<story><title>Apple Maps on the web launches in beta</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/07/apple-maps-on-the-web-launches-in-beta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>standardUser</author><text>Launching a web app that doesn&amp;#x27;t work on the web? I guess that&amp;#x27;s what we should expect from a company that makes a messaging app that magically only works on one piece of hardware. Apple has a knack for finding restrictions where they would otherwise never exist.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>Assuming you&amp;#x27;re referring to the fact that it doesn&amp;#x27;t work on all browsers, it&amp;#x27;s literally a &lt;i&gt;beta&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;It clearly states that it&amp;#x27;s for Chrome&amp;#x2F;Edge&amp;#x2F;Safari only, and not for mobile. But it also says at the bottom:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Support for additional languages, browsers, and platforms will be expanded over time.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think it&amp;#x27;s totally fair that a &lt;i&gt;beta&lt;/i&gt; has support for limited browsers, in order to get it out faster. Just like it&amp;#x27;s only in English for now as well, although that will obviously expand too.&lt;p&gt;If it&amp;#x27;s not available for Firefox or Android when it leaves beta, then yes it&amp;#x27;s a problem. But an English-only beta with limited compatibility is one of the things betas are &lt;i&gt;for&lt;/i&gt;. It&amp;#x27;s an appropriate setting of expectations.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple Maps on the web launches in beta</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/07/apple-maps-on-the-web-launches-in-beta/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>standardUser</author><text>Launching a web app that doesn&amp;#x27;t work on the web? I guess that&amp;#x27;s what we should expect from a company that makes a messaging app that magically only works on one piece of hardware. Apple has a knack for finding restrictions where they would otherwise never exist.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CamperBob2</author><text>Not super impressed.  It has the same problem as Google in that street names are displayed much too sparsely, making it hard to orient yourself.  Additionally, the satellite view is too dark, at least in my area.&lt;p&gt;The imagery looks clean but the minimum altitude is much higher than what Google offers, so it&amp;#x27;s hard to evaluate.  (Helpful tip to mapping providers: you don&amp;#x27;t need more resolution, just let me zoom in on your existing imagery!  There is no reason whatsoever to stop at 1:1.)&lt;p&gt;No street-view functionality appears to be present.  Not sure if it&amp;#x27;s supposed to be, but it&amp;#x27;s certainly a dealbreaker if not.&lt;p&gt;And then, yes, there&amp;#x27;s the matter of failing to support commonly-used browsers, even though it works fine in those browsers when appending a bogus subdirectory name as someone else pointed out.&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, if there&amp;#x27;s any reason to use this over Google Maps I&amp;#x27;m not seeing it.</text></comment>