The mapping wars continue to heat up as Apple Maps accelerates its feature rollouts to catch up with the dominant Google Maps. The mapping underdog’s latest move is to bring its most advanced features – including “Look Around” and “Detailed City Experience” – to Denmark and Greece.
What are these features exactly? Look Around is the 3D wayfinding feature that lets users navigate urban areas through directional arrows seen through their upheld smartphone. It’s basically Apple’s answer to Google Live View, and is one of the orbiting parts of its broader (and gradual) AR master plan.
“Detailed City Experience” meanwhile provides more mapping color, to put it simply. This includes added texture for buildings, viewable from several angles, as well as layers of characteristic colors. The idea is to add dimension to landmarks and sporting venues, and to capture more local flavor as you navigate.
Given an increasingly wider rollout, these features gain traction, while also signaling that they’re ready for prime time. In addition to Denmark and Greece, that list of destinations includes the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, France, and Germany.
Old Tech, New Tricks
Back to the rising temperature levels in the mapping wars, this is one of the fundamental sub-topics of the broader local commerce world. Intertwined in local search and SEO, it’s central to the consumer shopping flow and, correspondingly, the local business marketing mix. Google and Apple both kow this.
Also notable for a decades-old technology, mapping continues to evolve at the pace of newer tech. Joining the above features from Apple Maps are competitive features from Google such as Live View AR navigation, new levels of mapping detail, and other planning utilities such as the “area busyness” feature.
As noted, Google has long led the way in mapping due to Google Maps’ adjacency to Google’s core search investments. But Apple – characterized above as an underdog – has made ample strides to catch up over the last decade. This follows its stumbles out of the gate with its famous “mapgate” mishaps.
Apple’s efforts accelerated with the launch of iOS 15 in 2001. That update included the two main 3D features detailed above, which add more stylized maps to deepen the UX. Apple has also increasingly rolled out more practical features for in-car navigation such as color-coded maps and night-time mode.
List of Locales
If you’ll indulge us in a little pack-patting, we saw all these moves coming after Apple began to collect first-party mapping data. That includes Street-View-like imagery and 3D spatial maps. The immediate outcome was its Look Around feature, but this data also opened the door for 3D navigation.
But notably, these feature rollouts continue to balance utility and sex appeal. For every 3D navigation feature, there are things like better visual delineations for turn lanes in its maps. For every stylized bridge and landmark, there are navigation modes that make the UX more intuitive while driving.
There are also updates that cater to transit riders. These include clearer indications for transit stations, and the ability for users to personalize transit routes by indicating frequent lines they use. This lets Apple Maps proactively alert users to things like delays, or prompts to leave home in time to catch your train.
So we’ll see many more feature rollouts from Apple Maps. This is what you can expect given the combination of its “underdog” position and its deep pockets. Meanwhile, anyone visiting Greece, Denmark, or anywhere else on the expanding list of locales can now have a more immersive experience.
