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Apple Maps sucks hard but Nokia’s navigation solution, a product called Here that was just announced today, is fast as hell.
You can try it in on the desktop or in web app form at m.here.net. I wish I had had this over the weekend—I visited San Francisco for the first time and kept forgetting Apple Maps lacks transit directions. And I cried and cried. Here, on the other hand, is an answer to your commuting woes. And you don’t even have to download an app or anything. Here works in multiple browsers across major operating systems—we tried it on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. However, it did freeze up a little for us in Chrome on Android and IE on Windows Phone.
Nokia already powers maps for a laundry list of services—Rand McNally, Garmin, Bing, Yahoo Maps, and more. That alone speaks volumes about its reliability. The company’s Stephen Elop said the location data is “very, very fresh,” and it seems he’s right. Just from tooling around with Here for a few minutes, it generally knows what you’re looking for before you finish typing, and directions load incredibly fast. At least some of us now have a reprieve from the hellacious Apple Maps nightmare. [AllThingsD]
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Nice to see Google Maps get some decent competition finally.
It’s pretty good… Maybe it don’t have the swagger of the apple maps, but it’s simple and works well at first glance.
What mapping service needs to be reliable, when it got swag?
Practicality is underrated. You may have SWAG but make sure you get back home..
To my second point, who needs a home when you got SWAG?
I just used their 3D view to look at The Gherkin and I’ m very impressed. Close up shots are amazing!
Lol, this looks fun.
Sounds a bit strange but my ‘test’ with any maps app is to ask it where my nearest petrol station is…
soooo. Apple maps, wheres my nearest petrol station. (it shows me my local corner shop) Ugh.
HERE maps wheres my local petrol station. (it points me in the direction of a petrol station that closed around about 10 years ago) ugh
When will I ever be able to find a petrol station near my house guys…. :p
Is The Gay Village actually a place in Manchester?
http://i.imgur.com/XYcwe.png
If it is, it seems huge!
Yes, never been myself (not that I’m gay…)
Yeah, its centred around Canal Street – someone once “edited” the street sign to say “anal treet”
Bahahahahahahaha
“I visited San Francisco for the first time and kept forgetting Apple Maps lacks transit directions. And I cried and cried”
#firstworldproblems
After holding out on downloading iOS6 purely due to the issue with Apple Maps I finally bit the bullet the other day and for the first time actually used it last night. Now, it was only for a relatively short 15 minute commute but on that once instance I was incredibly impressed. The turn by turn feature was streets ahead of the previous google maps app. Arrived with no problems either. Now, obviously on a larger scale there are a lot more problems with regard the tom tom data Apple are using not being up to scratch, but when these problems have been overcome I think it’s going to be way better than the very limited app that I previously had to put up with. I was expecting a disaster from all the rantings I’d heard online!
The rantings where mostly from Android people, the Maps turn-by-turn is really good, you can Google the postcode for a place you want and then the maps will take you there, I see no problem with that.
Yeah, that’s what I’m doing now. The data is shit, but the functionality is very good. Once you get your head around that and learn to get your data elsewhere, it’s very useful. My experience has been 50:50 positive/negative so far (where the positives have exceeded the previous offering but the negatives were new lows).
Once they get the data (places) correct and add proper transit info then it will be a very good mapping application, it is already very quick and smooth, maybe some of the image’s needs updating and the 3D need’s looking over in some places but so far I see a very good map app in it’s first stage.
Google Maps were only limited on iOS. On Android they are the shiz and the turn by turn is great.
I don’t doubt that Maps will be fine once they sort out where stuff actually is and realise that some people use public transport, I just think it’s a shambles that they expect their users to fix their problems for them!
Also, other than showing off iPhones to their friends, what do people use 3D view for? I can’t think of anything less useful.
3D isn’t too practical but when you find a place where 3D is and it’s flawless it’s just cool. even on turn by turn, you go down the street and the building are in 3D, gives you a better point of reference for upcoming turns etc.
It will be interesting to see if the iOS app itself gets approved, even though it’s only a HTML5 based app it will set a precedent for Apple either accepting of denying Google Maps entry to the App Store under the terms of “copying existing functionality”
If Nokia gets in and Google doesn’t then we can rule that reason out pretty quick and it’s something else (additional API or whatever)
Not that impressed really, satellite data is either incomplete of very old. The whole of Milton Keynes is just a blur and the images of my office just north of Bedford are at least 8 years old.
I was expecting better.
Travelling the wrong way on dual carriageways isn’t really in the spirit of navigation.