Apple’s approach to cycling directions is second rate IMHO.

It’s only available in certain media city locations. If you stray out of those areas you’re out of luck.

Basically Apple seem more interested in rolling this out as a tick box item for journalists than helping me get to work.

This tells me that Apple is not serious about its Maps app.

So, say they wanted to support this for most of the world, what would look different to outsiders?

Waiting to support part of the world until they can support all of the targeted regions would deprive users of data they have for, I guess, years.

So, it should be a gradual rollout. Where should they start? I would think it’s easiest in richer countries, where it’s easier to obtain reliable data, and updates thereof.

Also, denser population areas likely give them most bang for the buck (getting many happy users as fast as possible seems necessary to me when discussing the success of the Maps app with senior management)

Because of those arguments, I don’t see whether that would look much different from what’s happening now.

So, I don’t see how one can conclude they aren’t serious about the Maps app or cycle paths.

Of course, things would be different if we had data telling us they don’t plan to get large coverage, slowed down or even stopped data gathering. I am not aware of either, though. It would be nice to have a history of the info on https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability, to see what, if any, progress they make.

By your logic, Denmark or The Netherlands would have been the prime location for bicycle routing to be introduced. Not only are the governmental infrastructure data sources of pristine quality, those places also see the most amount of cycling hours in the world. So they would rapidly get more data that they could fine-tune their algorithms with.

That surprised me, too. All the data probably already is in https://www.opencyclemap.org/?zoom=7&lat=52.65153&lon=8.9347... (aside: look how limited Danish cycling infra is compared to the Netherlands and Belgium)

Maybe routing is too hard on such a dense network, or it’s just that they’re an American company.

Only time will tell and we can be hopeful but a map that only covers part of any particular country is not very useful for navigation except as a proof of concept.

As it is it’s more like the 3D Tour feature of Maps. A great novelty but not useful outside of a very narrow usecase. That’s been around for a few years now but is still only available in a handful of locations.

> been around for a few years now but still only available in a handful of locations.

seems like a fairly long list though I havent monitored how often they add locations so maybe it launched with 100+ international locations.

https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#maps-flyover

Google still doesn't have Street View for my house. This tells me Google is not serious about its Maps app.

For me it's even worse. Here in Germany they're driving around capturing all data and taking photos but they don't update the StreetView imagery because of that huge blurring debacle back then when they launched StreetView here.

I see it as then wanting to do it right through curation. Contrast that with Google where they just throw ML at everything.

That seems to be their approach to a lot of things.

Often though this “curation” is never rolled out to a wider audience.

Take for example on site servicing. Apple have never offered that and instead you’re encouraged to visit your local Apple Store.

Except that Apple Stores are still not present out side of certain blessed locations.

If you don’t live somewhere Apple thinks is trendy enough for an Apple Store you’re out of luck.

I’m not expecting a wider roll out of routing for cyclists anytime soon.

Apple Maps has been reliable enough where I worked that it was the default mapping app in our ambulance CAD (computer aided dispatch) system called Geosafe. We literally drove every road in the county and Apple Maps was completely spot on.

I love it.