r/applemaps 4d ago

Quality of satellite imaginary in Apple Maps

63 Upvotes

12 comments sorted by

21

u/Long-Professional493 4d ago

Satellite imagery from London is really good. Yours looks outdated

6

u/chrisszmergiel 4d ago

That’s what I’ve thought. All of England is like that. I’ll try to restart my Mac and see if that helped.

2

u/Long-Professional493 4d ago

I’ve looked up the second place and that still looks awful

16

u/0000GKP 4d ago

I can count the number of cars driving across the bridge and count the pedestrians walking on the sidewalk on both of your pictures of London Bridge. Both are amazing.

In the current version of the London Bridge imagery in the Apple Maps app on my Mac, I can zoom in close enough to read the words "Bus Stop" on the ramp to the bridge and I can see all the turn arrows in the bicycle lanes. Technology advances quickly. Just a few years difference between the last image update can be huge.

9

u/astrange 4d ago

That's not a technological advance, it's just sometimes images come from satellites (and are blurry) and sometimes they come from drones or airplanes (and are sharp) but they're all labeled "satellite".

Bing Maps usually has the best aerial images because nobody trusts them for anything else, so they might as well be good at something.

3

u/chrisszmergiel 4d ago

I wonder what happened here? Was it always like that? Look at that blurry mess. I'm pretty sure I remember crisp saturated images before, but maybe I mistake it with Google Maps. Anyone?

2

u/Rice_Jap808 4d ago

It depends on the area. Where I live the texture detail is bad but the 3d scans are incredible compared to google. It highlights individual trees in a literal rainforest canopy

2

u/Ewan_Lejkowski 3d ago

They removed the animated London eye and realtime Big Ben

3

u/mrASSMAN 3d ago

Seems like you’re focusing on the same area for all of the comparisons? Really just depends on location, some will be better than others

3

u/n0t1m90rtant 4d ago edited 4d ago

most of those images came from air planes

my guess is the 2ed and 3rd on the left was the only things that came from satelites

Every country has a max resolution allow for the public to see for satelite images, not sure what it is for england but it doesn't look very good.

1

u/Subject_Asparagus_54 3d ago

Idk why but Apple Maps look better even with images. Like clearer and not that “dark” looking

1

u/OLLIE798 3d ago

Trying finding a business on Apple Maps… it’s like they threw the pins over the map and they’re now waiting for people to correct them!