removing the dropped pin. I can't
| move the pin, or do anything to change where the pin is. Ugh.
| cozzyd wrote:
| that's weird, searching for gas stations worked fine for the
| developers in Cupertino
| dwaite wrote:
| > For example, I centered the map on my location in Los
| Angeles, CA and then clicked search for "Gas Stations", and
| it promptly reposition the map and gave me all the gas
| stations in San Jose, CA, a city hundreds of miles away. WTF?
|
| I'm not seeing that behavior at all. When I type gas stations
| in search, it adds a 'nearby'. It will slightly reposition
| the window if there are matches on the edges, and the search
| goes into the history with the closest local area (e.g. the
| suburb I'm centered over).
|
| It is an active beta though, so I suppose it could differ
| browser by browser, day by day.
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| I've sometimes used Apple Maps on a desktop browser, with the URL
| https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection/map?path=anything (hold
| ctrl while scrolling to zoom)
|
| I'm quite glad there's now official support.
| balderdash wrote:
| I can't wait for Apple Maps to dump yelp. Am I the only one that
| that thinks yelp reviews are useless?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Apple has nothing to replace it with. It's hard to imagine
| Apple adding reviews and trying to police that -- policing
| their own App Store reviews seems to give the trouble (but
| perhaps is not a solvable problem).
| freedomben wrote:
| They could surely negotiate something to get access to
| Google's reviews. A nice thing about Apple's position is that
| they have enough money to build or buy whatever they want,
| depending on how strategic it is. If they buy google's
| reviews then they get to have access to the best data, and
| also inject themselves as a middle-man which can allow them
| to collect their own useful data and know exactly what people
| are looking at, but also able to claim privacy benefits
| because they shield people from Google (i.e. stop Google and
| their evil privacy invading tracking). If content in reviews
| is objectionable, they can just say "our partner didn't
| filter as they should, it wasn't us." I think it's actually a
| pretty good position to be in.
| lmpdev wrote:
| I would argue over a certain threshold of human
| comments/reviews/inputs this is invariably an unsolvable
| problem
|
| People rightfully give FAANG crap for improper policing (as
| they should) but in their defence I have yet to see a single
| solution successfully implemented platform wide, ever
| boringg wrote:
| Yelp was high value in the past - its going to low value in the
| recent years. It's also regional in its value.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| yelps relevancy had already declined by the time it was
| included in apple maps
| athenot wrote:
| They've added ratings to the Maps app for certain categories of
| businesses (or maybe it's for businesses not in Yelp, dunno).
| It looks like they are testing it out. It also supports picture
| upload.
| dagw wrote:
| Is there anything better to replace it with? Even if they could
| use Google's reviews, I don't feel they are much better. I
| guess they could do a deal with TripAdvisor, which is the only
| other site I can think of that has fairly comprehensive
| coverage of reviews, but is TripAdvisor really a step up from
| Yelp?
| Larrikin wrote:
| A one star place on Yelp is a warning, especially if there are
| implied health code violations. But anything else between two
| and five, I look at the pictures of the food and decide for
| myself. There's gaming going on for years but pictures can tell
| a lot, even if it's not everything.
|
| The anti Yelp restaurants that delist themselves from various
| sites for whatever reason do not exist to me and will never get
| my business because I will never even think about them when I
| am thinking about where to eat.
| coldcode wrote:
| Running Safari on MacOS (latest) I see in the console:
|
| [Error] Could not connect to the server. [Error] Fetch API cannot
| load https://xp-qa.apple.com/report/2/xp_amp_web_perf_log due to
| access control checks. [Error] Failed to load resource: Could not
| connect to the server. (xp_amp_web_perf_log, line 0)
|
| Looks like a beta bug.
| botanical wrote:
| I just tried it on Firefox with https://beta.maps.apple.com/abc,
| and all the POIs are incorrectly placed (at least in South
| Africa) and the roads are right-angled and un-named.
|
| Also, Apple makes an absolute mess when contributing to the
| OpenStreetMap project. For example, their contributors make any
| informal / illegal shortcut part of a residential street when it
| isn't.
| diggan wrote:
| > Also, Apple makes an absolute mess when contributing to the
| OpenStreetMap project. For example, their contributors make any
| informal / illegal shortcut part of a residential street when
| it isn't.
|
| This would be very bad, where are you getting this from? That
| their own maps implementation doesn't work outside of
| Chrome/Safari doesn't sound nearly as bad as if they're
| damaging an entire ecosystem like that.
| botanical wrote:
| I contribute to OSM, and I've seen it in my own local town.
| It's not so much nefarious as it is negligent. They don't
| have local knowledge, see a satellite image of what seems
| like a road and decide it connects to existing residential
| roads. If you spend time on it, you'll notice it too as it
| was common enough for me to notice it.
| diggan wrote:
| You have any concrete examples of this happening you could
| link to?
