Wesley Hilliard
As a thank you for the revamped Apple Maps experience, Apple has gifted the Maps team a unique set of pins and artwork showcasing how the application has changed.
The spouse of one Apple employee shared a LinkedIn post showing off the package sent by Apple. It contained two pins, a sticker featuring the navigation icon, a poster with various map elements, and another poster with different location photos used in guides.
An included card referred to the project as "Springfield," which may be the internal name for the new maps experience. It seems that each employee on this team received this thank you gift.
The included card read as follows:
We did it. You did it. Each and every one of you has your fingerprints on Springfield.
You continued to innovate long past the point others might have said, "this is good enough". You saw around the corners, and gave our customers a revolutionary product they didn't even know they needed yet.
Thank you for all of your distinct contributions to this product and for building on the legacy of great work here at Apple.
The new Apple Maps experience brings new artwork, better navigation tools, and a wide variety of changes, including accurate street signs and paint when viewed in 3D mode. Apple has rolled out the new feature in major cities across the United States, Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
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6 Comments
This calendar year, I had the opportunity to use Apple Maps (AM) extensively in both the US and in Italy. In particular, I used it a lot in Italy to navigate areas with which I was not terribly familiar. I used it for driving directions, transit directions, walking directions, and simply to locate businesses.
I always used AM as the first resort and I estimate it failed me 10%-20% of the time, which is far too often in comparison to Google Maps which almost never failed me. The most egregious example is the time I was trying to find a notable landmark in central Pistoia; AM tried to send me the wrong way down a one way street (at night and in a poorly-lit area! thankfully I am comfortable with the mishmash of signs typically seen on Italian streets). This was a street that was not temporarily restricted to one way nor recently designated one way. Google Maps (GM) sure knew it was a one way street. It took me two torturous loops around the historic center to realize the problem was the incorrect directions at the one way street.
On other occasions AM couldn't find businesses and addresses that I knew existed (GM knew they existed!) or recommended routes that were more complicated than they needed to be, even taking into account modifiers to a route search such as "no tolls".
AM has certainly come a long way since it was the butt of many jokes - these jokes persist even today, nine years later! thanks Scott Forstall! - but at least in my experience it clearly still lags behind GM. If I wasn't such an Apple fanboy, GM would always be my first choice for navigation.
So keep up the good work, AM team... but Google has a lead that might be insurmountable.
Call it ‘insurmountable’ or what you will, but Apple loves coming from behind. I wouldn’t want to be looking over my shoulder at Apple.
I think Apple has their priorities in order, especially for something that is free.
9 years behind. I live in switzerland and have a similar experience, I tend to prefer waze to GM, and GM to AM while driving.
and the directions parser in AM mac osx is worst than whatever else. In compensation, flyover is nice
In live in USA. From day one I used Google Map because that was only choice. Now Apple Map is available and few years back hesitantly started using it but now Apple MAp is my default. Only thing I don't understand why I can't make Apple Map as my default map on iPhone ?
Wow, that spouse is quite the big-mouth posting that on social media. Someone is probably going to get carpeted by their boss.