Apple Maps gets really excellent with latest improvements

Watch where you’re going…

Apple Maps is now amazing. Apple has begun rolling out three-dimensional city views and other enhanced features to Maps users in London, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. It will be available in Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. later this year. Support for additional cities, including Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, will be available next year.

What Apple said

“We are thrilled to offer the new Apple Maps experience. Maps is the best way to navigate the world: It is easy to use, beautifully designed, and built with privacy at its core. With this update, we are pushing Maps even further, providing more ways for users to discover the natural beauty of the world and explore cities through a new 3D view,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Services. “Our goal has always been to build the best and most accurate map in the world. The upgrades in Apple Maps are a continuation of that effort, with features and an attention to detail that only Apple can deliver.”

New Apple Maps enhancements in iOS 15 include:

• Richer details in Maps
• Driving routes with better navigation
• Immersive walking directions shown in augmented reality.

Augment your reality (where available)

Apple Maps introduces a new way to navigate cities with a visually stunning 3D map that offers unprecedented detail for neighborhoods, commercial districts, marinas, buildings, and more. Now users can see elevation details across a city, new road labels, and hundreds of custom-designed landmarks like Coit Tower in San Francisco, Dodger Stadium in LA, the Statue of Liberty in NYC, and the Royal Albert Hall in London, with more to come. A beautiful nighttime mode with a moonlit glow activates at dusk.

Better driving

Maps now features even more road details. Turn lanes, medians, bus and taxi lanes, and crosswalks are clearly displayed for navigating busy intersections, and highways with overlapping complex interchanges are rendered in a road-level 3D view, making it easier to see upcoming traffic conditions or the best lane for an approaching exit.

Also read: How to measure the distance between places on Apple Maps

Route planning provides the estimated time of arrival for future departures based on expected traffic. The new navigation will be available through CarPlay later this year.

Better on public transit

Nearby stations are prominently displayed at the top of the screen, and users can pin their favorite lines in Maps so the best route is just one tap away. Once a transit route is selected, Maps will automatically notify a user when it is time to disembark as they approach their final destination, and riders can even keep track on Apple Watch.

These updates build on transit features already available in Maps, including real-time transit, which provides 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 important real-time information like outages.

And better on foot

Apple Maps introduces step-by-step walking guidance in augmented reality. Users can simply raise their iPhone to scan buildings in the area, and Maps generates a highly accurate position to deliver detailed directions that can be viewed in the context of the real world.

A New Interactive Globe

Apple Maps offers a rich and interactive three-dimensional globe that shows Earth’s natural beauty with amazing textures and contours. Users can see vibrant details of mountain ranges, deserts, rainforests, oceans, and more. Even the most remote and precious locations on the planet can be explored right from iPhone.

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