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Probably not without self-doxxing.
| mtmail wrote:
| https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/issues is where you can
| give feedback to Apple's OSM mapping team. There's one
| thread per country
| dwaite wrote:
| Do you have reference to this being based on an Apple
| change and based on analysis of satellite images?
| robertoandred wrote:
| Firefox is not currently a supported browser.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Links like https://beta.maps.apple.com/abc still work.
| tjoff wrote:
| Neither firefox nor chrome works on android with that link.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| According to the linked support page, nothing except
| Apple OSes and Windows is supported; not even desktop
| Linux! That's quite an accomplishment in 2024. They
| really went above and beyond in _not_ supporting any
| modern browser.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Interestingly that /abc link works for me on Linux
| (Brave), but the published link doesn't work for me on
| Linux+any browser, Chrome included.
|
| Agreed, quite annoying. I own a bunch of Apple stuff, but
| when they do this crap i can't invest further into their
| ecosystem because it's unusable to me much of the time.
| dwaite wrote:
| "Support for additional languages, browsers, and
| platforms will be expanded over time."
|
| Sounds like it is a true beta and not a "Google" beta.
| vdnkh wrote:
| Works for me on FF dev edition. I bet WebGPU support is
| required (mainline FF does not support this).
| generalizations wrote:
| Use an extension to change your useragent string; it mostly
| works on firefox, just expect bugs.
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| Firefox on Ubuntu works on my machine, but only using your
| link, and it displays "[App.AppleMaps.Title]" as the tabs
| title. The POIs seem to be correct in Switzerland.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| Despite preferring Apple's ecosystem over all others, I've built
| up quite a robust collection of "Favorites" and "Want to Go" and
| 'Starred" places in Google Maps, which makes the switching costs
| to move to Apple Maps high.
|
| Is there a way to export that data from Google Maps? Will Apple
| offer an import feature?
| mittermayr wrote:
| Only through Google Takeout. I am trying to build a tool that
| allows displaying and sharing them outside of Google Accounts
| or Maps, but the only reliable way to get them out is
| unfortunately still Takeout. Some browser extensions offered a
| loop/extraction but they mostly don't work anymore I think.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Google Takeout is excellent; basically GDPR data downloads 5
| years before GDPR was even a thing. Before moving anything to
| Apple Maps I'd want to be sure they offer a similar feature
| so I'm not locked in.
| e12e wrote:
| Just be aware google takeout contains everything _except_
| files uploaded to Google Drive.
| lippihom wrote:
| The Takeout export from Maps is quite messy when I've done it
| in the past.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| I accumulated 8,000+ visited locations on Google Maps, but
| they've been increasingly abandoning "power users". You might
| want to reconsider before "investing" or being emotionally
| attached to Google Maps's saved lists:
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1cfqk52/did_i_j...
|
| [2] https://techissuestoday.com/google-maps-limits-entries-
| into-...
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| From that reddit thread:
|
| Sharing some perspective on this (I was involved in the fix).
|
| Basically what started happening at some point was that Maps
| had built in a "timeout" for the fetch of Saved lists. When
| the lists weren't able to be downloaded/fetched in under X
| seconds, the system stopped trying, assuming that lists in
| general would always load in under X seconds.
|
| For users with huge lists, and for some users with very slow
| connections, it would timeout and not show anything. The way
| to notice it was typically when sharing the list, because the
| receiving user would fall into that timeout trap. The owner
| of the list usually didn't notice immediately because the
| places were cached on their devices.
|
| It's still being worked on, and being rolled out slowly..
| Some changes will come though, not sure how it'll be
| announced.
| echelon wrote:
| Was the fix to use a paginated API?
|
| Also, as an aside, do you have any political sway over this
| decision?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/06/
| g...
|
| Location history is extremely valuable to remember trips
| and retrace steps. I don't want this living locally on a
| device where it can go missing.
| lippihom wrote:
| Collectively there are 100s of strings open across Reddit,
| Stack Overflow, etc asking for a clean way to export saved
| places on Google Maps, but other than Takeout (which for the
| average user is quite complex), there isn't really anything
| that works well.
|
| There's ways to hack together a scraper that can go through and
| grab everything, but it's still quite messy. I think Google is
| making it hard on purpose in order to use this as their "moat".
| namukang wrote:
| You can use Browserflow (Chrome extension for browser
| automation) to extract saved lists from Google Maps:
| https://browserflow.app/shared/MWz0bTt7zBkyRMTs
|
| Screen recording:
| https://www.loom.com/share/5ad91e0347294c7a9b4f0e0b3b2b8544?...
|
| I made Browserflow so feel free to ask any questions / let me
| know if you run into any issues.
| sofixa wrote:
| I have to say, this is pretty bad even for a beta.
|
| * the map is downright unreadable on a 34 inch ultrawide screen
| on Chrome/macOS, in dark mode - it's very dark grey on black,
| with small text in a weird font
|
| * the UI is obviously mobile-style, badly inspired by Google
| Maps, with a tiny bar to the left; even when clicking on submenus
| (guides -> one of the guides), it stays miniscule even though
| there's a massive real estate to work on
|
| * there's only by car and by foot, which means it's useless for a
| lot of the world that uses public transit or biking
|
| * for some reason it defaults to the wrong measurement system
| even though my locale and location should be enough to deduce I
| don't care about miles
| nerflad wrote:
| I love Apple Maps and use it every day in NYC. Hope they will
| make it require a slightly longer press to drop a pin. I can't be
| the only user accidentally doing this ~a dozen times a week.
| Happened just now in the browser, trying to drag the view.
| Rooting for the product.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Their current browser experience doesn't include transit or
| cycling, which makes it not terribly useful for NYC.
