The iOS14 Apple Maps Thread

[MozMan68]

This is a Wiki Thread for the latest updates to the Apple Maps app. Note that some of the updates listed below may only be available in the latest beta software and not necessarily publicly available until iOS14 is released.

The thread for the new Maps updates that occurred during iOS 12 and iOS 13 can be found HERE.
For discussion of Maps updates in iOS 15, please use this thread HERE.

Please simply click on "EDIT" for this post to make changes to the noted areas below.

Please post observed/confirmed changes to the Apple Maps imagery and POI's (from all formats; iOS, iPadOS, MacOS and CarPlay) as new posts to this thread.
Thanks!

Updated Maps Areas
Countries are listed alphabetically. Where an entire country did not roll out at once, areas within the country are listed in the chronological order in which they rolled out.

• Andorra - Wide release September 10, 2021
• Australia - Announced to be added by end of 2021
• Canada - Preview released October 20, 2020, Wide release December 10, 2020
• Ireland - Preview released August 22, 2020, Wide release October 1, 2020
• Italy (including San Marino & Vatican City) - Preview released July 29, 2021, Wide release September 10, 2021
• Japan - Wide Release -- August 4, 2020
• Portugal (Not included: Madeira, Azores) - Preview released April 22, 2021, Wide release June 7, 2021
• Spain (Included: Canary Islands, Balearic Islands. Not included: Ceuta, Melilla) - Preview released April 22, 2021, Wide release June 7, 2021
• United Kingdom - Preview released August 22, 2020, Wide release October 1, 2020
  • Crown Dependencies:
    • Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man - Preview released August 22, 2020, Wide release October 1, 2020
  • Overseas territories:
    • Gibraltar - Preview released April 22, 2021, Wide release June 7, 2021

Look Around

• United States of America
  • Hawaii (Island of O'ahu) - Added June 3, 2019
  • Las Vegas metro area - Added June 3, 2019
  • San Francisco/San Jose metro area - Added June 3, 2019
  • Los Angeles metro area - Added September 30, 2019
  • New York City metro area - Added September 30, 2019
  • Houston, TX - Added November 18, 2019
  • Santa Cruz, CA - Added December 18, 2019
  • Boston, MA - Added February 19, 2020
  • Philadelphia, PA - Added February 19, 2020
  • Washington DC -- Added February 19, 2020
  • Chicago metro area -- Added April 20, 2020
  • Seattle, WA -- Added June 29, 2020
  • Phoenix, AZ -- Added October 7, 2020
  • Miami, FL metro area (including Ft. Lauderdale) -- Added December 16, 2020
  • Detroit, MI metro area (including Ann Arbor, Pontiac and Rochester Hills) -- Added December 16, 2020
  • Denver, CO metro area (including Boulder) -- added December 16, 2020
  • San Diego, CA metro area (including South to the Mexican border and as far North as Escondido and Carlsbad) -- Added February 3, 2021
  • Portland, OR metro area -- added February 3, 2021
  • Atlanta, GA metro area -- added May 12, 2021
• Japan
  • Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagoya -- Added August 4, 2020
  • Fukuoka, Hiroshima, and Takamatsu -- Added December 4, 2020
  • Sendai and Kanazawa -- Added May 17, 2021
• United Kingdom
  • London -- Added October 1, 2020
  • Edinburgh -- Added October 1, 2020
• Ireland
  • Dublin -- Added October 1, 2020
• Canada
  • Toronto -- Added December 10, 2020
  • Calgary -- Added December 10, 2020
  • Vancouver -- Added December 10, 2020
  • Montreal -- Added December 10, 2020
  • Parts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland -- Added December 10, 2020
  • Nearly every major city as well as most of their suburbs and main highway system across the entire country!! -- Added December 10, 2020
• Spain
  • Entire country -- Added June 7, 2021
• Portugal
  • Entire country -- Added June 7, 2021
• Italy(including San Marino & Vatican City)
  • Entire country -- Added September 10, 2021

