Comparing Google and Apple Maps ↦

Justin O’Beirne has written the first part of what will no doubt become the definitive comparison between Google and Apple Maps:

We looked at 54 pairs of maps across three cities (New York, San Francisco, and London) and found several significant differences:

• Apple Maps, on average, labels more cities than Google at every zoom.
• Google Maps, on average, labels more roads than Apple on nearly every zoom.
• For two-thirds of zooms, both maps generally show the same number of roads. For the remaining third, Apple almost always shows more roads.
• Both maps, on average, label a similar number of POIs—but have only 15% of their POIs in common on an average zoom.
• Both maps also prioritize different kinds of POIs: Google Maps heavily prioritizes transit, while Apple prioritizes landmarks. Apple also generally shows a greater number of POI categories on a given zoom—and shows twice as many restaurants and shops as Google.

Be sure to click through to see the side-by-side images.