| standardUser wrote:
| Is a map without transit even a map? I still use Google Maps
| as my default for transit, but Citymapper is considerably
| more reliable and I've been trying to remember to use it
| more.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| A problem I had with CityMapper is that at the time I last
| used it, it used the distance units of the city you're in,
| with no ability to change it. For example, if you're in New
| York, the distances will be in feet, and feet only.
|
| Since I already know the public transport of my my own city
| and that I reach out for CityMapper when I'm travelling,
| it's a jarring omission. I was incredulous enough to check
| with support, and sure enough they confirmed as of last
| year at least it is indeed the case that the units cannot
| be changed.
| standardUser wrote:
| That's a pretty big oversight on their part. But when I'm
| in a tight spot (like train service is ending late at
| night) I've had CityMapper save my ass a few times when
| Google was showing me inaccurate information. This has
| mostly been in NYC and London.
| bsimpson wrote:
| This has always driven me nuts about Google Maps too.
|
| Contrary to what some PM apparently believes, nobody
| taught me kilometers on the plane.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > Is a map without transit even a map?
|
| Yes. Transit is bot a majority use case.
| nerflad wrote:
| The desktop and iOS apps (and integration of e.g Doordash
| with the Maps API) are great
| dwighttk wrote:
| Yeah and the process to remove a pin is a little clunky I find
| jessekv wrote:
| And the process to add them is a bit too "streamlined".
| gcbirzan wrote:
| How do you remove them?
| ss64 wrote:
| You have to reload the whole page.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| After the initial gaffes, I was reluctant to use it and stayed
| with Google Maps for a long time. But a couple years ago
| someone mentioned it had improved, and I'd already been trying
| to gain some distance from Google... and it's pretty usable.
| I'll just remember to be a little skeptical if it tells me to
| drive across the Australian desert.
|
| I wish I was even half as happy about DDG though.
| leumon wrote:
| Just give us airtags in icloud.com/find please, so that I can use
| them while having an android phone. I don't need apple maps in
| browser.
| nytesky wrote:
| Why not just get a tile?
| deletedie wrote:
| Same problem - Tile doesn't have a webapp / site
| nytesky wrote:
| Oh but does have android app. Sorry didn't realize you just
| wanted no app, I definitely sympathize.
| kube-system wrote:
| The Tile network is not great, in my experience.
| neilv wrote:
| Trying it with Firefox ESR...
|
| > _Your current browser isn 't supported_
|
| > _See Supported Browsers/_
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585
|
| > _On your Mac or iPad: Safari, Edge, Chrome_
|
| > _On your Windows PC: Edge, Chrome_
|
| No platform other than Apple-Microsoft proprietary ones?
|
| No browser other than Chrome/Edge plus Safari?
|
| Apple should really be more sympathetic to open standards Web.
| They might be one regulatory decision away from Google Chrome
| taking over as the popular browser on Apple products as well. One
| defense is to hold Google-Microsoft and sites to Web open
| standards, not bless the proprietary Web.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Maybe they will by the time they come out of beta? It only just
| launched.
|
| The page you reference even acknowledges this:
|
| >Availability varies depending on region. To start, Maps on the
| web is available only in English. Maps on the web will be
| available for additional browsers, platforms, and languages
| soon.
| scblock wrote:
| Yes this is a huge miss. It's IE all over again.
| yohannparis wrote:
| That is why it is named beta.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Presumably if it's a beta then you'd want as much feedback
| from users as possible. How is blocking Firefox in a beta
| going to help get this in a production ready state?
| throwitaway1123 wrote:
| Unfortunately, many users will gather from this experience
| the following sentiment: "if I want to access the latest
| cutting edge betas, then I should be using something other
| than Firefox". The net result of this is less browser
| diversity.
| burkaman wrote:
| It appears to work perfectly fine on Firefox. They are only
| applying the user agent check on the root path, so if you hit
| https://beta.maps.apple.com/anything it will work on Firefox.
|
| I believe I've tried all the (pretty limited) functionality and
| I haven't found any justification for blocking Firefox.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| >I haven't found any justification for blocking Firefox
|
| They don't want to spend on QA for another browser
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Struggling company like Apple simply can't afford to.
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| They don't have the technology
| riffic wrote:
| there's absolutely NEVER any justification for blocking
| firefox except just like, complete hostility.
|
| It's Apple though so of course, they get a pass.
| dawnerd wrote:
| That's weird because you've been able to use their embedded web
| maps for a few years now just fine with Firefox. Wonder what
| gotcha they ran into implementing the full thing that needed a
| browser check?
|
| Edit: their browser check is just bad. I get it in safari too.
| diggan wrote:
| > That's weird because you've been able to use their embedded
| web maps for a few years now just fine with Firefox. Wonder
| what gotcha they ran into implementing the full thing that
| needed a browser check?
|
| Likely nothing. "Unsupported" messages like that are usually
| not written based on what the website/webapp can run on, but
| rather what they have/not have testing for. So if they're
| only testing it on Windows/macOS/Chrome/Safari, even if their
| developers probably confirmed it works in Firefox/Linux,
| they'll add that message/block as their QA doesn't include
| Firefox or Linux.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I just tried it in Chrome on Linux and it didn't work. Even
| tried switching my user agent so it would look like i was on
| Windows but that didn't work either.
