[thrownawaysz]

The fact that there is no 1st party Apple made hiking and topography map on the Apple Watch is such a failure, not even on the most expensive “made for explorers” Watch Ultra. And things like gpx import is just a mere dream

It’s a lifestyle device after all but still

[kumarvvr]

> there is no 1st party Apple made hiking and topography map on the Apple Watch is such a failure

I remember a time when Apple was chided for integrating functionalities of popular apps into its OS.

Apple created an incredibly awesome device, and its up to the market to make full use of its potential. Why would it be a failure for Apple to not make such an app?

[interstice]

Because they don't allow deeper integrations maybe? I still don't have a watch face layout I like.

[gcanyon]

But in this case at least, the third-party developer has produced exactly the wonderful result they're looking for. The screen shot at the end showing the difference between Apple's map and theirs is so stark and compelling. If I were hiking I'd pay $20+ for their version.

Edit to add: throwing out a price like that made me go check to see what they actually charge, and either Apple's presentation of in-app purchases or their use of it is sad: it gives the same "premium" item like eight times, with different prices. Maybe that's per month and then longer periods with bulk discounts? Maybe they have a lifetime option for $40? If I were a regular hiker, I'd go for that.

[yreg]

When Apple uses private APIs that are forbidden to developers on the App Store to compete with them it's not exactly fair.

So I wouldn't say it's a failure that they don't do that even more often.

[ascertain_john]

APIs are hard to get right the first time. I could see why they wouldn't want to release one until they've dogfooded and refined it.

That said, I'd love to see them take an approach unstable API release that requires the app to show a warning like "This app relies on unfinished features that may change or stop working entirely in the future, requiring the seller to release an apo update." and require them to launch it as a free preview, make it refundable during this period, etc.

[jorvi]

Apple Maps has been able to display full-size navigation on the lockscreen since iOS 7 or 8 (?). Apple Maps also has access to a special style of notification that no other navigation app has.

iOS 7 was released in 2013. 13 years ago, aeons in tech land.

So "APIs are hard to get right the first time. I could see why they wouldn't want to release one until they've dogfooded and refined it." is crap. They're hoarding private API access purely for competitive advantage in services.

[redserk]

1) Apple has had a lot of functionality gated for many years. I’d buy the “they need to refine it” if they had a track record of actually opening things up without the hammer of regulation forcing them to.

2) This is a solved problem. You throw a “this is an experimental API, it’s interface may change”

[gumby271]

I feel like we could expect a bit more from the billion dollar company to support new apis. They have a solid mechanism to deprecate apis and force developers to rebuild their apps already, just shorten that window for the cutting edge apis released in preview.

[NetMageSCW]

As a developer, that’s a good way to get unused APIs and fewer apps.

[interstice]

Oh and while I'm here the single layer non editable menu / weird grid is also the worst. I grew up texting under the desk on a nine key and only checking after I'd selected the contact to send to. Give me that level of muscle memory again someone, anyone, please.

[porsager]

I made Type Nine for iPhone, and have waited a long time for Apple to open up for doing it on the watch.

https://typenineapp.com

PS. I typed this under my desk!

[interstice]

Oh neat! Bookmarked

[modeless]

Pebble watches are operated with physical buttons and you can definitely take advantage of muscle memory.

[microtonal]

Also Garmin watches. E.g. the Fenix line has 5 buttons and you can do pretty much everything with the buttons. So much handier than fooling around on small touch screens when you are e.g. on a bike or hiking (it does have a touch screen too). Also, the battery lasts up to several weeks (depending on the model), so you don't have to worry about it. Plus great support for using maps during a workout.

I also have an Apple Watch Ultra. My feeling has always been that Apple Watch Ultra is a smartwatch first, sports watch second. Garmin watches are sports watches first, smartwatch second.

I was an early adopter of smartwatches with first the Moto 360 and then Apple Watch Series 1 and I have found that I use the smartwatch part less and less. In the end I only used it for notifications for two apps (Signal and WhatsApp), sometimes for calling my wife when I'm on a bike, and contactless payments. These I can do with a Garmin as well, but it far less clumsy as a sports watch than Apple Watch.

Plus Garmin Watches generally work with GadgetBridge, so they are much easier to use in a privacy-preserving way.

[rjzzleep]

That is quite literally how every part of Cocoa was polished. Things such as sidebars, notifications, came from third party libraries, Growl, etc. were all design patterns from the community. Isn't that also how iTunes came to be? Apple trying to acquire the best music players to integrate into its ecosystem? It's somewhat sad to observe what become of apple.

