If you use Google’s maps app on your iPad, you’ll know that it kinda sucks. Search is great, and the fancy maps look ok, but the UI elements are comically big when blown up to fit the iPad screen, and they cover most of what you really want to see – the maps. And Street View isn’t much better.
Enter Streets 2.0, an update to – you guessed it – Streets, which brings Googles vector map tiles and live traffic as well as big-screen Street View.
The app integrates with Apple’s own maps app so you can launch it from there, or you can browse the streets in-app and then launch your current position back in Apple Maps, which is neat for narrowing down a location and then getting driving directions to get there.
Speaking of driving, car users can check the current traffic conditions (viewed as colored lines on the map). You can also save the current Street View to your camera roll.
Search is crappy. You can pretty much view a list of local sites (tourist spots mostly) and that’s it. I searched on “Pizza” and was taken off to a spot in the mountains in Northern Italy, a spot so remote that it doesn’t have coverage on Street View. You never know, though – maybe this place serves the best pizza in the world.
As a Street View viewer, though, it’s great. There’s even an option (on by default) to show Street View coverage on the map. The only problem is its horrible icon. The price is right though: $1.
