Apple Maps in Sequoia and iOS 18
Building on the existing Guides feature, Maps in iOS 18 lets you save places with a quick tap of the + button on their Maps listing.
Saved places are accessible from the new Library menu, where you’ll also find your Guides, Pinned locations, and more.
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A great component of saving a place is that you can then add a personal notes to it.
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A big focus of iOS 18’s Maps update is better serving hikers.
It will be interesting to compare this with the more specialized hiking apps, but I can’t see why I would prefer Maps. It’s not going to have the navigation features or the community.
Apple Maps supports custom routes in iOS 18, so you can plan out a specific hiking route that you want to take. At a trailhead, you can tap on the “Create a Custom Route” option to initiate the custom routing experience.
From there, you tap on the map to begin setting points for your route, and the Maps app will provide length and elevation details. You can also have the Maps app finish a route automatically by tapping on the Reverse, Out and Back, or Close Loop options.
These features are mostly limited to the U.S., but topographic maps are also available in Japan, according to fine print on Apple’s website.
Apple blew away the saved places I set when Maps was young. They have a long record of destroying user data. Why would I trust their new “saved places”?
Hidden in iOS 18 is much-needed, long-requested update to Apple Maps. There’s finally a “Search here” button that makes it far easier to find what you’re looking for in places that aren’t your current location.
In earlier versions of iOS, if you search nearby for, say, gas stations or restaurants in Apple Maps, and then drag the map to another location with your finger, it will usually (but not always) auto-populate the new area with search results for the same request.
Did anyone watch WWDC 2024 session 10097 “Unlock the power of places with MapKit”?
Am I the only one who thinks that this was more of a really weird sales pitch, with very little actual developer value, and much less usable technical details?
I think this is an iOS 18 thing but Maps actually has a very low-resolution offline map of the entire world stored on your phone. You might ask what a map that doesn’t work on viewports smaller than 100km would be useful for. Well, it gives you your own little flight tracker[…]
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