WWDC 2022 is a special WWDC for Apple Maps: it marks the ten year anniversary of Apple Maps’s debut.

Ordinarily, this would be cause to expect some big announcements. Then again, Apple Maps’s biggest changes ever came just last year—and they were several years in the making. So there’s reason to believe that Apple’s Maps-related announcements might be fewer and more subdued this time around.

On top of that, Apple is expanding and maintaining more Maps features than ever before...

...in more countries than ever before:

And the coverage of these features is becoming increasingly fragmented and uneven, with only a handful of areas actually getting every Apple Maps feature:

So perhaps this year’s announcements will focus more on expanding Apple Maps’s existing features than on announcing new ones?

If that’s the case, most Apple Maps users are likely to be very pleased—especially given that “expand existing features to my area” was the single most requested new Apple Maps feature back in our April poll:

So without further ado, let’s look at a few of the things that Apple might announce at this year’s WWDC, starting with the likeliest...

New Map Expansions for the Rest of 2022

Both in 2020 and 2021, Apple teased the next countries to receive its new, in-house map data during its WWDC keynote—and I expect Apple to follow suit this year. (In fact, I’d be very surprised if this isn’t Apple’s first Maps-related announcement during the keynote.)

Apple is currently testing a new map expansion for France, Monaco, and New Zealand (i.e., Expansion #15). And looking at past years, there seems to be room for at least two more expansions later this year:

So which countries might be next?

At present, two trios of countries seem most likely: (1) The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and (2) Switzerland, Austria, and Liechtenstein:

Given their earlier vehicle collection dates, the edge here goes to the Benelux countries—but if you look closely at the sequence of Apple’s Pedestrian Image Collection (up to now, the single best predictor of future expansions), it increasingly seems as if Apple is preparing to expand to all six countries simultaneously:

Though Apple has never expanded to six countries simultaneously (the current record is four), these six countries combined aren’t actually that big. Together, they’re roughly the size of Washington State. And if all six were released as a single expansion, they’d be Apple’s fourth smallest to date:

So it seems increasingly plausible that Expansion #16 might include all six countries. And that leaves us with Sweden, Norway, and Finland as the countries likeliest to comprise Expansion #17 after that:

If this is in fact what Apple’s planning, then Apple will be able to announce that it’s expanding to twelve more countries yet this year (e.g., France, Monaco, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Sweden, Norway, and Finland)—with a final country total for 2022 that’s double last year’s:

This makes it look as if Apple is moving really fast, with crazy momentum—but it’s also a bit deceptive because even though Apple is bringing its new map data to so many new countries, it’s actually on track to cover less land area this year than any of the past three (because all of these new countries are relatively small):

In any event, this isn’t the only feature that Apple is likely to announce expansions for during the WWDC keynote...

New “Detailed City Experience” Cities

At last year’s WWDC, Apple announced seven “Detailed City Experience” cities for 2021, “with many more to come next year”:

But with 2022 almost half over, Apple has only shipped three new cities so far this year (Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver).

And on top of this, the number of custom building models shipped per city has also been steadily declining:

In the case of Toronto (one of the latest release’s three cities), it was particularly surprising that the CN Tower—one of Canada’s most recognizable landmarks—didn’t receive a colorful model:

In any event, Apple has shipped ten “Detailed City Experience” cities, total, so far—all during the ten months between early June 2021 and late March 2022.

This tells us that Apple is shipping these at an average of one per month. So at Apple’s current pace, this means we can expect nine more cities—but hopefully more!—yet this year. And given that the most recent cities were released back in March, we’re also probably overdue for a few new ones on the day of the WWDC keynote.

So which cities are likeliest to be next?

If we look for commonalities between all ten cities that Apple has shipped so far, we find four things:

   1. All ten were visited by Apple Maps Backpack Image Collection at least three months before they were released

   2. All ten are covered by Apple’s in-house map data

   3. All ten have “Look Around” coverage

   4. All ten have POI labels in “Look Around”

As it turns out, another eighteen cities (in addition to the ten that Apple has already shipped) also currently have these commonalities—which gives us a shortlist of the cities that Apple might release in the near future:

So out of these eighteen cities, which of them might be released on the day of the WWDC keynote?

If we look at the dates each city was visited by Apple Maps Backpack Image Collection, we see that Apple has had the longest to work on the Australian and American cities that it has visited:

Sydney and Melbourne, in particular, seem the safest bet for the next “Detailed City Experience” cities—especially since late last year, Apple had also teased that they would be receiving AR walking directions in the near future. But I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a handful of American cities announced, particularly Chicago and Boston.¹

Speaking of Chicago and Boston, both cities also received Cycling Directions relatively recently...

