If you’ve ever taken a ride on an unfamiliar city’s subway or transit system, you know how confusing it can be to know which specific exit to use to find the right above ground location you need to get to where you’re going.
In the upcoming iOS 9, Apple Maps aims to help you out with a subtle yet extremely useful feature: it will tell you which exit to take when you’re using the Transit option, also new to iOS 9.
Taking the best exit from the subway is important in big cities like San Francisco or New York, and might make the difference between getting to your destination on time or missing another above ground connection.
Currently, Apple Maps users must tap over to a rival platform like Google Maps or a third party app like Transit, to get any kind of public transportation navigation help.
iOS 9 is adding data for buses, subways, and other forms of public transit. With this new feature, it leaps ahead of the competition, which as of now won’t tell you which specific exit you should leave by.
Apple Maps will also get some Siri functionality, letting you invoke Apple’s personal assistant to ask for directions, instead of having to type or dictate your destination into the Maps app itself. There’s also a new feature called Nearby, which will show you several categories and nearby places to help you find stuff you want or need.
You’ll be able to get public transportation directions in Apple Maps starting in Baltimore, Chicago, Berlin, London, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington DC. More cities should come online thereafter.
Source: Business Insider
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
6 responses to “Find your way out of the subway faster with Apple Maps”
How can you possibly say that “it leaps ahead of the competition” when the competition is so far ahead when it comes to mapping? I love Apple stuff, but the day it fell out with Google Maps set it many many years behind. I will start to take notice of Apple Maps the day it can give me public transport directions without calling on a third party app here in UK.
That’s iOS 9, right? Coming this fall.
Yes. I’m sure iOS9 will be wonderful, and I am looking forward to using some of the awesome new features. When it comes to mapping, however, I have seen nothing that suggests it will leap ahead of the competition. Sure, it may be better than what it is now, but i stand by my claim that Google Maps is a better overall mapping service, especially for users outside the U.S.
I’d love to be proved wrong in iOS9. If not, why not give users the option to choose a default mapping system? Now that would be amazing!
I’m totally with you on that last. :)
Love to see how they deal with Paris’s Châtelet Metro station.
I think it all depends on what you want to use a mapping system for. If you just want to drive or walk from A – B then either system is good, and yes, I agree that Apple has a nice clean interface. Where it falls down, for me anyway, is when you need to use any public transport system.
Yes i know some cities in USA are planned to be integrated into Apple Maps, but I don’t live in USA. I do a lot of travelling around Europe and rely on public transport to get me around. So therefore public transport would be an important function in any mapping system for me. So lets perform an experiment:
Lets assume that i am a stranger to my home town of Liverpool and I want to get to Wirral Country Park (about 15 miles away) I ask Apple Maps, it immediately offers the App store to download some Apps, but which one? I’m a stranger, so I don’t know if i need busses, trains or ferries. (I could select Google Maps as an option, but that sort of defeats the object)
Anyway, asking Google Maps the same question immediately displays the public transport options, without having to download any apps.
So this is what I want in a mapping system, and for me, Apple Maps just doesn’t cut it at the moment. I’m sure at some stage it will, but right now I believe the best option would be for Apple to give users the option of what Maps should be used as default, I would choose Google.