More cities can now be viewed using Apple Maps' gorgeous 3D "detailed city experience"
Apple has continued to work hard to improve Apple Maps which it first released as the default navigation app for iPhone with the release of iOS 6 in September 2012. Plenty has been written about the issues that Apple had at first which led CEO Tim Cook to recommend that iPhone users turn to third-party apps like Google Maps and Waze until Apple Maps was running at the same high standard that Apple's customers were used to experiencing from Apple products.
Apple dropped the third-party mapping company it was using and decided to build its own mapping software from scratch. This plan worked beautifully as more and more iPhone users have turned to Apple Maps as their first option for navigation and have installed Google Maps as a backup on their iPhone models. A couple of years ago, we pointed out that Apple was the first to use traffic lights and stop signs as landmarks to help drivers know when to make a turn.
In 2021, Apple started releasing its "detailed city experience" as part of iOS 15. Four cities were part of these absolutely gorgeous-looking 3D images when the feature was first disseminated by Apple. Over time, Apple offered it for navigating in 22 cities and has just added it to two more cities in Texas, Dallas and Houston.
The feature not only includes detailed 3D maps but also shows "...elevation details across a city, new road labels, and hundreds of custom-designed landmarks like Coit Tower in San Francisco, Dodger Stadium in LA, the Statue of Liberty in NYC, and the Royal Albert Hall in London, with more to come." There is also a "beautiful nighttime mode with a moonlit glow [that] activates at dusk." The Houston, Texas "detailed city experience" includes custom-designed 3D views of NRG Stadium, Minute Maid Park, Toyota Center, and Shell Energy Stadium.
The cities that currently can be viewed using the "detailed city experience" on Apple Maps include:
- Atlanta, GA
- Berlin, Germany
- Boston, MA
- Chicago, IL
- Dallas, TX
- Hamburg, Germany
- Houston, TX
- Las Vegas, NV
- London, United Kingdom
- Los Angeles, CA
- Melbourne, Australia
- Miami, FL
- Montréal, Canada
- Munich, Germany
- New York, NY
- Paris, France
- Philadelphia, PA
- San Diego, CA
- San Francisco Bay Area, CA
- Seattle, WA
- Sydney, Australia
- Toronto, Canada
- Vancouver, Canada
- Washington, DC
You can see the difference between Apple Map's "detailed city experience" and its standard 3D view by looking at the two screenshots below. The first one shows the enhanced 3D imagery for Houston while the one underneath shows the regular 3D view for Denver.
Houston with the Apple Maps detailed city experience
What Denver looks like using the standard 3D view on Apple Maps
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