Remember Tahiti at the 2013 Confederations Cup? To this day, comparing Apple Maps with Google Maps was tantamount to evoking the friendly selection that led to successive victories in that tournament. Now, however, the Apple has a letter up its sleeve – and it responds by the name of Look Around.
We have already talked about the resource that competes with Google Street View, both in the iOS 13 presentation article and in the deeper look at the new Apple Maps that we published last week. What we had not yet seen was a real comparison between the two tools.
Now she is already with us, thanks to developer Reüel van der Steege:
Made a quick side-by-side comparison video driving the same road in Hawaii with ‘Look Around’ in Apple Maps on # iOS13 vs Google Street View. It really is «smoothly move down the street»! Impressive ? # WWDC19 # iOS13Beta #AppleMaps #GoogleMaps #Apple #maps pic.twitter.com/nIA3kklhJe
– Reüel van der Steege (@rvdsteege) June 13, 2019
I made a quick side-by-side comparison “driving” the same road in Hawaii with the Look Around, from Apple Maps, and Google Street View. He really “moves smoothly through the streets”! Impressive.
The difference is really impressive – as a Twitter user responding to Reüel said, Apple’s feature really does look like a navigable 3D model, while Google’s looks more like a series of 360º photos in sequence. That is, yes: point for Apple in this!
Some things have to be considered, however. The first, of course, has to do with coverage: Google Street View is already present basically all over the world, while Look Around it will start crawling now – vehicles (and people) collecting information for Apple are running in selected cities in a few countries in the northern hemisphere, which means that we will have to wait many years before the tool arrives in Brazil, for example.
In addition, Google Street View is a feature that is already 12 years old and has not shown significant differences in its functioning since then. Considering that Google has a much more frenetic pace of development than Apple’s glacial momentum, it may be that the Mountain View giant will take the stage “tomorrow” to present a new technology that surpasses the Look Around. You never know, do you?
Anyway, for now, let’s let Apple taste this momentary victory.
via Cult of Mac
