> I don't understand why the Apple Maps team has been so slow on features
Have they ? Every major iOS update has major updates to the Maps app.
It is slowly bridging the gap with Google Maps and the issues are still mainly with POIs which Apple arguably can never fix. Unless of course they do their own Street View and invent their own captcha system.
Google Maps gets new features all the time, it's weird Apple waits to give Maps an update annually. Apple would be better served decoupling a lot of the default apps from OS level updates.
It also seems to reset fixes.
One example: when asking for cycling directions into the city from where I live, Google maps tried to send me down a staircase in a local park. I notified google and it was fixed a few months later. Now it's back…
I've seen it for other fixes too.
I thought Captcha was primarily used for model training and not actual POI parsing.
Regardless there are plenty of third parties who are in this space that companies like Apple license their data from. There's no reason someone can't compete with apple on POI quality.
It is used for model training. But the model recognises the street names and numbers which it can use to exactly position businesses. One of the biggest issue with Apple POIs are that they are often in incorrect (and sometimes ridiculous) locations.
Apple already licenses its data from many providers e.g. Foursquare, Yelp but that only gets you so far. Google is much further ahead largely through their own technology.
Have they ? Every major iOS update has major updates to the Maps app.
It is slowly bridging the gap with Google Maps and the issues are still mainly with POIs which Apple arguably can never fix. Unless of course they do their own Street View and invent their own captcha system.