Notable Changes

• Cycling- Maps now routes cyclists along bike lanes, bike paths, and bike-friendly roads. Preview the elevation for your ride, check how busy a street is, and set routes to avoid steep inclines or stairs. Maps also offers custom cycling voice guidance and a rich experience on Apple Watch that makes it easy to navigate with a glance.
  • Beijing, China - Coming soon
  • California(rest of State) - Added April 27, 2021
    • Los Angeles - Added week of February 15, 2021
    • San Francisco - Added June 22, 2020…expanded area week of February 15, 2021
  • London, England - Added October 1, 2020…expanded area week of February 15, 2021
  • Mainland China - Apple website says this is available, but unable to confirm.
  • New York City - Added September 17, 2020…expanded area week of February 15, 2021
  • Shanghai, China - Coming soon
  • Seattle, WA - Added April 27, 2021
  • Toronto, Canada - Added September 10, 2021
• Guides - Get recommendations for the best places to visit in a city with Guides created by a selection of trusted brands. Guides help you discover great places to eat, shop, meet friends, or explore in cities around the world. You can save Guides so you can easily get back to them later, and they automatically update when new places are added so you always have the latest recommendations.
  • Personal Guides may be created on macOS (Big Sur) to share with friends and family.
• Electric vehicle routing - Easily plan trips with your electric vehicle. Maps automatically adds charging stops along your route and even accounts for charging time when calculating the ETA. Once you add your electric vehicle on your iPhone, Maps can keep track of things like the current charge and charger type to give you the best route for your vehicle.
  • Limited to CarPlay with new "EV" app?
  • Designed around the vehicle itself so it only shows chargers that are compatible with your vehicle?
• Congestion zones - Major cities like London and Paris have congestion zones to help reduce traffic in dense areas. Maps lets you see congestion zone tolls on the map and can route you around them if you like.
• New maps available in more countries - Detailed new maps are coming to more countries later this year, including Canada, Ireland, and the UK. The new maps offer more detailed roads, buildings, parks, marinas, beaches, airports, and more, giving you a more realistic view of the world.
  • See above for complete updated countries/release dates.
• Ratings and Photos - You can contribute ratings and photos you’ve taken of restaurants, hotels, shops and other businesses directly in Maps. Help others find great places by letting them know what you thought of the food, service, atmosphere and more. Or share a photo of the restaurant’s interior or your favorite dish so they can see what it’s like.
• Refine location - Quickly get a highly accurate location and orientation when you’re in urban areas with poor GPS signals.
• Speed cameras - Maps lets you know when you’re approaching speed cameras and red-light cameras along your route. You can also see where individual cameras are located on the map.
• Incident Reporting - Accidents, hazards, or speed checks along your route can be reported by telling Siri on your iPhone or on CarPlay (new in iOS 14.5 released April 26, 2021 — USA only at launch)

Feature Availability by Region
https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/

Apple Van/Pedestrian Image Collection Schedule
https://maps.apple.com/imagecollection

Business/POI Edit Site
https://mapsconnect.apple.com/

Maps Developer Site
https://developer.apple.com/maps/

 

[djdsas]

1. Volume in CarPlay - currently mute or guidance on. Both Google Maps and Waze offer 'Alerts only' for sound.
2. Would still like an option for offline maps

3. I'm not sure if it's only me, but I feel like the color scheme for actually starting navigation after searching or selecting a destination is confusing. It's probably because I have an Acura without touchscreen with dial control instead. See attached image. The blue color is your select point but the 'go' button is green. To me, green means go, but the selection is actually blue which is on the x. I'm getting used to it but it can be confusing when you are concentrating on driving.

 

[MozMan68]

1. Volume in CarPlay - currently mute or guidance on. Both Google Maps and Waze offer 'Alerts only' for sound.
2. Would still like an option for offline maps

3. I'm not sure if it's only me, but I feel like the color scheme for actually starting navigation after searching or selecting a destination is confusing. It's probably because I have an Acura without touchscreen with dial control instead. See attached image. The blue color is your select point but the 'go' button is green. To me, green means go, but the selection is actually blue which is on the x. I'm getting used to it but it can be confusing when you are concentrating on driving.

1) you can do this from the phone settings though, right? You’re saying you want it as a temporary option from the screen?
2) Everyone would.
3) You’ll get used to it. I think blue is generally easier to see on the screen from a routing perspective and then yes, green means go.

 

[one more]

Looking forward to expansion outside of the United States...

Me too. Does anybody have a guess of when we might see the new, more detailed maps, for the first batch of “beyond the US” countries? Would it be when iOS 14 launches in September, or? I was also happy to learn that Apple and Google decided to join forces together working on COVID API, hoping it might bring them closer together in possibly sharing their maps data too at some point.

 

[MozMan68]

Me too. Does anybody have a guess of when we might see the new, more detailed maps, for the first batch of “beyond the US” countries? Would it be when iOS 14 launches in September, or? I was also happy to learn that Apple and Google decided to join forces together working on COVID API, hoping it might bring them closer together in possibly sharing their maps data too at some point.

My guess would be that first European maps are released in a beta format this Summer before rollout begins in September.

 

[jonblatho]

I was also happy to learn that Apple and Google decided to join forces together working on COVID API, hoping it might bring them closer together in possibly sharing their maps data too at some point.

