Apple Maps: an alternative worth considering for your website
Apple Maps has quickly gone from a new kid on the block to an established mapping solution. It now provides a viable alternative to Google Maps for adding maps to your website as well as to your mobile apps, in addition to a number of APIs for working with maps and geographic data.
Why might you want to switch? First, it will probably work out cheaper (and the pricing is much more transparent). If you are already using MapKit in your apps, you’ll find the web version very similar; and even if you are not, the maps are good to work with as a developer, with many of the features you’ll want already baked in.
And if privacy is your thing: there’s a reason DuckDuckGo chose MapKit JS for the mapping in their search results…
We’ll be looking at: - Pros and cons of Apple vs Google Maps - A comparison of pricing - Embedding maps with MapKit JS - Plotting and clustering of markers - Geocoding addresses - Searching for places and points of interest - Getting travel directions - Generating static map images
Bonus content: a brief look at some other Apple services you’ll have access to (e.g. the WeatherKit API)
