‘A new navigation experience’: Apple’s flash feature coming to iPhone

It’s been Apple’s Achille's heel – the pre-installed feature on iPhones some users simply refuse to use. A huge update might change that.

Apple has relaunched one of its biggest iPhone features which should – finally – make it more competitive with arch nemesis Google.

From today, Australia is being given access to the much revamped Apple Maps app. The company bills it as the “best way to navigate the world”.

Many of the new features – including more detail, public transport information and traffic jam date, and a Street View equivalent – mean Apple’s app is now on a par with the Google Maps goliath.

Apple is spruiking features which it claims are ahead of its rivals including Flyover, which allows users to get like Superman and swoop over a number of Australian city and locations created by stitching together thousands of photos.

Apple is also making much of its privacy up policy which it says is “central to the Maps experience”.

Apple Maps’ new Flyover feature allows users to swoop around cities.

Apple Maps now on par with Google Maps

Despite its leading position in phones in Australia, which data analysts Statista puts at 56 per cent, Apple’s Maps app has struggled to gain as many users as rival Google Maps.

While usage data of the various apps is hard to pin down, research based on results from analytics firm ComScore suggests that in the US – where Apple has a similar handset share to Australia – iPhone users were twice as likely to plump for Google Maps over Apple’s Maps. That’s despite Apple Maps being already installed on new handsets.

Part of the reason for that lacklustre response to previous iterations of Maps will have been the poorer user experience offered compared to Google.

But the firm says that’s all about to change in the new version.

“Apple Maps is the best way to explore and navigate the world, all while protecting your privacy,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s Australian head of services, said.

“The map has been rebuilt from the ground up, with better navigation, richer detail, more accurate information for places, and remarkable features that only Apple can deliver.”

Rather than relying on existing maps, Apple has mapped all of Australia from scratch for the revamped App.

New Apple Maps images of Sydney’s CBD.

Compared to Google Maps.

Apple’s answer to Street View

It’s also taken photos of just about every street in Australia – with cameras attached to cars or in backpacks – for its Look Around feature.

It’s similar to Google’s Street View. Apple Maps automatically shows the photo of the thoroughfare as a pane which users can then expand to the whole page. Like Street View, Look Around can be viewed in the full 360 degrees.

All the favourite locations are there – major CBDs, suburbs and regional towns. But Apple has gone further afield with the outback town of Cooper Pedy available to view on Look Around as well as the entire Nullarbor Highway.

Flyover is talked of as a unique feature which offers “photo realistic immersive 3D view of select metro centres”.

“Users can move their device through space to experience a city from above, or explore in high resolution as they zoom, pan, tilt, and rotate around the city and its landmarks.”

Coober Pedy as seen by Google Street View.

Coober Pedy on Apple Maps app.

Like Google, Apple now offers real time traffic congestion data on its maps as well as public transport information.

The audible travel direction feature, which guides people to a destination, has also been updated with “more natural sounding directions”.

So, for instance, rather than Siri telling drivers to “turn left in 200 metres,” the automated voice might now say: “At the next traffic light, turn left.”

Apple has made much of privacy features on the remodelled app.

“Privacy is central to the Maps experience,” the company has said. No sign in is required to use the app and Apple employs a process it calls “fuzzing” to obscure the user from the mapping data gleaned from their device.

Apple will be hoping the features on the app will be enough to persuade people who happily use Apple as their phone to use Apple Maps as their mapping tool too.