This may just be my bubble, but even among my iPhone-owning friends, I haven't seen a single person use Apple Maps in Europe, so I wouldn't be surprised if the efforts to improve the map data have been more focused on the US.

German here and me and my wife almost exclusively use Apple Maps, mainly because it looks and feels nicer. The differences in navigation are miniscule, but if we want to really check the traffic before we start we do a quick glance at Google maps. One difference in navigation we noticed is, that Apple Maps gives some small local streets - those just one revel above "Feldwege" (agricultural/forestry roads) - more weight than they should have. They are not really "single track" (almost unheard of in Germany) but come close, with no lane delineation dashes, etc.

I’m in Europe. I use it as part of Apple CarPlay for all my navigation and I think it’s much better than Google Maps (for car navigation, at least)

European here. Been using Apple Maps exclusively for the best part of a decade now.

I changed to it for car navigation. It's a less cluttered interface and integrates better with voice control than Google maps. I still use Google to find out what's around me in a city, which is probably where the money is.

I'm from Europe and I use it 99% of the time. I find the UI in satnav mode much better (cleaner and readable) than the one Google Maps has. The only time I use Google Maps is when I really want to find something that's not in Apple Maps or when I want to read reviews without fumbling with the web browser.

The reason is that Google are highly commercialized first on thier maps, while Apple focused on major markets. E.g. I can remember the times like 2017, when Apple maps was as rocky as possible, but they were working fine in Shenzhen with matching chines to transcriptions, while Google maps sucked at scale there.

I've used it quite a lot in Europe - specifically for walking directions in cities. I prefer Apple Maps for walking directions, especially paired with the watch - the data is good and the UX with the watch is excellent.

It’s quite good in both Spain and UK. Better at public transport than Google Maps.

I want to use Apple Maps instead of Google's apps, I'm in Canada.

Apple have been promising bicycle support in Canada since iOS 14. Bike paths and itineraries still aren't there.

It's the same with public transit, which is unsynchronized or unavailable depending on the city.

Apple Maps will show business informations and schedules, but only pull information from Yelp, which no one here uses. The app will guide you to businesses that have closed or moved out, and will show you photos and menus that date 5+ years.

It's not an issue of software quality unfortunately, but one of negligence on the service side.

My wife used Apple Maps for a while here in the UK and driving in Europe. The results varied between amusing and traumatic. No issues ever with Google Maps since she swapped (but I know from experience it's not perfect). Apple maps would send her over tertiary roads through mountain passes that were snowed out, instead of salted/gritted primary roads, would show major highway junctions wildly (dangerously) inaccurately and showed areas that had lots of properly mettled roads as open countryside with no thoroughfares at all.

Europe here. We have a friend who always gets lost and for that we call him "Apple Maps".

Here in the UK, Apple maps is the only app I use. I dont even use the inbuilt car gps.

Ireland, on Apple Maps for the past decade more or less. Works fine. Once it led me to the wrong place because someone “contributed” that information to the map.

In Germany it's pretty decent, the only thing I still open Google Maps for is to occasionally check reviews or store opening hours.

I can’t reply to sibling comment, but the Apple Maps native integration in the Apple ecosystem is far far ahead of Google’s. Their CarPlay, Watch, notifications, island etc integration shows how all apps should feel, but not even Google can be bothered to have the integration right.

to be frank, I have a feeling that Google has more / better data.

Well, back in the days, it took Apple 3 years to fix umlauts in PDF documents with VoiceOver. It is pretty much normal that you're being treated as a second-class user if you are not residing in the US. It is a form of digital colonialism. Learn english, move to the US, or suffer the death of a thausand cuts.

I use Apple Maps all the time if I can, it's just better at being a navigator, but the search UX sucks giant salty balls

in Japan apple maps is commonly used.

I use it all the time, because its driving directions interface is so much better than Google, it's not even funny. But it is overall worse than Google Maps.

And they are planning to make it even worse with ads, so.

I believe Apple Maps uses Open Street Map data for the mapping, which it augments with its own data collection. So it shouldn’t be worse than other vendors, like TomTom, who use the same dataset. Google has its own map data that’s probably better than OSM, but I think it probably has the same bias of USA + large international metros focus as Apple.

Google Maps is definitely still a little better but I find the delta is nowhere near as wide as it used to be. The main problem with Apple Maps I find today is that their data on business listings and locations tends to be a little older than Google’s, sometimes even a year or more out of date. So if a business or meeting place you’re trying to get to has moved recently you can wind up in the wrong spot.