Apple Planning to Expand Maps App's 'Look Around' Feature (2025)

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Monday August 12, 2024 9:10 am PDT by Hartley Charlton

Apple Maps is seemingly preparing for a significant expansion of its "Look Around" feature to compete more aggressively with Google's Street View.

Apple's "Look Around" feature offers high-resolution, interactive street-level imagery in the Maps app. To date, its scope has been relatively limited, mainly concentrated in major metropolitan areas and a few select regions worldwide.

A recent discovery by X user Ryan Fae, shared with MacRumors, reveals that ‌Apple Maps‌' vector tile format, used in the beta version of the web-based platform, leaks information about future Look Around coverage areas. This information, found within the Maps app's underlying code, outlines a more extensive network of planned coverage that's far beyond what is currently available.

The leaked data shows that in the United States, Look Around coverage will no longer be confined to major cities. Instead, it will expand to include major highways, smaller cities, and rural areas. The findings also suggest that new countries are set to gain Look Around coverage as well, including Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, China, Belarus, Turkey, Bulgaria, Mexico, and Slovakia. The expansion into some of these places aligns with sightings of Apple mapping vehicles in 2023. For many of these regions, this would represent the first time high-quality street-level imagery has been made available, as Google's Street View either lacks coverage or is of low quality in these areas.

Tag: Apple Maps

[ 31 comments ]

Top Rated Comments

Nugget

9 hours ago at 09:14 am

I think this is great news. Street view is really the one thing that still sends me to Google Maps sometimes over Apple Maps.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

MasterControlProgram

8 hours ago at 09:31 am

One thing Street View will probably always have going for it is you can access older images of an area. You're not going to see a massive difference now, but in 50 years time if Google keep combing the streets and recording the changes it will add up to quite a powerful time machine to watch an area change over the years.

I'd love to see Look Around do something similar, but Apple haven't even got matching coverage comparable to Street View yet, let alone a history of changes. I hope Apple really make the effort to catch up to Google.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

binaryfuneral

6 hours ago at 12:11 pm

I want to see maps work more like a traditional GPS when using CarPlay. I like being able to see upcoming streets when the vehicle is in motion like a traditional GPS.

Ummmm. I have news for you....

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

MozMan68

7 hours ago at 10:58 am

Maybe they can focus on making maps work correctly. I gave apple maps a chance this weekend and it took me across the street from the address i provided it. ?

Yeah...this NEVER happens on Google Maps or other mapping apps... :rolleyes:

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jgreg728

8 hours ago at 09:26 am

Great news! Look Around is way nicer than Street View. Definitely need more of it now that Maps is on the web too.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jhollington

8 hours ago at 09:35 am

The leaked data shows that in the United States, Look Around coverage will no longer be confined to major cities. Instead, it will expand to include major highways, smaller cities, and rural areas.

Something that I found quite shocking when Look Around first came to Canada was that Apple had done exactly that up here. Granted, there are far fewer highways up here than in the United States, but Apple had taken the trouble to record nearly every mile of every major and minor highway south of the tree line, even up into obscure small towns in Northern Ontario. When Look Around went live, it was for pretty much ALL of Canada, not just a few major cities.

I figured it was only a matter of time before it repeated that experiment elsewhere.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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