What are the advantages / disadvantages of Bing maps over Map Kit on iOS

Question

Microsoft have recently released a Bing maps objective c component.

See here and here

They mention that have less restrictive terms:

We think you will find that the terms of use are less restrictive than what you find with the Apple Map Kit, with no sacrifice in functionality.

What exactly does that mean? Can we now save the map images in our app for offline use, for example?

• What other advantages are there?
• What are the disadvantages of using Bing maps over map kit?

Answer 1

I can't speak for any advantages but that's only because I haven't tried it yet - I'm planning to in the future :)

However, I can think of a few disadvantages -

1) A user excepts a map on an app to have a certain look and feel that they're used to with Apple's map component. Changing this will make the app less familiar and therefore less immediately usable. Bing would have to be a giant leap forward in it's usability and it's feature set for this to be offset.

2) The Apple map components are already shipped with the iPhone - they're probably already loaded in memory as well. This means to use a third party map library means you will have a larger app that will take longer to startup.

3) Apple's components have been tried and tested for years now - Bing's library is relatively new. Obviously this will change over time and they will eventually both become mature libraries but right now, I prefer to trust the older codebase with it's known bugs and many fixes :)

4) This is a tiny one - I have no problems with the apple restrictions so less restrictive terms isn't a real selling point for me (though I do appreciate this will be different for different users and use cases).

But like I said I'm perfectly willing to give Bing a go :)

Answer 2

I find it surprising that nobody has yet mentioned the most obvious difference, besides the licensing terms, which is that Map Kit uses Google Maps imagery and data (or that of their partners), whereas the Bing Maps component uses Microsoft imagery and data (or that of their partners).

There are several factors to consider when comparing the two:

• Completeness and accuracy of the map data
• Precision
• How often it gets updated
• The resolution of imagery
• ...

There are also more subjective preferences of things like the style of map labelling etc. Notice that the 41latitude link previously posted by Jano compares the previous road style of Bing Maps. Most parts of the world (with the exception of UK and Japan) now use the "Lavender" road style in Bing Maps, as described here: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/12/15/announcing-v1-1-of-the-new-map-style.aspx

From my experience, neither Google Maps or Bing Maps is consistently better in quality across the whole world, but there are certainly regional variations in which one is clearly better than the other. If your application is designed for use in only a certain geographic area (in a particular country, only in urban areas... etc.), then I recommend that you look at what the two providers offer for that particular area. Of course, both providers have a rolling update programme, so just because one is better today does not necessarily mean that it will still be best tomorrow...

I've made a couple of blog posts in the past comparing Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Open Street Maps in the UK that you might find interesting to demonstrate the sort of things to look for (inluding incorrectly labelled or missing roads, routing directions that take you down pedestrian-only routes...):

• http://alastaira.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/mappa-mercia-demonstrating-the-power-of-open-street-maps/
• http://alastaira.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/open-street-maps-vs-ordnance-survey-a-k-a-the-mystery-of-birkbeck-road/
• http://alastaira.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/google-maps-vs-bing-maps-vs-osm-responsiveness-of-data-corrections/

Answer 3

I just ported a small application to Bing Maps and it's as easy as removing the MapKit imports and using the Bing classes. The API is nearly the same, sometimes the names change, like addAnnotations becomes addMarkers, and things like that.

Screen went black when I added 1000 pins, that seems to be the limit. There is no reason to do that really, just testing the performance. :P This happened using a developer key. Other than that, the maps are fast

I sea a lot of features here: Bing Maps Platform Features, like pushpin clustering, but I saw no mention of that grepping the docs. I don't understand why Apple or Bing doesn't implement k-means clustering, it's not a big effort. Until then, you have to do it yourself.

So short story, and without doing much testing, it's the same thing. I expected some extra candy to attract developers, but I don't have any reason to quit using Google maps.

I even like more the labeling style of Google maps.