After relying on Google Maps for five years, Apple launched its own Maps app in September of 2012 to joyful fanfare that quickly changed to befuddled confusion. The app's maps were buggy, sometimes directing you to drive across bodies of water to get where you wanted to go. It was bad enough that Tim Cook openly apologized for the service. Time has improved the service, but problems reported by users seldom seemed to get fixed ... until recently.
Reddit user heyyoudvd has noticed that Apple has been updating Apple Maps regularly, starting with once a week on Fridays for the past month, before suddenly moving to updating every day within the last week. This one Reddit user has seen more improvements made to Apple Maps data in the last month than in the previous 2 years combined.
The new daily updates are coming at 3 a.m. Eastern time.
Over the past month, Maps were being updated once a week (every Friday) for me, but now, that has improved further. Over the past few days, I've noticed an update occurevery single day at 3am Eastern. At exactly 3am, Apple pushes out new data and corrects many of the problems that users had previously reported. For example, I noticed that if I open the app at 2:59 but then again at 3:01, the map would reload itself, and a bunch of POI corrections and updates would suddenly be present. Every day, a handful of corrections in my area are made (many of which are the ones I reported in the past week), and after just a few days of this, I'm starting to notice a real improvement in my area.
Apple Maps has had a difficult life, from its rough debut to not making an appearance at this year's WWDC due to reported shake ups in the development team. These updates are a step in the right direction. Hopefully when Maps relaunches in iOS 8 we'll be seeing a new side of the navigation app.
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