As much as I prefer Google Maps's routing functionality, this is one thing that admittedly Apple Maps gets right in its UI; when you open it, there's a map, a search box, and my search history.

Google Maps used to be that, until PMs took over pushing random new features. No, Google, I did not open your maps app so I could see "what's new", and have no desire to do that. Even the search history is broken -- it now uses some inscrutable logic to decide whether or not a previous search is worthy of inclusion into the past searches list.