| xet7 wrote:
| At Linux, I used Firefox AddOn "UserAgent Switcher and
| Manager" to change User Agent to macOS Safari. Then it
| worked.
| layer8 wrote:
| It feels like back in the "optimized for Internet Explorer"
| days.
| kevinak wrote:
| I saw this same issue on MacOS... in Safari, so probably just a
| bug.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Doesn't even work with alternative web browsers on iOS which
| are just using embedded Safari.
| mort96 wrote:
| Yeah this isn't a web app... this is a Chrome+Safari app
| andylynch wrote:
| Amusingly, it's also unsupported on Mobile Safari.
| ajross wrote:
| So weird to see a demand for adherence to open standards
| justified by... the desire to see Apple preserve the dominance
| of its _decidedly-closed_ device ecosystem.
| philistine wrote:
| Life is weird. And in this weird case, Apple's monopolistic
| insistence on denying other rendering engines on its phone
| has prevented the web from devolving into a monoculture.
|
| C'est la vie.
| neilv wrote:
| Agreed it's weird. But it's not the justification in general.
|
| Apple is so accustomed to leveraging proprietary
| stranglehold, including sometimes being an outright
| totalitarian, that they need to realize the precariousness of
| their position of strength, and learn why most other parties
| have to at least pretend to believe in non-proprietary
| interoperation.
|
| A school bully shouldn't wait until they get a debilitating
| sports injury, and they are suddenly the one getting stuffed
| into the trash cans, to start preaching&practicing the good
| word that no one should be stuffed into trash cans.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Under the _Helpful?_ option on that page, I chose _No_ and
| submitted a comment expressing my disappointment that there was
| no support for Firefox or any other browser for GNU /Linux
| users. While I can access Apple Maps on my iPhone, I prefer to
| be able to view maps on my large desktop monitor.
| can16358p wrote:
| Nice. With the current trajectory Apple Maps will be a serious
| competitor to Google Maps.
|
| When it first came out we all made fun of it and it deserved that
| fun to be made. It was absolutely terrible.
|
| Fast-forward to today: I live in Turkey, Google Maps' satellite
| view is extremely blurry at an unusable level, and Apple Maps
| displays satellite view perfectly at a nice resolution. There has
| been a change in street numbers about three years ago here. Apple
| Maps displays the current new street number while Google Maps
| still displays the old street number. And before you say Apple is
| only good at first-world metropolitans: I live in a small town in
| Turkey, barely more populated than a village in winter.
|
| The only reason I keep Google Maps is compatibility especially
| when sending location etc to others with Android devices,
| otherwise I'd have long deleted it.
|
| With this upgrade I might actually indeed delete Google Maps
| which has one of the worst UX I've seen (well, it's a Google
| product so that's expected) and very bad data, at least for all
| my practical purposes.
| jader201 wrote:
| I've been using Google Maps forever. When Apple Maps came out, I
| experimented with it a bit, even tried using it as a default, and
| it was terrible. Several locations it couldn't find, or just was
| in the completely wrong location. Even businesses were missing.
|
| Every now and then I try it out, and it will seem improved a bit
| over the previous time, but it won't take long before I run into
| an address that is again missing or incorrect.
|
| After a while, I gave up on it altogether. But sometimes on
| CarPlay, I will accidentally end up on Apple Maps, and will
| realize it after it either has me going in the wrong direction,
| or it can't find the place I'm going.
|
| Even my last trip a couple weeks ago this happened.
|
| I'm surprised it has the usage it does, because still to this
| day, I -- admittedly anecdotally -- still have issues with the
| data.
|
| I think maybe in larger cities it functions better. But outside
| of large cities, I think the data is still quite a bit behind
| Google Maps.
| ladberg wrote:
| Your last line is right, it's definitely a location thing. I've
| been using Apple Maps for years in the various big cities I've
| lived and I strongly prefer it over Google Maps, but whenever
| I'm on vacation I'll switch to Google.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I switched to Apple Maps a couple of years ago. I live in
| Seattle and haven't had any problems with it.
|
| Also, if you didn't know, you can delete Apple Maps entirely if
| you dislike it. iOS definitely tries hard to enforce those
| default apps.
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| How does it do with traffic? I was driving with a friend who
| was using apple maps recently, and I was able to save us from
| a ~20 minute traffic jam on i5 by just taking an early exit
| darby_nine wrote:
| I used to be extremely loyal to google maps but they simply
| haven't added any notable features in more than a decade. They
| _still_ end the route automatically "at destination", even if
| you missed your turn and now are driving miles past your
| destination, which made me frustrated enough one day to dump it
| and never look back.
|
| Apple maps does something similar but they enter "parking mode"
| rather than just summarily ending navigation. A little change
| but a huge difference in usability.
| willmadden wrote:
| I've heard that google maps has turned into a "magic box".
| They'll never change the core architecture because the
| original developers are long gone, and any attempts to
| replace it are likely to result in an inferior product.
| asadotzler wrote:
| I live about a dozen miles from the Googleplex in the Santa
| Cruz Mountains and Apple Maps has roads all around me that do
| not exist: at best jeep trails but mostly logging roads from
| 150 years ago that are nothing but forest today, barely hiking
| trails at this point. Apple Maps is a joke outside of major
| cities and has been since its debut.
