Apple Redesigns the Maps App
Apple's users in the United States can now experience a redesigned Maps with faster and more accurate navigation and comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and more.
Apple completed the rollout of this new Maps experience in the United States and will begin rolling it out across Europe in the coming months.
Apple says privacy is central to the Maps experience, offering personalized features created using on-device intelligence. AppMaps is integrated into popular apps, including Photos, Messages, Calendar, Weather and more. With MapKit and MapKit JS, Maps is also the foundation for many popular third-party apps and services like Instagram, Bank of America and Nike Run Club.
Maps offers interactive street-level imagery with high-resolution, 3D photography and transitions through major cities with Look Around. Appple customers from anywhere in the world can navigate through New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston and Oahu, with many more places to come.
The app allows users to store the places they visit every day in Favorites. Additional features in Maps include:
- Real-time transit information gives detailed transit schedules, live departure times, arrival times, the current location of a bus or train en route, and system connections to help plan a journey. Maps also includes real-time information like outages. Real-time transit is available in many cities across the world including the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles and, starting today, in Miami, with many more cities to come.
- Share ETA sends an estimated time of arrival to family, friends or coworkers with a simple tap. The receiver can follow along on the journey, and Maps will even update them with a revised estimate for when the traveler is arriving if a significant delay occurs.
- Flight status uses on-device Siri intelligence to scan for information stored in Mail, Calendar or Wallet and proactively serves flight information for terminals, gate locations and departure times, as well as flight changes or cancellations for upcoming travel.
- Indoor Maps for airports and malls makes it possible for users to get the most out of their next trip or shopping excursion. By opening the Maps app, users can see what level they’re on, restroom locations and even which stores and restaurants are open.
- Siri Natural Language Guidance provides more natural-sounding directions that are even easier to follow, such as “At the next traffic light, turn left.” Siri Natural Language Guidance is available across the United States.
- Flyover offers a way to see select major metro areas with photo-realistic, immersive 3D views. Users can move their device through space to experience a city from above, or explore in high resolution as they zoom, pan, tilt and rotate around the city and its landmarks. Flyover is available in more than 350 cities.
With Maps, no sign-in is required and it is not connected to an Apple ID in any way. Personalized features, such as suggesting departure time to make the next appointment, are created using on-device intelligence. Apple says that any data collected by Maps while using the app, like search terms, navigation routing and traffic information, is associated with random identifiers that continually reset. Maps goes even further to obscure a user’s location on Apple servers when searching for a location through a process called “fuzzing.” Maps converts the precise location where the search originated to a less-exact one after 24 hours and does not retain a history of what has been searched or where a user has been.