Cycling Directions Coverage Across the Entire U.S.

Over the past couple of months, Apple has been rapidly—but quietly—expanding its Cycling Directions coverage across much of the U.S.:

Given the pace of Apple’s expansions, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Apple announce Cycling Directions coverage across the entire U.S. during WWDC.

In any event, it’s surprising that it has taken Apple longer to expand Cycling Directions across the U.S. than it originally took Apple to expand its in-house map data across the U.S.

But another feature that has taken even longer to expand across the U.S. is Look Around...

Expanded U.S. “Look Around” Coverage

As of this month, it has now been three years since Apple published the first Look Around imagery. And in the time since, Apple has only managed to expand it to eighteen metros across the U.S.—with Atlanta being the most recent, back in May 2021:

This is all a bit surprising for three reasons:

1. The pace of Apple’s “Look Around” rollout has been much slower than Google’s “Street View” rollout originally was. For instance, here’s how much of the U.S. was covered by “Street View” just a year and a half after Google published its first imagery:

2. Apple has been driving its Apple Maps vehicles across the U.S. for at least seven years now. And by mid 2019, Apple had already driven most of the U.S.—in some cases, multiple times:

3. Apple has since released Look Around for all of Australia, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and much of Canada. And most of these countries were driven years after Apple began driving the U.S.:

So it seems as if the U.S. is well overdue to see a major Look Around expansion in the near future, perhaps even during the WWDC keynote.

The current theory as to why U.S. coverage has been taking so long is because Apple has been working include POI labels—and that this is a highly manual process (which has since been confirmed to me by multiple “little birdies” with direct knowledge of the process). So one of the biggest questions is: how much of the U.S. Look Around imagery will include POI labels? (Major cities seem a sure bet—but what about medium-sized cities and rural areas?)

Another equally big question is: how many of the U.S. areas that receive Look Around will also receive “Refine Location” and A.R. walking directions?

In any event, Apple may be preparing to announce a bundle of U.S.-focused expansions during the WWDC keynote, including full Cycling, Look Around, Refine Location, and A.R. Walking Directions coverage for the entire U.S.

If true, it’ll help equalize the mix of Apple Maps features available across the U.S., which comprises half of Apple Maps’s global userbase:

So far, we’ve been looking at existing features that Apple might expand—but there are also a number of other new things that Apple might also announce...

Offline Maps

Multiple little birdies have informed me that the Maps team has been working on Offline Maps off-and-on over the past several years—but that technical- and management-related issues have repeatedly held up this feature’s launch (with at least one senior Maps leader being forced out of the Maps team due to the delays).

Given the amount of time Apple has spent working on it, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was the year that Offline Maps was finally launched.

That said, this feature will likely only be available for areas covered by Apple’s new map data.

Indoor Maps of Stadiums, Museums, & Other Venues

In recent weeks, a button to buy tickets has quietly appeared in the POI listings for many stadiums and museums:

On top of that, a disproportionate number of the colorful models appearing in Apple’s “Detailed City Experience” are of stadiums and museums. So given this and the fact that Apple has now mapped most of the world’s (and the U.S.’s) busiest airports, the Maps team may now be moving on to mapping other indoor venues besides malls and airports.

Apple’s Version of Google Maps’s “Local Guides”

Back in December, we saw that Apple employees who had worked on Apple Maps’s 2021 Redesign were gifted a variety of goodies:

One wonders if these gifts also served as a trial run of the rewards and swag that Apple might offer to participants of its own Local Guides program? (“Apple Maps Ambassadors” has a nice ring to it.)

Apple Maps Web Portal

There have been a number of rumors that Apple is preparing to launch its own search engine. This combined with interesting job postings over the past year on Apple’s website may signal that Apple is finally preparing to have something more than a sales pitch at maps.apple.com.

__

1  One other question regarding the “Detailed City Experience”: will aspects of it graduate from the city? In other words, will Apple expand elements of the “Detailed City Experience” widely across regions and countries?

Given how Apple is making the “Detailed City Experience”, the likeliest aspects to be replicated outside of cities include the lane markings, the road elevation data (i.e., 3D overpasses), and possibly the trees (but only alongside roads).

However, given the pace of Apple’s “Detailed City Experience” rollout thus far (10,082 sq mi covered after one year), I don’t think we’re close to seeing any kind of nationwide rollout at this time. Rather, I think Apple is likeliest to start to adding these features first to California (or even just a section of California) and then rolling it out region-by-region, similar to the rollout of Apple’s new map data and cycling directions. ↩︎