[joshstrange]

And jailbreaking was a creative source as well until jailbreaking (full, surviving reboots) went away. Yes there is still a sideloading community but nothing like what we were doing with Summer/Winterboard or the hundreds of random tweaks I applied to my phone back then. So many hours spent scrolling through new packages on Cydia.

I wish Apple would see that opening up their platforms actually leads to a better core OS as Apple borrows/steals from the community.

[refulgentis]

That’s a somewhat obvious flattening of perspective. While it’s clever we can make both positions sound silly, it illuminates nothing while throwing shade.

[caycep]

maybe the culture should be for them to contract with popular app makers to be "The" default app for x amount of years or such, vs sherlocking.

[Centigonal]

I trust people like David Smith and companies like onX more than Apple when it comes to creating and supporting a top tier outdoor mapping app.

[dylan604]

Maybe some people are too young to remember Apple's Maps v1. Even Tim Apple recently mentioned that debacle in what was essentially an exit interview.

[SllX]

I recently switched back to Google Maps after Apple announced ads were coming to Apple Maps, since if the default Maps app is going to be saddled with ads on my thousands of dollars worth of Apple hardware anyway, I may as well use the best. And yeah, let’s be honest, Apple Maps is good enough for most use cases, but Google Maps blows it out of the fucking water.

In that light, I may be hard pressed to call it a debacle, but it’s still third-rate.

[microtonal]

For sports OpenStreetMap is much better anyway, in most countries it has many more hiking/cycling/MTB trails. More details on relevant POIs (water points, bathrooms, etc.). Plus there are many specialized versions like Open Fiets Map (cycling), Freizeitkarte (general outdoors), OpenMTB (mountainbiking and hiking), etc.

Currently I'm using Garmin's version of OpenStreetMap + an overlay for the Dutch cycle path network [1] on my watch.

[1] If you are in the Netherlands, this is a gem: https://planner.gps.nl/download.php?toolid=1 . Download the device version, copy it to your Garmin gpsr or Watch and you have a very nice overlay of the cycle network with nodes (knooppunten), etc.

[interloxia]

Examples.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/24/apple-maps-ads-what-to-...

How to advertise in Google Maps

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/16388390?hl=en

[mannyv]

My kids pointed out that Apple Maps shows street lights, which makes navigation much easier than waze or google maps. They use apple maps exclusively.

[miyoji]

This is a very weird comment considering that Google Maps has had that feature for years.

[Centigonal]

FWIW Google Maps also has ads, although they're disguised as "sponsored" PoIs with greater visibility in search results

[dylan604]

> In that light, I may be hard pressed to call it a debacle, but it’s still third-rate.

Not sure how that isn't a debacle:

"The product wasn’t ready," Cook, who will step down as CEO in September, said during an Apple town hall on April 21, Bloomberg reported. "We apologized for it and we said, 'Go use these other apps. They're better than ours.' And that was a humble pie. But it was the right thing for our users."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2026/04/24/tim-cook...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-22/tim-cook-...

(Bloomberg site paywalled, so used a non-paywalled source quoting Bloomberg)

[SllX]

To clarify, if this wasn't clear already: Apple Maps at launch was a debacle. It's present day Apple Maps I would be hard pressed to call a debacle.

[d12bb]

Well, except Google Maps nowadays sucks for everything but POI discovery, and even that is getting worse with reviews getting tinkered with more and more. Not to speak of the abomination Google calls an user interface.

Only reason to use Google nowadays for me is travel in countries where neither Apple nor OSM have good coverage.

[jsbisviewtiful]

Apple is so intent on making the Apple Watch a catch-all that it doesn’t necessarily do any specific activity amazingly. After three Apple Watches over many years I finally sold my 10 last year and won’t be buying another. I bought a Coros and am pretty pleased with it, would consider a Garmin in the future. Coros and Garmin devices are built with activity in mind and not unneeded apps, like Uber. Garmin and Coros both have maps too.

[microtonal]

With Garmin you have to pay attention to the model though. E.g. cheaper Forerunners, Instinct, etc. do not support maps, though some support breadcrumb trail navigation. Then there are some models that do not support it, but have third party apps that add maps. For the models that do (e.g. Fenix, Venu X1, high-end forerunners), it is glorious though. There is a large community making specialized maps (typically based on OpenStreetMap) for Garmin Watches and GPSr units. Installation is typically as easy as dropping an .img file in the right folder on the Watch/GPSr.

Also Garmin's own maps are based on OpenStreetMap and have become pretty good.

