Apple began rolling out a new, more feature-rich version of Apple Maps in 2018, but at the time it was limited to only a few select parts of Northern California. This year, it has been extending the new Maps out to more of the country — and now, with the addition of more Midwest and Western states, it finally blankets more than half of the U.S.
Apple says that the updated version of Maps will come to the rest of the country before the end of the year. Today, the rollout includes states like Colorado, Utha, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregan, Montana, Washington, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and parts of Illinois and Indiana. As is always the case with rollouts like this, you may not see the new features right away.
The new Apple Maps is pretty significantly different than the previous version — and that largely has to do with the fact that it contains data collected by Apple itself. Previously, Apple relied on data from third parties. The result of the Apple-collected data is that Maps is much faster, and Apple can update it much quicker. Apple added most of the Northeastern states to the new Maps earlier in the year.
According to a blog post from Justin O’Beirne, who has been covering the rollout, the new Maps now covers over half of the U.S., and around two-thirds of the population.
The new Apple Maps doesn’t just look better — it adds a range of extra features to the service too. Notable additions include the Look Around feature, which is similar to Google’s Street View, and Siri Natural Language Guidance, which changes how Siri guides users by using more helpful phrases like “turn left at the next traffic light,” instead of phrases like “in 1,000 feet turn left.”
The new Apple Maps will continue rolling out over the next few months, and as mentioned, is expected to cover the entire U.S. by the end of 2019. After that, it’s expected that Apple will roll the new Maps out to other parts of the world, though it’s currently unknown how long that may take.