| lancebeet wrote:
| I opened it up and was a little surprised by what it showed in
| my surrounding area. It was filled with restaurants and
| businesses that haven't existed for years. There must be
| thousands or even tens of thousands of apple maps users that
| live in the area that see those places in the app every day. I
| wonder how often they try to visit one of those places. Perhaps
| they have a habit of searching on google (or google maps I
| suppose) to verify that it exists before they go to a new
| place? Very interesting.
| butz wrote:
| Don't know what I was expecting, but Apple Maps seems to be as
| noisy as Google Maps, maybe event more. So many businesses
| listed, some with long names taking 5 lines. Good thing this is
| "not supported" on Firefox, I might've found even more issues.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| For all of these companies lipservice to A.I., mapping still
| requires a high degree of human involvement to normalize.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| That's the best feature of Apple Maps. Google hides a ton of
| businesses, even at max zoom.
| H12 wrote:
| I would really love to see a "maps" app that focuses
| specifically on local discovery for businesses and other points
| of interest. Or, one that at least makes a real attempt to
| deliniate between getting you to a known place, and finding you
| new places to go.
|
| Most mapping apps seem to blend navigation & discovery into a
| single experience that winds up being worse at both.
| balozi wrote:
| Heaven knows Apple would never give me anything for free. So,
| Apple will have to PAY ME to try their beta product. The era of
| free work is over.
| dadoum wrote:
| It has no public transit support? or did I miss a button? I mean
| it's one of the only use I have for a desktop map, plan your
| route ahead, see where to go, and how to go there.
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| Is there a way to use light mode?
| usaphp wrote:
| the only thing I like in Google maps more than Apple Maps is
| reviews. Yelp integration in Apple is annoying as it asks me to
| open an app to view photos from a place.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| The more time moves on the more Apple's "App First/App Only"
| approach seems to feel like a mistake.
|
| While yeah there has been a handful of benefits to it on iOS
| specifically, the move of real work to iPads never materialzed so
| real work still gets done on Macbooks and therefore searches for
| locations, calendars, documents, etc all end up in Google
| infrastructure instead of Apple.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Doesn't work with Firefox?! Are we back to this shit where all
| the companies want us to use IE6? Come on, this is so janky.
| Especially for a company like Apple.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/SQl7YUh.png
| AJRF wrote:
| Type "double bedroom" in to search. Is that booking.com spam?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Weird results. Looks like bad data fed in.
| jcrash wrote:
| I just wish Apple Maps would drop Yelp .. I hate Yelp
| toephu2 wrote:
| What alternative do they have? Google Maps reviews?
| byproxy wrote:
| A version, or two, ago they've introduced their own rating
| system where you can thumb's up/down certain criteria (which
| elude me, right now. but, of the "ambiance", "food quality",
| "service", etc. variety). So, I imagine they're looking to
| ween off of Yelp for their rating's system.
| memcg wrote:
| Doesn't duckduckgo already use Apple maps and work on Firefox?
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?iaxm=maps&q=washington+dc&bbox=-77.2...
| betaby wrote:
| "Your current browser isn't supported" Okay.
| bparsons wrote:
| - A lot of retail businesses listed in my neighborhood that don't
| exist. I am guessing they are pulling from corporate registries
| to find these?
|
| - The directions feature is about 14 years behind Google/OSM. No
| transit, no cycling, and no traffic visualization.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| Why are mapping services so stingy with custom lists of pinned
| location? This announcement from Apple made me excited because
| Google Map's saved list has become unusable for me. I have 8,000+
| favorites (used to mark places I've visited) on Google Maps and
| behavior above 500 is undefined. On Mobile, Google Maps loads an
| arbitrary list of 3,000 pins. Unfortunately, Apple is even worst
| with a limit of 100 [2]
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/1cfqk52/did_i_j...
|
| [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/103188
| thefourthchime wrote:
| You can put items in guides, i'm not sure the limit of items
| you can put in a guide or how many guides though
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| "Total number of places across all Guides: 300"
|
| These limits wouldn't be an issue if Google Maps API actually
| allowed fetching saved list features.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| AFAIK the API doesn't even let you log in as your Google
| user account.
| lewisgodowski wrote:
| I have over 2,000 places saved in Guides in the Apple Maps
| app. Not sure what that 300 place limit is referring to,
| but I haven't had any issues.
| mempko wrote:
| Try https://maps.here.com
| sroussey wrote:
| Safari on iOS is not supported?
| cptskippy wrote:
| Where do they source their data? I've contributed a lot of
| hyperspecific information to OpenStreetMap about my location that
| Google gets very wrong. It looks like Apple took some of it,
| slightly tweaked some stuff, and completed ignored other bits.
| habi wrote:
| Apple mentions OpenStreetMap quite prominently:
| https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/maps/legal-en....
|
| Also, the "Legal" link on https://beta.maps.apple.com/ goes to
| https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution.html which
| lists OpenStreetMap on the first line.
| hellcow wrote:
| I hope they at least donate...
| habi wrote:
| I guess they also donate, but at least they contribute
| quite substantially: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Or
| ganised_Editing/Activi...
| asymmetric wrote:
| What's an easy way to update OSM data on the go on a mobile
| device?
| cptskippy wrote:
| I like SteetComplete but it's very basic, it just asks basic
| questions about the area you are in based on existing data.
