Shocking Comparison Reveals Apple Maps Lags Far Behind Google

Following the arguably disastrous launch of Apple Maps back in September, 2012, the Cupertino-company has taken a more hardline stance on its proprietary, point-to-point directions and voice-guided navigation platform — ensuring customers, time and time again, that its working aggressively to implement features that would bring the fledging Apple Maps utility up to par with competition like Google Maps.

A new update on Apple’s actual progress, which was compiled by Justin Beirne, has revealed that the company accomplished — well, very little, actually — in its ‘ongoing attempt’ to bring the vast feature set and coverage offered by Google Maps to the Apple Maps platform.

Google Maps vs. Apple Maps

While Apple Maps has been a ‘work-in-progress’ since its debut, the comparison shows not only the extent to which Google pushes updates to its mapping platform, but also just how far ahead of the curve Google is in the overall mapping space. Specifically, the comparison shows the respective improvements to Google Maps and Apple Maps over a 12-month period of time — with updates on progress captured at one-month intervals, spanning a full year.

Beirne’s comparison focuses on a stretch of Patricia’s Green Park located in Hayes Valley, San Francisco, and shows the progress by which Apple and Google made changes to their mapping platforms, respectively. In the end, a whole year’s worth of tracking the same stretch of land on both iOS and Android devices has revealed, quite simply, that Google is much farther ahead of the curve, and is able to push updates to its Mapping program much faster than Apple is.

Not only did Apple Maps change at a snail’s pace, but the comparison revealed that the information added to Apple Maps wasn’t as accurate as that provided by Google. For instance, while Google Maps’ data on the structures and businesses surrounding Patricia’s Green Park changed multiple times over the year, Apple Maps, meanwhile, is still missing the majority of this information, altogether.

In a specific example, Apple Maps appears to show the same location being occupied by three separate auto servicing businesses; while Google Maps, on the other hand, provides different information for each of them. More puzzling, however, is that Apple Maps appears to cycle through location information as the months progress — in other words, the business locations change and, in some instances, are either removed or changed back with each successive update.

Google has been ramping up its Maps platform over the past year — while Apple has, quite evidently, been floundering as it tries to bring Apple Maps up to an acceptable level of dependability. What’s interesting and worth noting is that Apple initially sought to replace Google Maps with Apple Maps back in 2012 — even despite the app’s disastrous launch, complete with a letter of apology to Apple’s customers promising that the company would “keep improving” the service over time. Even after all this time, though, Apple Maps doesn’t appear anywhere near ready to dance with its rival in the mapping space.