I am disappointed at the type of criticism of this post on Hacker News. This write-up is the kind of high-quality, original, analytical writing we so desperately need these days, in an online world that is completely saturated with clickbait that adds nothing to our understanding of the world.<p>Is the piece lacking in some semantics? Perhaps. But I was struck by the comments about market share and Android strategy, rather than directly discussing the article and the points it makes about the two maps at hand.
It seems that google has a more coherent theory of how users use maps at different zoom levels.<p>At the outermost zoom, physical geography is emphasized : terrain shows prominently, and political boundaries at the national level with hints of state boundaries.<p>Zoom in farther, and political bondaries are more emphasized and physical features less. States are named and some cities.<p>Zoom in farther and you start to reach the domain of navigation. Large roads are prominent and labelled, as are some cities.<p>Zoom in farther and more roads are labelled, as well as rail/metro stops and some landmark destinations.<p>At the highest levels of zoom, finally it transitions to destinations and foot-navigation as the focus.<p>Apple has a similar progression, but with less coherence. It emphasizes cities/neighborhoods more at the expense of road labels. And landmarks and destinations appear at lower zoom levels, also at the expense of road labels. Rail/metro stations are much less prominent.
Alternative: OpenStreetMap !<p>"The following companies offer consulting, tile-hosting or other services for sites wishing to switch to OpenStreetMap."<p><a href="https://switch2osm.org/providers/" rel="nofollow">https://switch2osm.org/providers/</a>
From a cartographic perspective I would love to see this expanded to include Mapbox, and Bing. As well as Yandex, and any other foreign players whose names I cannot remember right now. I would probably be more interested in seeing how they compare, instead of just US based ones.
> And both are in a race to become the world’s first Universal Map — that is, the first map used by a majority of the global population<p>This is a very US centric view.<p>The comparison is done in the city where the two companies are nearly located, the other city is the most important in US and the other is the most important of the English speaking cities in the world outside USA.<p>If you want to talk about global mapping, use global comparisons.<p>And not talking about the fact that Apple Maps are supported in just one platform and the market share in USA is very different than globally.
I strongly prefer apple maps.<p>Why?<p>Because I have low vision and only Apple Maps respects the system font size. I can actually read the map labels. Google maps renders the print too small.<p>If I can't read the map labels, I can't use the map. Everything else is gravy.
I wish there were more settings and personalisations available in both Maps apps. I’d like to activate an option that always shows me all public transport stations, regardless of zoom level.
The article reads like there are no noteworthy alternatives to those two. But in my experience, at least HERE Maps and Bing Maps are quite up to par. Especially HERE is quite strong when it comes to navigation.
Ok, a very interesting way to analyze maps. Like a lot of engineers I enjoy different maps. It wasn't until we replaced our wall sized US Map this year (we got a large format US Map, World Map, and Globe when homeschooling our kids) that I realized how different maps could be (both good and bad).<p>In my fantasy science fiction imagination I've got a map on an large format HiDPI screen that I can drop a Surface Dial on to and turn it to pick out the features I want from Pilot to Topographic to Road Atlas to Political Districts. We have the bandwidth and storage to do that now, just need a designer and business case.
Small discussion from when the article was newer: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836584" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836584</a>
While specifically cartography, the recent trend to 3D render satellite views by both Google and Apple is pretty bad, and a step backwards. Both companies try to project the 2D photograph onto a 3D mesh, which fails to work in many cases due to alignment and measurement errors. Instead of getting nicely wrapped polygons, you get weird crumpled shapes with distorted pixels projected on them. While annoying, this wouldn't be a show a stopper because you can always click "2D" to see the undistorted 2D photograph right?<p>WRONG! 2D simply rotates the 3D model so that the z-axis is perpendicular to your screen. All the distortions and artifacts remain in place! This is broken.
The image loading on this site was pretty unbearable; the images loaded from the bottom up lazily and were pretty low resolution.<p>I ended up loading all the chapters before I read the 2nd page, so the rest of the pages would be ready for me. I don't know if the image loading was a design choice or just because of the HN traffic.<p>Very fascinating topic.
> And both are in a race to become the world’s first Universal Map — that is, the first map used by a majority of the global population. In many ways, this makes Google Maps and Apple Maps two of the most important maps ever made.<p>> Who will get there first?<p>Isn't it pretty clear that Android is well ahead in global market share? I mean, Apple isn't even trying to become the market leader, they are solely focused on the premium segment.
> And both are in a race to become the world’s first Universal Map — that is, the first map used by a majority of the global population<p>Actually, lol, no. OpenStreetMap is. Google Maps will be a contender for some time, but eventually it'll settle.