And I ask Google Maps to direct me home and it points me at Home Depot.

Frankly both Apple Maps and Google Maps could stand some UI improvements. Google Maps won't shut up, throws up some bizarre progress bar even on mute, has mystery meat navigation, and replaces the map with some giant material design-style empty space when it decides I've "arrived" (even if I haven't).

Apple Maps used to make it hard to pan around, but that's been fixed in iOS 10. Instead now it has terrible bugs in landscape mode, and has adopted the "you've arrived, now you don't need the map any more!" behavior.

If they just let the map be a map...But anyways I'm old enough to remember pulling over to pull out the giant paper map in San Francisco, so I can't get too upset. Either one has made my life so much better.

> And I ask Google Maps to direct me home and it points me at Home Depot

On iOS? You can tell Google your home/work addresses in settings, I ask for directions/transit home multiple times most weeks and it works. On Android they can figure them out, but on iOS they don't have enough permissions and you'll have to tell them - but when you do this works.

Google could request permission to access my contacts, which would give them access to my contact card, which has that information...

Instead they want me to sign into Google and it wants that info to then be stored on Google's servers.

While this is a war of anecdotes, I can safely say this has never happened to me. If I search for coffee shops around me, I see...coffee shops around me. The new redesign of maps for iOS 10 has -- at least to me -- a much better UX than the current Google Maps app does, also.

To pile on: all of you guys reside in the US. Google Maps its data is much more up to date compared to Apple Maps in most of the world. Navigating in SE-Asia with Gmaps is a breeze. Apple Maps constantly sent me to places, only to have the current address owner (and Google Maps) tell me that the business I was searching for moved. Same in Europe. Doesn't hurt that Google Maps has public transit integrated pretty much around the globe. Apple Maps currently only has that in 10 cities.. screw that noise.

Yup, outside of the US is definitely where Google Maps data shines. Obviously just another anecdotal experience, but I've had Google instantly find places in Italy that Apple said didn't exist or gave a location very far from what we were looking for.

On the other hand in Tajikistan Google Maps is beyond awful, even in Dushanbe. It regularly placed pins kilometres from real location. Openstreetmap on the other hand was mostly fine.

All of them are far from perfect, but vastly better than what we had before.

Apple Maps is absolutely way behind in non-US cities; I happen to like Apple's UX more, but I wouldn't recommend anyone switch if Google is better in their area. I'm quite aware I'm in the area that Apple is arguably strongest in, although they're pretty good around all of the US now. People also have an idea of How Much Apple Maps Sucks that's somewhat frozen in time -- for instance, while their transit is way behind Google's, they're in 33 cities now, not 10. (And their transit maps tend to be more detailed than Google's in my experience, giving you specific exits from larger transit stations to take.)

At any rate, sure, Apple Maps isn't as good yet. They launched years after Google Maps and with a much smaller team. (There are some interesting politics behind that, from what I've heard; just say that the fiasco of the Maps launch is the primary reason Scott Forstall is no longer with the company.) The team now numbers over 1000, from what I've heard, and I expect the gap to continue to close -- but it's going to continue to take a while.

I just checked, Apple can't find me transit directions from my city (a single one stop train ride from London) and a major London train/tube station. Nor can it find me bus directions around my city. I don't remember when Google added this stuff, 5+ years ago?

It's not just outside of the U.S. I live in Manhattan and this happens to me all the time.