|
| I will usually set out to document something on my bike and
| just take lots of pictures, particularly of intersections. I
| then use the OSM website to update things at home.
|
| The more meta data you feed into OSM, the more pointed
| questions StreetComplete asks. It can ask about simple things
| like road composition, street markings, and crossings. Often
| it's easier and faster to answer questions in App than using
| the OSM website.
|
| For people who want to contribute but don't feel like
| traveling around, there's plenty to do at home using aerial
| or street view data. Many house numbers are wrong or
| misaligned with home locations.
|
| Many neighborhoods use a hand full of footprints for homes
| and will mirror them or slap on a different facade. So I like
| to use aerial photography to trace out the foot prints of a
| few homes and then copy paste those onto all the like model
| homes.
|
| Then I use street view photography to get accurate house
| numbers and update maps as well. The house numbers and
| locations vary wildly but for condos and townhomes they're
| usually pretty bad.
|
| Simply putting accurate house numbers on foot prints makes a
| world of difference. Companies like Lyft and Amazon use OSM
| data for pickups and deliveries.
|
| Road information is also often out dated, especially for new
| construction. We had a lot of people in our neighborhood
| complaining about Lyft pickups not being able to navigate to
| their location. I fixed our neighborhood, tagged Lyft on
| Twitter and they updated their maps within a week.
| graeme wrote:
| I want to use Apple Maps. In a few areas I find they beat google.
| Airport Maps, Transit.
|
| But Google has deep integrations with a lot of things that just
| make it nice to use. For example, Apple Maps has bike directions.
| Google maps has bike directions that integration directly with
| the local bikeshare. So you can an ETA that includes walking time
| to/from the bikeshare stations for picking up and dropping off
| bikes.
|
| Right now Google Maps is at the "It just works" phase and Apple
| is not there, though they are improving quite a bit.
| swozey wrote:
| I live downtown in a busy neighborhood and Google has a "How
| busy is it right now?" thing, as inaccurate as it potentially
| is, is super helpful so I don't walk over to a bar/restaurant
| and find out its packed to the brim with people singing Titanic
| over karaeoke.
| graeme wrote:
| Precisely. For Macs Apple made a Pro Workflows team that
| looked at a bunch of specific tasks done by photographers,
| videographers, programmers etc and worked to make macs, ipad
| and iphones better for those specific things.
|
| They need a team like that for Maps. Run someone through "I
| want to go to a bar tonight" on Google Maps, have them try it
| on Apple Maps, spec out what is needed to actually make it
| work, and repeat for a couple dozen use cases.
|
| They really have been able to do this for a few areas within
| maps. If they broaden this out they'll be a serious contender
| for Google Maps. They already have them beat on privacy,
| speed, ios integration etc
| IncRnd wrote:
| Apple maps requires js to work. Google maps and Mapquest don't
| require js.
|
| While most people use js by default, this requirement indicates
| that Apple requires a greater footprint to run maps than Google
| or Mapquest.
| randerson wrote:
| Why should they optimize for the <0.1% of people who don't have
| JS enabled?
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Why should they optimize for the <0.1% of people who don't
| have JS enabled?
|
| Because their competitors do that.
|
| Most counts place non-js users (which is not always their
| choice) between 1% and 4%.
|
| That means that for every 10,000 users, there will be between
| 100 and 400 that don't have js enabled. It's been estimated
| that buzzfeed, which we use as a traffic example, gets over
| 10 million requests that don't support js per month.
| ngrilly wrote:
| What is the strategic rationale for offering Apple Maps on the
| web?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I would imagine that people who need Google Maps on the web are
| more likely to stick to that one platform everywhere. Offering
| Apple Maps on web makes needing to stick to Google Maps less
| necessary.
|
| It's the same reasoning as iTunes on Windows.
| ngrilly wrote:
| Agreed. But historically, Apple pushed users really hard
| towards their native apps. I'd be personally happy using a
| better web version of for example Apple Notes when I'm forced
| to use Windows.
| alexwilliams wrote:
| Apple? The Web? What?
| vstollen wrote:
| What I miss the most from Apple Maps is their lack of user
| content (at least in Germany). While I can find many pictures and
| reviews of every tiny store on Google Maps, Apple usually only
| has a handful of reviews and almost no photos submitted.
| bnchrch wrote:
| I live in a city in Canada, every 6 months I tend to give Apple
| Maps a try.
|
| Inside of this year there have been multiple times where the
| Apple Maps route is 3x longer.
|
| 15 min vs 45 min
|
| 55 min vs 1 hr 25 min
|
| I want to use Apple Maps, but don't let these comments from NYC,
| LA, etc make you think its close to par with Google Maps.
|
| Because its not.
| hellcow wrote:
| Is this due to it having inaccurate traffic estimates, or is it
| just picking bad routes independently of traffic?
