Apple Maps would be a better source if possible. I live in a big city and all of the place names are several years out of date. The map data does not match up with the Foursquare places data. When I zoom in to where I am on the map often times there’s no place name on the map or it’s the name of a place that closed and used to be there. Also sometimes the place name is misspelled lol. I tried to login to where Mapbox gets their data but the interface is so clunky and slow it’s almost impossible to update the data. No wonder it rarely ever gets updated.

Mapbox’s data comes from OpenStreetMaps, which is an open, collaborative effort, and is regularly updated all across the world!

Apple Maps unfortunately has very poor data in many countries, which disqualifies it at this stage. Overall, Apple’s data is worse than OpenStreetMaps on a global scale.

For example my own city, Bangkok, Apple Maps doesn’t have any of the train lines, which are used by millions of people every year. Apple Maps also doesn’t include my own street or neighbourhood, even though my neighbourhood is in a fairly central and populous area of the city.

Basically Apple have to up their game, and provide acceptably international data. It’s not good enough to just have great coverage in North America and possibly Europe. They have to have acceptable levels of coverage globally. OpenStreetMaps has that.

So until that balance changes in Apple’s favour, Apple Maps can’t replace Mapbox as Arc’s main mapping provider.

That’s a fair point. Apple Maps is great in the USA but maybe not so much elsewhere.

I don’t mind contributing to Houston on OpenStreetMaps to make it more accurate but I couldn’t get the site to load reliably. It was just very laggy and complicated to move around the UI in my opinion. My area has lots of outdated places (showing places that haven’t been there in years and not showing new places) and some even misspelled. And I see some places that were already fixed long ago still not showing up in the Mapbox map. Streets and land seem to be decent though so that’s good. So for me the map doesn’t do much good if I want to zoom in and see place names. Luckily the Foursquare data does a great job in the list view. Can mostly just use the map for reference for places that have been around for a long time and to just get a general idea of the roads and land. Really not a huge deal to me I don’t zoom into the map all that often. I’ve been using Arc for almost 2 years now and I just noticed how outdated Mapbox is for my area just now.

The best thing would be to have multiple sources in the settings, but then it just probably makes development more complicated.

The Google Maps SDK is also somewhat archaic, and feels partially abandonware. Whenever I’ve had to use it for a project I’ve found that issues on Github go unanswered, and often unresolved for months or years!

It seems like Google aren’t investing resources in their iOS SDK at all. So having Arc depend on it would be a bit of a risk.

I’m fairly happy with Mapbox so far. Mapbox’s OpenStreetMap data is reasonably high quality over most of the world.

Although if Apple get their map data up to standard across the world, instead of only in major American and European centres, then it would be worth considering again.

Can we maybe have it as a toggle because the new maps in America a great, sometimes even better quality than google

Supporting both Mapbox maps and Apple Maps isn’t something that I have the resources (ie time) to do, unfortunately. It would require building each piece of map functionality in the app twice, thus doubling the amount of development (and maintenance) time required.

If Apple ever manage to escape their US-centric services focus, and offer adequate services coverage globally, then moving back to Apple Maps will be an option. But for now, Apple are far too siloed in their US spaceship, and aren’t providing a globally usable map service. Apple’s maps simply aren’t an option at this stage. We’ll have to wait and see whether that changes in the future.

I don’t know about you guys but I am having so much trouble with Mapbox, there are so many areas even whole towns that don’t appear on the map, according to Mapbox I work in a middle of nowhere even though I work at an international airport. I support the idea to replace Mapbox, I know it’s cheaper for developers but good quality will Pay in the long run making the app more reliable and appealing.

Peter, Apple Maps has worse coverage globally than Mapbox. So as far as quality goes, Mapbox still beats Apple Maps.

It’s also not a matter of money. Apple Maps is completely free to use, so there’s no cost in switching to that. The reason for not switching to Apple Maps is their lack of map data coverage in large parts of the world.

At this stage Mapbox is still the best option for a global userbase. Apple Maps is still too provincial, focusing on a limited number of regions of the world, with poor coverage outside of those regions.

Hopefully Mapbox will update their maps because as of 2020 they are so terribly outdated. On the other hand, Apple seems to be working hard on improving their maps. It would be great to have the option of choosing which map we would like to use but you have already said you don’t have the time and resources to do that, hopefully someday you will. Cheers

Have a look at the OpenStreetMaps site. Mapbox maps are based on OSM, which is updated constantly by volunteers.

I’d actually pay to have Apple Maps in Arc app. Mapbox/OSM is the reason I stopped using the app a while back.... Hopefully this will be added in the future, let me know when. And I’ll go back to using the app the rest looks awesome, Mapbox/OSM is just a dealbreaker for me atm

I too hope someday the Arc app will use Apple maps instead of Mapbox. I live in a major city up in Canada and I can tell the map Arc uses is terribly (many years) outdated. I think that if Mapbox misses a lot of important places globally what is left for smaller cities and countries. Matt could reconsider this request.

I recommend contacting Apple, and letting them know that their maps coverage is not good enough to be used internationally.

Arc’s use of Apple Maps is held back by Apple, not by myself. Arc cannot use a maps service that doesn’t provide adequate data to an international user base.

I understand and appreciate your position on this, but I do feel like your stance is a bit misaligned.

Apple has been making remarkable strides with their maps. Yes, their efforts have started with the United States, but it has not been limited to just the U.S., not do they appear to be slowing down those efforts on any level.

Their maps website indicates they’re collecting data (ground truth) all over the world. There is always going to be deficiencies in places, and no platform will be perfect in all locations, but from what I have personally seen in my own international travels, Apples data is good enough.

Apple has also directly contributed a lot to OSM.

I have no direct issues with mapbox, other than I find its quality and detail to be incredibly lacking (whole streets missing) for my location which pales in comparison to Apple and Google.

Yes, Apple have been making strides, but they are still far behind the competition. When, and only when they match or beat the competition globally will I consider Apple Maps again for Arc.

Making an effort is not the same as achieving a goal. I am sure that Apple will achieve the goal, but so far they have not. The decisions I make for Arc must be based on the realities of today, not the possibilities of tomorrow.

Would you consider using Google maps or Waze? If it is too expensive then raise the price for Arc.

With the iOS 15 beta Apple Maps seems to have taken a huge step up in worldwide quality. Certainly in my area which they didn’t have right until this update. Maybe worth looking into it again.

Upvote for Apple Maps integration. Here in Australia quality is excellent. But I understand that’s not the case everywhere.