Remember Tahiti at the 2013 Confederations Cup? Until today, comparing Apple Maps with Google Maps was the same as evoking the sympathetic selection that led to successive defeats in that tournament. Now, however, Ma has a letter up her sleeve and she goes by the name of Look Around.
We have already talked about the feature that competes with Google Street View, both in the iOS 13 intro article and in-depth look at the new Apple Maps 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 Reel 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 moving down the street"! Impressive 🤩 # WWDC19 # iOS13Beta #AppleMaps #GoogleMaps #Apple #maps pic.twitter/nIA3kklhJe
– Reel van der Steege (@rvdsteege) June 13, 2019
I made a quick side-by-side comparison of “driving” down the same road in Hawaii with the Look Around, from Apple Maps, and Google Street View. It really "moves smoothly through the streets"! Impressive.
The difference is really striking, as a Twitter user reporting to Reel stated, Apple's feature does actually look like a navigable 3D model, while Google's looks more like a series of 360-shot photos sequenced. 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 primarily around the world, while Google Look Around Starting to crawl now vehicles (and people) collecting information for Apple are running some selected cities in a few countries in the northern hemisphere, which means 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 operation from l to c. Given that Google has a much faster pace of development than Apple's glacial momentum, the Mountain View giant may take the stage tomorrow to introduce a new technology that surpasses Look Around. You never know, no?
Anyway, for now, let's let Apple savor this momentary victory.
via Cult of Mac
