Poor Apple Maps. It has been the whipping boy of the Internet for several years. Here is my favorite shot at Apple Maps from last season’s Silicon Valley.

Scene from HBO's Silicon Valley. I do not own the rights.

For the first year after Apple Maps released, I kept Google maps on my home screen. However, after that Apple Maps improved enough to work for me. Moreover, the killer feature with Apple Maps is the Siri integration. I can be driving down the road, press the button for Siri and say “get directions home” or “get directions to Hippieland Granola Factory” and Siri does the rest of the work for me. It looks it up, opens the location in Apple Maps, and then initiates directions. This has saved my bacon plenty.

I still think this is a function of where you live. With me being in California, I suspect the Apple Maps problems got fixed a lot sooner than it would for someone who lives somewhere more remote. Nevertheless, if you gave up hope in Apple Maps, you should go look at it again. How-to Geek just did a comparison of the two services and found Apple and Google maps were a lot closer than they expected.