Apple shows Google how to do Street View with style

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Head to head
Apple's new Look Around feature will launch with iOS 13.
Photo: Reüel van der Steege

Apple’s a few years behind Google with its Street View-style feature called Look Around, announced at WWDC 2019. It may have been worth waiting for, however — at least, based on a new side-by-side comparison.

Assembled by Reüel van der Steege, the demo showcases the impressively smooth Look Around, next to Google’s jerkier alternative. Both parts of the side-by-side demo depict the same road in Hawaii.

The Apple tech uses some impressive morphing technology to combine the individual still photos taken by Apple’s mapping cars into a cohesive whole. While it might not cover as much ground as Google’s Street View, it certainly makes it clear that Apple’s new iOS 13 feature isn’t messing around.

Taking Maps to the next level

The new Look Around feature builds on the mapping data that Apple has been collecting for several years. Arriving with iOS 13, it lets users tap on a spot on Apple Maps and get a 360-degree image of that location.

If nothing else, it highlights just how far Apple Maps has come from the bad old days of 2012. That was the year the service launched, and was so broken that Tim Cook had to publicly apologize for it! Things have certainly evolved since then…

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