Well after the recent noise concerning Maps and the switchover to Apple’s backend data instead of Google’s I’ve been making an effort to use Maps as my primary navigation tool to see how well it fares.
Globally, I’m pretty happy with the results.
Things I like:
Traffic circles/roundabaouts
The presentation of traffic circles is really quite nice and clearly represents the entries and exits which makes the turn decision easier than in many other navigation apps.
Overall interface
Despite being a data junkie I find that for regular use, the clean interface with only essential information is actually best for use as a GPS. Some others present extra data like points of interest, speed and so on, but from a practical standpoint they are actually distractions that take attention away from road.
The only thing that I think should be a priority would be adding in the current speed limit with auditory warnings.
Speed of recalculation
Generally speaking whenever I deviated from the proposed route, it was able to adapt to my new location within a few seconds. One thing I quite like is that the proposed changes to the route tend to be more sensible than many others that spend the next few minutes insisting that I should try to do a U-turn.
Mixed bag:
Data quality
For almost all of my recent travels to the coast visiting Fécamp, Etretat and Honfleur the data was just fine. I had no issues is having it take me to my destination.
Data was an issue when trying to get back into Paris where it tried to send me down some bus only lanes and into some construction zones. I’ll pardon the construction zones since that’s almost impossible to keep track of in Paris, but the bus and taxi lanes desperately need to be corrected.
Changes I’d like to see:
Problem reporting while driving
I would like to see a button that I can tap to queue up corrections. Obviously, the interface for reporting errors should not be used while driving, but if I could tap a button that records the location and at the end of the trip go back and fill in the details of the problems that would be very useful.