Apple Maps (for iPhone)

Apple's new Maps app is at the center of what has turned out to be quite a kerfuffle in the mobile world. Now that Google Maps is back and better than ever, with its superior feature set, we can evaluate Apple Maps on its own more easily. If you're wondering whether Apple Maps is safe to use regularly for driving, the answer is a qualified yes?but Google Maps (our current Editors' Choice), Waze, and Scout by Telenav are all better GPS free nav apps?at the moment, and Apple Maps continues to have serious POI-related inaccuracies. Still, it's worth a look, if only for its beautiful graphics and interface. And while Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly apologized for Apple Maps, you can bet the company is working hard on improving it.

User Interface and POI Search
For this review, I tested Apple Maps with a Verizon iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.2. I was hoping that by this time, three months after the launch of iOS 6, that Apple would have incorporated some serious improvements, but so far the answer seems to be no.

The basic user interface is familiar enough. Tap the lower left button to bring up your current location and compass direction. Tap the bottom right corner, and the map will curl up to the left, showing buttons for dropping a pin, displaying traffic, or activating hybrid and satellite views. The satellite view is weird; it animates smoothly, but everything looks a little crunched and distorted, at least in Manhattan. The standard road display is better, but even then, the app has a curious way of highlighting strange neighborhood names and landmarks, rather than the big ones you'd expect it to.

The tiny Search bar is difficult to activate, but once you do, you can input a street address or type in search terms.? Typing "pizza" brought up 10 places scattered across the city; I zoomed into the map and ran the search again, which was much more localized. It always missed my favorite pizza place on Madison Avenue three blocks away, even though it's been there for over 20 years. This type of missing data was par for the course; the same went for various pathways in northern Manhattan. It doesn't know where my dad's old storefront is in Brooklyn, and like MapQuest, it assumes a search for East 15th Street should default to Brooklyn even though I'm standing in Manhattan.

On the other hand, POI data pages look great, with slowly panning, Ken Burns-style photo display and access to Yelp reviews. And with a single tap, you can navigate to any POI you searched for?something that Google Maps actually gets wrong, as it requires shifting to a different mode (Directions) and takes several extra taps.

Built-in Siri integration lets you speak destinations into the phone. But while Siri tends to be more accurate than Google Now on Android phones in terms of voice recognition, Google Maps still beats Siri for its ability to parse complex sentences (such as "take me to the museum with the Chihuly exhibit").

Performance and Conclusions
Once en route, the app really shows its stuff. The 3D buildings look gorgeous, and map animation is super-smooth. I really like the way the camera panned around to follow what I was doing; this single trick makes other GPS apps look dated. During navigation, Apple Maps presents the next one or two steps using giant green road signs; it's easy to read at a glance. That said, the font in the top bar is really small, so it's tough to read your ETA or distance remaining for the whole trip. You can also tap a button to open a list of step-by-step directions.

I didn't run into any actual navigation issues during testing; once on the road, the app seemed to work well.?On the audio side, voice prompts were exceptional: Loud, clear, and well-timed. I couldn't believe how loud the iPhone 5's speaker sounded with this app. Text-to-speech also worked perfectly; I didn't hear any weird pronunciations during testing.

Lots of stuff is missing, though. There are no road speed limit signs or current speed indicator. There's no lane assistance for exiting or entering highways, either in 2D or 3D. You can't tap the display to repeat a voice command in case you didn't hear it.?And as has been widely reported, there are no photorealistic street views like there are with Google Maps, and there's no public transit information for pedestrian navigation.?The much-touted, photo-realistic flyovers are fun, but you can only get them in major cities, and I'd gladly trade them for some of the more useful missing features I just listed.

Traffic reporting, while present, is sporadic and lacks detail; all you get are dotted lines on the map representing areas of congestion. While?Apple Maps has real-time traffic data with the ability to reroute around jams, you can't see it at a glance across your whole trip during actual 3D navigation, so you can't plan ahead the way you can with, say, TomTom for iPhone.

All told, Apple Maps feels more like a tech demo rather than a navigation application that's meant to be used often. The inaccurate POIs and missing features only reinforce that impression. Simply put, this is a gorgeous app that needs better data. If that were a regular con, it would be a 3.5 or 4 star app, based on its other features. But the POI and address inaccuracies are so serious, and so hamper your ability to use the app, that we're rating it much lower. For now, Google Maps is the app to beat when it comes to free, accurate driving and pedestrian directions for your iPhone, and Google's own vector-based mapping engine also looks great, even if lacks the visual pizazz of Apple Maps.

More GPS Reviews:
??? Apple Maps (for iPhone)
??? MapQuest (for iPhone)
??? Scout by Telenav (for iPhone)
??? Waze (for iPhone)
??? Garmin (for iPhone)
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