[thomasfoster96]

The biggest issue that I (being in Melbourne, Australia) have with Apple Maps is that it is incredibly slow. It was barely usable because of the speed on my iPhone (even on 4G) before I removed the app, and is pretty much unusable on my Macbook. I’m talking up to a minute before an actual map would display, and often up to 30 seconds when zooming in. I know quite a few other people have the same problem - even the Macs in the nearby Apple Store take ages to load anything. I can only assume that Apple doesn’t have a data centre in Australia or south-east Asia that serves the Maps app.

Google Maps is pretty reliable. I do use it a lot for walking though, and there are some issues in that department: strange routes, especially if there isn’t a road nearby, often useless time estimations, etc. Plus up until recently public transport wasn’t supported in Melbourne (but was on Apple Maps), which was a pain. Public transport support still isn’t 100%. My main qualm is that the web version drains my laptop’s battery at an alarmingly quick rate - and on my phone it certainly doesn’t help battery life either.

OpenStreetMap’s data is far superior to both Apple Maps and Google Maps in my experience - the only problem is that not being commercial means that search and routing are pretty much useless. I would happily use an app that offered all the features of Google Maps but used Mapbox tiles (and gave me a choice of map style).

[adambrenecki]

I'm in Adelaide, Australia and I've never had this problem; I get maps within a second on both iOS and macOS, ADSL and LTE (Telstra in both cases).

(As an aside, from what I've heard, public transport support being terrible in Vic is mostly on PTV's head, not Apple or Google.)

[thomasfoster96]

Strange - I just tried Maps on my Mac again and it was ~20s from the window opening to a map appearing (but much quicker when zooming out/in). I’m on TPG ADSL, which is usually able to stream 4K Netflix/YouTube with very few problems. But as I said, even the Macs in JB HiFi and the Apple store take a long time to load Maps, and I’ve had the same delays in Tasmania as well.

Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if PTV bureaucracy had something to do with it but it’s not as though they themselves are bad at technology, given their own app has been able to track trams and some buses for years...

[arctux]

You might want to check out Eraser, made by Mapzen. Eraser is a Google Maps like app that uses OpenStreetMap data and is backed solely open source software and open data. It's a little rough around the edges (especially when it comes to transit routing).

https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map https://mapzen.com/blog/erasermap-beta/

[thomasfoster96]

Thanks, will have a look.

[dstroot]

I would add that offline mode in google maps is a lifesaver. I am in Iceland right now and was able to download a huge area and can navigate without any data usage. Wonderful!!