Apple Maps cars take to the road in Finland, Norway, and Sweden
Amber Neely
Apple will be expanding Apple Maps to include portions of Finland, Norway, and Sweden in July and August, according to the Apple Maps Image Collection page.
The areas to be canvased are Finland's Uusimaa region near Helsinki, Norway's capital city Oslo, and Sweden's Malmo. The data collected by the Apple Maps cars will be used for Apple's Look Around feature, a competitor to Google's Street View.
Look Around was announced in iOS 13, and is still limited to major cities in the U.S., including Honolulu, Los Vegas, and Los Angeles.
Apple has spent several years updating and renovating Apple Maps after a particularly poor launch in 2012.
The service has been significantly improved and offers interactive street-level imagery with high-resolution, 3D photography and smooth and seamless transitions through major cities with Look Around.
The service completed its first major U.S. rollout in January of 2020, though Apple Maps vehicles will continue to canvas states to expand features. It is currently canvassing Europe, Japan, and Ireland this year.
Apple has potentially completed its U.K. data collection, as the Apple Maps site no longer lists it on the Image Collection site.
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7 Comments
Malmö is Sweden's second largest city but the capital Stockholm is much larger. Even the agglomeration of Malmö is smaller than Stockholm-proper.
Actually, you are both wrong. Malmö is only the 3rd largest city in Sweden — quite far behind Gothenburg (2nd) and Stockholm (1st, and capital). Have no idea where this mistake comes from. This has been the size order of Swedish cities for more than a century. But either way, it’s nice that even the small cities get included in Maps.
Amber is quite geographically fair however, since she also teaches us about the grand city of “Los Vegas” in the USA. :D
Gah! Yes, Gothenburg second and Malmö third, of course. I went to wikipedia to check and either I misread there or mistyped here.
Every time one of these maps articles drops it just reminds me how long their implementation of all this stuff is taking! The maps van drove by my work over a year ago, but still no look around. Maybe iOS 14? 15? Not to mention flyover. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