Absolutely, and I cannot stress this enough, not gonna happen. Apple and Google aren’t competing over COVID-19. They are competing over maps.

Apple has sunk way too much cash into Maps as a benefit to people who buy their devices to just hand it over to Google. Same for the other direction. There’s a reason Apple abandoned Google Maps (probably too early) in 2012 and why they’ve stuck to doing their own maps.

 

[MozMan68]

Hoping they add bike routes...not because I ever use them, but to shut up people saying Apple Maps suck because Google Maps has bike routing.

But seriously, add bike routing.

And I want multiple entrance edits back. What a tease to have them in the early iOS 13 betas only to pull them.

And it will never happen, but I'd love for Apple to designate certain Apple I.D. folks (just for verification reasons) as "super users" or trusted resources that have priority when submitting corrections or are allowed to have corrections auto approve to be checked later so updates can occur at a faster pace.

And a web version....not much...just these and I'll be happy.

 

[gwhizkids]

My "simple" request is for a massive expansion of Look Around. Let's get more than a few miles outside select city centers!

 

[gwhizkids]

My "simple" request is for a massive expansion of Look Around. Let's get more than a few miles outside select city centers!

Well there have been some expansions recently but in the cities I am in mostly (NYC and Boston) it’s still the same areas.

 

[s0ur_lemon]

All I want from the iOS 14 Maps is a way to quick report of road closures-current system relying on TomTom closures data (even in the US where the new Apple in-house base Maps are) is very unreliable and not every closure report is accepted by TomTom / appears on the map.

I also tried to report directly to TomTom (by using TomTom mapshare reporter tool on the web), but also not every report got accepted.

So relying on TomTom data in case of road closures makes Maps unreliable (at least here in the Europe), because sends you on the route which in fact is closed (in case of less important roads quite often-say in 25% of cases).

So some way how to report a closure which gets automatically pre-approved by the system and quickly appears on the map can help to other drivers and makes the Maps more reliable against Google.

 

[one more]

Major disappointment with regard to the new maps expansion announced at WWDC - just Canada, Ireland and the UK “later this year”. What about the rest of the world? These updates are ever-evolving anyway and the maps will never be perfect, so why hold them up? Let’s remember that Google & Co are not frozen either and keep developing their products, so Apple really needs to speed their mapping efforts up.

 

[iOS Geek]

I received a "by invitation only" email to each platform's betas today. iPadOS and tvOS are currently the only two platforms I downloaded. (need my MacBook for work, so can't risk betas on that one, and I usually wait a few betas until I put them on my phone).

What's interesting is that when I downloaded the iPadOS beta, it was called "Public Beta 1". So if you have questions about Maps, let me know and I'll dig around! Right off the bat, I will have to say that I can NOT view the Cycling directions that were mentioned. I'll assume it's because I'm on my iPad and it kind of makes sense not to have cycling on it. But it might just not be available on the beta yet. (I tried putting directions in between two points in San Francisco since they mentioned the Bay Area as having cycling directions, but no luck).

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

Kind of disappointed there is no music controls like Waze. Figured that would be implented in IOS 14 maps.

 

[bigchrisfgb]

I’m very excited for the new update coming to the UK, I wonder if we’ll get nationwide converse of Lookaround upon launch, or if we’ll have to wait a while.
I also wonder if the update for the UK maps will launch in the BETA. If it does does anyone fancy getting any images of Newcastle upon Tyne for me?

 

[keating]

Frustrating that a company with billions of dollars in the bank can’t hire more cartographers to get their international maps improved faster. At this rate it will take them a decade to finish their ‘new map’.

 

[gwhizkids]

Frustrating that a company with billions of dollars in the bank can’t hire more cartographers to get their international maps improved faster. At this rate it will take them a decade to finish their ‘new map’.

Has it occurred to you that there may not be that many cartographers out there or that simply throwing more people/$$$ at it will not get the job done? This is a data issue and the Mapping vehicles have to go do their thing. That takes time.

My guess is that they are refining the techniques they learned while mapping the US and subsequent rollouts may be faster as a result. There are also localization issues, which is also a very labor and data intensive task.

This is a HUGE project and will take time. Keyhole/Google had a big headstart (over a decade). That matters and its very impressive that Apple has reached near parity since launch.

 

[s0ur_lemon]

I received a "by invitation only" email to each platform's betas today. iPadOS and tvOS are currently the only two platforms I downloaded. (need my MacBook for work, so can't risk betas on that one, and I usually wait a few betas until I put them on my phone).