Also worth mentioning (probably the same with Coros) that these are offline maps, so they always work, and you typically install them for a whole continent.

[ulfw]

And I am happy with my Huawei GT-6 41mm. Looks like an actual real watch unlike the Apple ones, does everything Apple does, just no third party apps. Guess what, never needed one. Battery lasts a week instead of a day. Very refreshing to end the day with 91% battery left rather than 11%.

[ymolodtsov]

But we can have apps and developers like David on the Apple Watch. This is what makes it different from Garmin, where you need the company to build pretty much everything.

[astafrig]

> no 1st party Apple made hiking and topography map on the Apple Watch

I regularly use hiking and topography maps on my Apple Watch with the first party maps app, so it sure what you’re talking about

[thrownawaysz]

That's a regional feature not available everywhere

[astafrig]

Everything involving geography is a regional feature because it takes time to create things for physical stuff across the physical world; its not just some arbitrary limitation like streaming media.

[throwaway27448]

Tbf there is no such app for the iphone either

[coldtea]

Is it? They have a platform you can run other apps on, and this one in TFA and others provides this functionality.

[cromka]

Honestly, the less Apple made apps, the better for the ecosystem and the quality of the apps in general. Apple's recent "sherlocked" apps are not good quality at all, but they make it substantially more difficult for 3rd parties to compete with the now default offerings.

[Sir_Twist]

Not a developer, but I feel like Apple improving the defaults has been good for the ecosystem. The Reminders app is an example of this, because as it has gotten better over the years, the baseline for a good iOS to-do app has been raised, without reducing the market.

[Schiendelman]

I agree 100%. I ended up building myself a utility to wrangle my reminders (like keep them from getting missed/lost) instead of using a third-party app.

[coldtea]

Can you describe that utility?

[Schiendelman]

Yeah! I mean I published it on the app store, too. It does three core things: 1) Makes sure every reminder gets a date and time if it doesn't have one 2) Snowplows them ahead of you, so if you go on vacation they're still in the near future 3) Moves reminders out of the way if you accept or create a calendar event conflicting with it

It also preserves ordering when moving things (hence my snowplow approach).

Soon it'll summarize what you did that day so you can feel good about what you get done - that's coming shortly, I'm testing the feature for another few days.

There are a bunch of settings to tweak this - picking what reminder lists to include, setting a time window for when it'll reschedule things, etc.

This should link to it:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reminder-wrangler/id6759400510

[xp84]

Nice try, Claude Code

[coldtea]

Is that meant to be a joke? I've been on HN for over a decade. Closer to ELIZA's era than that of LLMs.

I'm curious because I'm also interested in hacking the Reminders app via its API, to add some features in a side app

[djfdat]

One issue is: when the Reminders app was simple, making a better reminders app just had to be a little more complex that a single developer could improve upon it and charge for it once and make a living. Now, the bar is so high, that it takes significantly more work/time to make a better app, and thus we have to pay subscription pricing in order to use it.

Instead of: let me buy this app for a few bucks and give it a spin, its now: even if I like this app, do I want to pay for it a few bucks a month for forever?

[SllX]

Generally speaking, Apple should be improving and adding to the base operating system all the time, including new apps. It is better for their users including new users if the phone itself is capable of more out of the box.

Where they fall short though, the App Store is right there. There’s almost always a better alternative for those who value having something better.

[ileonichwiesz]

> There’s almost always a better alternative for those who value having something better.

That alternative comes with a $60/year subscription these days, though.

[SllX]

I don’t know what you’re paying for that you see a $60/year subscription, but if it’s worth the $60/year to you, then you pay it. If it’s not, you don’t.

There are two apps I pay for that replace an app on my phone: $15/year for Overcast replaces Apple Podcasts and & $25/year for Transit replacing the transit function in Apple Maps (which I may be able to drop now that I’m on Google Maps, but I haven’t tried yet, and the app is so damn good I’m not sure I want to). Those are easily two of the absolute best and most used apps on my phone.

But if you don’t want to spend money on another vendor, or there is nothing suitable for the price you want to pay, at least the phone often has something serviceable.

[joe_mamba]

Didn't it take them 10+ years to make a calculator app for the iPad?

[NetMageSCW]

No, it took them that long to decide they wanted to ship a calculator on the iPad.

[joe_mamba]

What's the difference when the end result is the same?

If you can't decide for 10 years what you want from a calculator app, then it took you 10 years to make one, regardless if writing the app was only 2 weeks coding effort and 9,6 years of deciding.

Didn't know Apple has so many astro-turfers here.