I like the interface of Apple Maps, but where I live (Turkey) the map data itself is very limited and buggy. It shows a literally 15-min walk as 2 days 16 hours by taking me through Greece and the islands instead of a simple crosswalk, for example.
I was a big fan when I lived in London, but I recently moved away to a new town that I don't know very well and on Friday it sent me on a 1hr walk that should have taken 25 minutes. When I looked at the route it took me afterwards, it made absolutely no sense at all.
I'm in the US but outside California. I find Apple Maps has better estimates for directions, but Google Maps is much more likely to have small businesses in its data set. I've also had experiences where it makes me drive across the street from my destination/1 block or two away
I want to like it because, as you pointed out, it's a cleaner interface
Yeah. I'm in Austin, which probably means my local data gets more attention than most
They do have a mechanism for filing corrections from within the app, which I've used a couple times and it seems to actually result in fixes, which is great
Hopefully they give more priority to a wider set of areas in the future
I like the zoom level to information ratio a lot on Apple Maps, especially in the UK. It’s not very good in my country so I reluctantly use Waze instead when needed.
Definitely helps to be in a major metro area. Even then, while I think Portland has pretty good detail, it was noticeably improved when I drove through the Bay Area last weekend. When that level of detail is available everywhere (in the US, at least), Google may have something to worry about.
For me it's just a cleaner, simpler, less ad-infested version of Google Maps