Some good news if you don’t really care for driving with Apple Maps, which seems to be just about everybody: with the latest iOS 12 update, you can now run third-party map apps from Apple CarPlay. Yes, including the objectively better Google Maps. This is good news.
As reported by our friends at Gizmodo and also The Verge, Apple CarPlay isn’t just limited to Apple’s own mapping app anymore with the latest update. If you have the latest Google Maps, version 5.0, you can run that off your car’s infotainment system now via your iPhone or whatever, something you could not do before. You may have to move the icons around to see it on your home screen.
It’s a sweet move, because—at least in my experience and that of many others—Google Maps is a more straightforward, accurate, easy-to-use navigation system than Apple’s, which I’ve seen give some pretty baffling driving decisions before. If your stuff is all up to date, there’s basically no reason to keep using Apple Maps on CarPlay now.
Even better news, according to The Verge: Waze is also working on a way to operate in Apple CarPlay, so if you depend on it to get crowdsourced data on speed traps or other road hazards, it’s about to get easier to use from inside your car.
Technology! It isn’t all bad.