William Gallagher
For nine months, Apple Maps cars and team members with LiDAR backpacks will be touring the UK to update its general mapping, its navigation directions, and the Look Around street view.
Apple Maps teams made a similar UK tour just under a year ago in March 2023, and was reported to be focusing on London, Birmingham, and Manchester. The new touring program appears to be more widespread, with Apple listing dates for visiting all the regions of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
The new program began on February 10, 2024, with Greater London. It then expanded to another six English counties on February 19, and is scheduled complete England by October 17.
Wales is being re-surveyed from April 17 to May 21, while Northern Ireland is June 1 to July 4, and Scotland is to be covered from June 8 to July 10. There will be no Apple Maps updating for the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, or Gibraltar, in this program.
On its listings page, Apple stresses that its teams and the resulting Apple Maps update will maintain privacy.
"We are committed to protecting your privacy while conducting these surveys," it says. "For example, we will censor faces and license plates on images that are published in Look Around."
Users can specifically request that "a face, license plate, or your own house be censored" by contacting Apple directly.
Christine McKee
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2 Comments
Shouldn’t this be a permanent, global and ongoing activity?
Apple’s flyover coverage is bad, and the Look Around coverage is terrible. Google’s Street view has nigh-on 100% coverage with the ability to go back to 2012 and earlier, whereas Look Around is as far as I know just London. It is much smoother and higher quality, but that’s not much use if there is no coverage. As Entropys says, this needs to be a constant thing even if there was full coverage.