Nice clean Yahoo Japan Maps Asagaya: this is the real dope 
Apple Maps Japan Asagaya: Point of Interest Death 
Google Maps Japan Asagaya: if you want your company logo on our maps… pay us up front!
My site doesn’t get many hits from Reddit but I always check new incoming ones just to see what the conversation is. Reddit is a parallel universe. Sometimes it intersects with my reality, most of the time it’s a distant unfathomable body. The latest ripple is about Apple Maps Japan cartography and how dope the detail is compared to the US version.
A closer reading reveals it is not the generic Point of Interest (POI) details so much as the company logo POI used for store chains, convenience stores and such. Those poor Reddit kids don’t know what they’re missing: they don’t have a Japanese App store account and cannot download and use Yahoo Japan Maps which is the real dope. Yahoo Japan Maps smooth clean uncluttered cartography pioneered the company logo POI thing and does it way better than Apple and Google ever will.
A kind note to Reddit map commentators: Apple Maps Japan, especially Apple Maps Japan dark mode, is not dope. It is death by Point of Interest. The same is true for the US version of Apple Maps 2.0. Justin O’Bierne, not my favorite cartographer by a long shot, has a very valuable observation in his review of the Apple Maps 2.0 USA reboot: the new detail is great, but it’s all surface. Dig into the Point of Interest information and it’s the same hot crappy mess of bad unvetted 3rd party data you find in Apple Maps Japan.
Until Apple fixes the POI mess, which Apple could easily do in Japan by hiring Zenrin, Apple Maps 2.0 will just be a pretty postcard with illegible scribbled crap on the back.
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