What's interesting is that when I downloaded the iPadOS beta, it was called "Public Beta 1". So if you have questions about Maps, let me know and I'll dig around! Right off the bat, I will have to say that I can NOT view the Cycling directions that were mentioned. I'll assume it's because I'm on my iPad and it kind of makes sense not to have cycling on it. But it might just not be available on the beta yet. (I tried putting directions in between two points in San Francisco since they mentioned the Bay Area as having cycling directions, but no luck).

Would you mind to look if some new possibilities of reporting map problems are there?

 

[one more]

Has it occurred to you that there may not be that many cartographers out there or that simply throwing more people/$$$ at it will not get the job done? This is a data issue and the Mapping vehicles have to go do their thing. That takes time.

What about Waze then? They started in 2006 and their maps quality was way more up-to-date and accurate than Google & AM combined. They did it by letting users contribute directly and this paid off big time. So much so that Google bought them and had to agree to Waze’s terms of operation, like still keeping their headquarters in Israel. Apple could have bought Waze too, yet chose to shun them. Today Apple has access to much better tech, including drones, and a patent for user feedback in Maps - it might be a good time to use both. Need more Apple vehicles rolling? Just get thousands of students drive them around during their summer breaks. I am sure many would prefer it to other summer jobs.

 

[MozMan68]

So...Should I copy the wiki post from the iOS13 thread and move over to this page to continue with iOS14 and try to get this thread stickied to the top? Or how has that worked in the past?

I think we have a good start here, but it would be nice to start tracking features and bugs in my first post like we've done in the past, I just never started the thread before.

EDIT: I've updated my original post and will ask the mods to make it a WIKI and sticky this thread to the main iOS14 area at the top.

EDIT #2: Thanks mods!! Now a Wiki and a sticky!

 

[zinacef]

Looks like the new biking feature for Apple Maps is already being touted as terrible - https://mashable.com/article/apple-maps-ios14-cycling-bike-routes-bad/?europe=true

 

[MozMan68]

Looks like the new biking feature for Apple Maps is already being touted as terrible - https://mashable.com/article/apple-maps-ios14-cycling-bike-routes-bad/?europe=true

Terrible on the first day after release as a beta?? What a surprise....

And who knows which settings were applied?

The other routes on the screen (including fastest) match the Google routes given as an example. I'm waiting for the public beta, but I'm assuming there may be a setting to "default to bike lanes" or something like that which led to the proposed route? Maybe not, but still...give me break.

AND...you can preview your route including elevations, so pick one of the other ones.

 

[zinacef]

Terrible on the first day after release as a beta?? What a surprise....

And who knows which settings were applied?

The other routes on the screen (including fastest) match the Google routes given as an example. I'm waiting for the public beta, but I'm assuming there may be a setting to "default to bike lanes" or something like that which led to the proposed route? Maybe not, but still...give me break.

AND...you can preview your route including elevations, so pick one of the other ones.

Oh, I agree! The feature is still obviously in beta and people are already pooping on it....like you said, “Give me a break!”

 

[MozMan68]

Oh, I agree! The feature is still obviously in beta and people are already pooping on it....like you said, “Give me a break!”

I say that also understanding his point of view regarding the route exaple maybe not being the best in his (or other's) opinion, but without all of the facts or even acknowledging that the other routes matched Google was just a little weak.

Someone's hoping his article is picked up by national news or something...hah. "Look what I caught!!! It's another Apple Maps debacle!!"

 

[MecPro]

Oh, I agree! The feature is still obviously in beta and people are already pooping on it....like you said, “Give me a break!”

TBH if they’re advertising it and showing a route I’d presume they’d use an accurate representation of what route the app Will suggest.

It does seem Apple offer similar routes to the Google option, but doesn’t take that Wiggle that is mentioned.

It’s definitely an odd oversight, but I’m no SanFran native so I’m not 100% of how bad this is.

 

[MozMan68]

TBH if they’re advertising it and showing a route I’d presume they’d use an accurate representation of what route the app Will suggest.

It does seem Apple offer similar routes to the Google option, but doesn’t take that Wiggle that is mentioned.

It’s definitely an odd oversight, but I’m no SanFran native so I’m not 100% of how bad this is.

Yeah...but I still claim there is something missing from this example.

Can someone verify guidelines in settings for bike directions? Sort of like "avoid busy streets", "default to bike lanes"...something like that??

Something as simple as that might have been selected to push the suggested route in the example. Maybe not, but I'd love to know for sure.

EDIT: "The biking option takes elevation into account to let users know if they‘re in for a challenging uphill workout or a leisurely flat ride. Lysik said users will also be able to tell it their route includes quiet or busy streets and even if there is a steep passage coming up or if they’ll need to carry their bike up the stairs."

@gwhizkids Can you post screen shots of the Maps options now? Anything specific to bike routing as mentioned yesterday?