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Pretty interesting how many things are clickable, but don't
| appear so. The cursor doesn't turn to "cursor: pointer".
| standardUser wrote:
| Launching a web app that doesn't work on the web? I guess that's
| what we should expect from a company that makes a messaging app
| that magically only works on one piece of hardware. Apple has a
| knack for finding restrictions where they would otherwise never
| exist.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| It seems to work for me. Can you elaborate on the problem
| you're seeing?
| csande17 wrote:
| Apple has a very short list of allowed browsers that does not
| include any Android browser, any Linux browser, or Firefox on
| any platform: https://support.apple.com/120585
|
| If you try to access Apple Maps on an unsupported browser,
| you get a hard "Your current browser isn't supported" block,
| presumably implemented with UA detection.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| No, it does work. Just go to a sub-directory. I can access
| via Firefox.
|
| https://beta.maps.apple.com/asd as an example.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Which proves that it does work, but they just explicitly
| block it.
| renjimen wrote:
| What a miserable company.
| crazygringo wrote:
| For goodness' sakes, it's in _beta_.
|
| Their devs are probably trying to make sure it runs in
| Firefox but they haven't added it to the official QA
| process, just like they haven't added languages other
| than English either. And they don't want Firefox users
| complaining about bugs that might be there yet.
|
| If this were a full release then sure I'd complain too.
| But this is just a beta. Maybe releasing betas before
| they have full compatibility and internationalization is
| _good_ , rather than "miserable"?
| kimixa wrote:
| But I thought that the whole point of it being a "Beta"
| was explicitly _for_ testing.
|
| Blocking untested combinations seems contrary to that
| goal.
|
| Or I guess it's another example of how the word "Beta"
| has become marketing speak for "New!", with a side of "No
| Support!"
| vanous wrote:
| Your current browser isn't supported.
| kevincox wrote:
| This seems to work for me on Firefox on macOS. Haven't
| seen any issues and don't know why Firefox on any other
| OS would be different.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I love this web oriented develop once and run everywhere
| magic, that is exactly like that, it's a kind of magic that
| is not the reality, works in some theaters only.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Funny, Apple Maps via DDG works just fine on Firefox. What
| a bunch of jerks.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=US&iaxm=maps
| wferrell wrote:
| What browser? Works in safari and Chrome (latest and latest) on
| macos. Genuinely curious what isn't working as that seems like
| a real mistake.
| eurleif wrote:
| Chrome on Linux, for example.
| update wrote:
| Firefox on Windows 11 doesn't work.
| junar wrote:
| Only Safari, Edge, and Chrome are supported, and only on
| Windows, Mac, and iPad.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/120585
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| +1; does not load for me using Firefox on MacOS.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| Amusingly does not work for safari on iPhone. Ok ok I have the
| maps app and that's what they want me to use but if I am on
| mobile now and I want to click to check it out right now...
| well, maybe I won't come back to try it later, guys??
|
| Feels a little like they rushed it to meet some Q3 launch
| timeline?
| pmdr wrote:
| > Apple has a knack for finding restrictions where they would
| otherwise never exist.
|
| And there are plenty of apologists ready to explain how it's
| your fault.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Not super impressed. It has the same problem as Google in that
| street names are displayed much too sparsely, making it hard to
| orient yourself. Additionally, the satellite view is too dark,
| at least in my area.
|
| The imagery looks clean but the minimum altitude is much higher
| than what Google offers, so it's hard to evaluate. (Helpful tip
| to mapping providers: you don't need more resolution, just let
| me zoom in on your existing imagery! There is no reason
| whatsoever to stop at 1:1.)
|
| No street-view functionality appears to be present. Not sure if
| it's supposed to be, but it's certainly a dealbreaker if not.
|
| And then, yes, there's the matter of failing to support
| commonly-used browsers, even though it works fine in those
| browsers when appending a bogus subdirectory name as someone
| else pointed out.
|
| Bottom line, if there's any reason to use this over Google Maps
| I'm not seeing it.
| The5thElephant wrote:
| What is it with Google Maps refusing to show me the street
| name I'm zooming in on? It feels like they make it especially
| sparse on streets your route line uses!
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| At this point I have to assume somebody has a blocking
| patent that is keeping the major players from doing the
| obvious right thing. Otherwise it's utterly inexplicable
| how street names are handled.
| memco wrote:
| Same for business names! If you zoom in too close to the
| building the name disappears.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Assuming you're referring to the fact that it doesn't work on
| all browsers, it's literally a _beta_.
|
| It clearly states that it's for Chrome/Edge/Safari only, and
| not for mobile. But it also says at the bottom:
|
| > _Support for additional languages, browsers, and platforms
| will be expanded over time._
|
| I think it's totally fair that a _beta_ has support for limited
| browsers, in order to get it out faster. Just like it 's only
| in English for now as well, although that will obviously expand
| too.
|
| If it's not available for Firefox or Android when it leaves
| beta, then yes it's a problem. But an English-only beta with
| limited compatibility is one of the things betas are _for_. It
| 's an appropriate setting of expectations.
| echoangle wrote:
| I understand not supporting other browsers, but why would you
| actively block them?
| gukov wrote:
| Apple doesn't want to be associated with something that
| looks broken.
|
| Having said that, what other beta products Apple had
| released in the past? I don't recall too many.
| willseth wrote:
| The original Apple Maps app!
| echoangle wrote:
| There's a iOS and macOS beta every year, if you count
| that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Because they're probably not undergoing a formal QA process
| yet and Apple doesn't want to deal with bug reports and bad
| press about how its beta is janky/buggy/sucky in other
| browsers. This is pretty standard stuff for webapps -- it's
| not anything unique to Apple.
