Both Google and Apple offer great mapping services and choosing which one is better for you can be a real headache. That’s why we’re here determined to help, as both of those apps had been through plenty of changes over the recent history.
Google Maps started out 15 years ago, and it revolutionized the internet. The service offers satellite imagery, street maps, aerial photography, route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle and air, route planning for public transportation, and much more.
On the other side, Apple Maps is a much younger service since it was launched in September 2012. It offers both directions and estimated times of arrival for pedestrian, automobile, and public transportation navigation.
Apple Maps
When you’ve targetted a location using Apple Maps, you can see relevant details such as if the place accepts Apple Pay, if it takes reservations via Open Table, and so on. Also, you can add any desired location as a contact in your agenda. As Apple itself says about its app:
More than 4 million miles of driving have led to a new underlying map with a far more informative and realistic view. The new map features significantly improved and refined details for roads, beaches, marinas, parks, buildings, airports, and more. It is now available across the U.S. and will roll out in a number of additional countries later in 2020.
As for the data collection and privacy, Apple Maps stands pretty well. The service allows the privacy of the user when he is using the app and exploring different regions. A random identifier is used when Apple sends requests to the server and it generates live navigation. This happens anytime a user wants to navigate from one certain point to another.
Google Maps
With Google Maps, you can do a ton of useful stuff like plotting multiple locations, changing directions by the age-old drag and drop method, riding sharing services, switching from maps view to Google Earth anytime you want, see the parking situation for a specific area, and much more.
As the official presentation from the Play Store says:
Navigate your world faster and easier with Google Maps. Over 220 countries and territories mapped and hundreds of millions of businesses and places on the map. Get real-time GPS navigation, traffic, and transit info, and explore local neighborhoods by knowing where to eat, drink and go – no matter what part of the world you’re in.
As for data collection, it has to be said that Google is very interested in gathering it. Without selling personal information directly, Google builds data based on the users and utilize it for ad purposes.
Our final conclusion is that Google Maps is better than Apple Maps, but surely the decision, in the end, is all yours for which app to use.
