A friend asked his network, “Google or Apple maps? Discuss.”
I could rant for days here. On one hand, we have GPS. Its government controlled, slow, somewhat inaccurate but usually works. On the other hand we have a cluster of USPS data, cars & cameras collecting imagery, and wildly abused user-contributed information all of which are dumped into the collective hive-mind of free map software. Like a map, scrawled in Sharpie, on the wall of a bathroom stall.
Google maps is brilliant for traffic info. Not just real time, but predictively, too! That’s because every Android and logged-in gmail account has been sharing real-time informatics (whether you like it or not). It’s brilliant. You can even see traffic patterns based on day of week, time of day, even holidays. Provided that you know exactly where you need to go.
Apple/iOS maps… I think I had 3 birthdays the last time I tried to load that up. It was so slow I used my car’s navigation system instead. Gawd knows that’s an act of pure desperation.
In all fairness, I can’t attest to which system is more accurate for physical addresses. The final responsibility rests upon the shoulders of the US Postal service. Unfortunately, that tax-payer funded agency is now little more than an indentured servant to Amazon. Ultimately, we need the USPS for authority in this department…as if they should be surveying geological and location data, not just stamps and commercial mailers, and providing accurate information on locations and addresses within our country.
We could call it the United States Geological Survey agency, or USGS.govfor short.
Oh, damn, that domain name is already registered.