|
| Just because people in this thread have found workarounds
| to get it to launch in Firefox doesn't mean there aren't
| still a bunch of bugs there, that Apple doesn't want
| marring the user experience.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > but why would you actively block them?
|
| From first-hand experience, I've seen it happen in SaaS
| orgs with (diplomatically speaking) "unsophisticated-but-
| confident" userbases seeking to reduce support-costs. The
| kind of SaaS where the paying customer is a business - and
| where the users' eyes glaze-over any warning banner or
| message but eagerly call the SaaS support number for
| entirely unrelated issues with Outlook; so outright
| blocking unsupported browsers/clients reduces the support
| burden.
|
| (I'm not defending this practice; I'm strongly opposed to
| it)
|
| ----
|
| Another (also, unfortunately, from first-hand experience)
| reason is a (very) non-technical project leader will write
| up a (semi-reasonable) brief Jira ticket like "Our SaaS
| product doesn't work in Firefox; until we invest in
| supporting Firefox we'll just direct users to use a
| supported browser" - but the ticket gets assigned to a
| particular kind of remote contractor SWE who never
| challenges higher-ups or says "this is a bad idea" - who'll
| interpret the part about "we'll direct users to use a
| supported browser" as "block unsupported browsers".
| bityard wrote:
| Guides -> Latest -> "The Sexiest Hotels in Rome"
|
| Hokay, then
| ctchocula wrote:
| The worst part of Apple Maps is it doesn't have "always point
| north" mode. That makes it unuseable for those of us that can't
| use non-North turn-by-turn maps.
|
| It's been a feature request for many years now and Apple hasn't
| done anything about it.
| barumrho wrote:
| Curious why you need the map to always point to north?
| imp0cat wrote:
| It's been discussed here before, some people (myself
| included) find it easier to navigate when the map is always
| rotated north up.
|
| In other words, it's easier to figure out which way you're
| going and keep your "internal" navi in sync with the app.
| recursive wrote:
| It's a preference, not a need.
| petarb wrote:
| Doesn't work on safari mobile
| alistairSH wrote:
| Doesn't work on iPhones, not sure I understand the point?
|
| And doesn't DDG use Apple Maps already? At least it appears to do
| so on my iPhone.
| renjimen wrote:
| Hilarious that it is 2024 and Apple are only now releasing a
| browser version of their maps. Reminds me of how god-awfully
| outdated Safari and iMessage are, but Apple pursues their walled
| garden policy regardless.
| enjoyyourlife wrote:
| It has already been available on
| https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=maps&iaxm=maps
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Apple Maps on the Web Works via DDG
|
| >DuckDuckGo Taps Apple Maps to Power Private Search Results
|
| >Try it out with one of the many different ways you can search
| for places on DuckDuckGo:
|
| Search for an address
|
| Search for a geographical place
|
| Search for a local business
|
| Search for a type of business
|
| Search for places nearby
|
| >At DuckDuckGo, we believe getting the privacy you deserve online
| should be as simple as closing the blinds. Naturally, our strict
| privacy policy of not collecting or sharing any personal
| information extends to this integration. We do not send any
| personally identifiable information such as IP address to Apple
| or other third parties. For local searches, where your
| approximate location information is sent by your browser to us,
| we discard it immediately after use. You are still anonymous when
| you perform map and address-related searches on DuckDuckGo. You
| can read more about our anonymous localized results here.
|
| >https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-apple-mapkit-js/
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Firefox isn't a supported browser. Android isn't supported at
| all. I'm not even sure how you manage to find yourself in a
| situation where that can even happen.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Are you genuinely confused that Apple didn't prioritize support
| on Android and on #3 (4?) browser? Or are you just
| disappointed, but expressing it as bewildernent?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Competent web development has usually been associated with
| standards compliant sites that work everywhere.
|
| In 2024 its weird that someone who isn't a moron manages to
| break the web. One would assume this is deliberate to retain
| some competitive edge. If so why bother a map product that
| doesn't work where I need it 99% of the time is completely
| useless. They might as well have retained more advantage yet
| by making it mac safari only.
| echoangle wrote:
| "Not prioritizing support" is a nice euphemism for explicitly
| blocking it. They could have just left it alone or added a
| dismissible banner saying "this browser isn't supported,
| don't report any bugs you find, we don't care", but they went
| out of their way to prevent you from accessing it.
| flutas wrote:
| > Firefox isn't a supported browser.
|
| If you swap useragents it is.
|
| Seems there's a few bugs around (mostly visual so far) but it's
| usable.
| sgerenser wrote:
| I've been a Mac and iOS user since practically day 1, and I'm not
| a fan of Google's privacy policies (or rather lack thereof). But
| frankly, Apple maps just sucks. A map app that doesn't have
| trustworthy POIs is useless. My wife's retail store moved
| locations about 5 months ago and its still showing the old
| location on Apple Maps. She was able to update the location on
| Google on the day they moved, but Apple just refuses to move it.
| She submitted multiple times to get it moved via Apple's business
| owner portal, I submitted with the "report incorrect information"
| link multiple times over the course of months, and it still shows
| up wrong. The worst part is, you actually get a response that
| says they looked at your report and took action, yet they do
| absolutely nothing.
|
| If you google for this, there's tons of reports on Reddit and
| Apple's discussion forums with the same complaints. Apple
| apparently doesn't care.
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