On April 20, 2020, Apple released “Look Around” imagery for Chicago and many of its Illinois suburbs:

Covering 57% of the population of the Chicago metropolitan area (and 42% of the population of Illinois), this latest release is Apple’s largest yet in terms of land area:

And it brings the total number of Look Around areas to ten:

Together, these ten areas cover 0.3% of the U.S.’s land area—which is a little larger, in terms of land area, than the State of Maryland:

But it’s quite a different story in terms of population. While Look Around covers just 0.3% of the U.S.’s land area, it covers 13.8% of the U.S.’s population:

There’s such a large difference between area and population because Apple has been prioritizing the U.S.’s biggest cities.

Notice that eight of the ten areas that Apple has released are among the ten largest U.S. urban regions:¹

The only exceptions are Las Vegas and Honolulu. While these two areas also have high populations, they’re not nearly as populous as Apple’s other Look Around areas—ranking just #31 and #62, respectively, among U.S. urban regions:

But while Las Vegas and Honolulu have relatively fewer residents than Apple’s other Look Around areas, it’s quite a different story in terms of tourists and visitors. Here, Las Vegas and Honolulu rank #6th and #7th:

So even though Las Vegas and Honolulu have smaller resident populations than Apple’s other Look Around areas, there’s still a high number of people (and a high number of iPhone users) in these areas at a given time.

And notice that the Bay Area also ranks highly in terms of visitors:

Undoubtedly, one of the reasons why Las Vegas, Honolulu, and the Bay Area are such popular destinations is on account of their year-round, good weather.

And to that end, FiveThirtyEight found that each of these areas has some of the U.S.’s most consistent weather—with Honolulu, in particular, ranking #1:

Consistent weather patterns would seem ideal for developing and testing an outdoor image collection process...

...so it’s probably not coincidental that Las Vegas, Honolulu, and the Bay Area were the first Look Around areas released by Apple, back in September 2019:²

But even more ideal than consistent weather is consistent, sunny weather. And according to NOAA, Las Vegas and Honolulu are among America’s sunniest cities—with Las Vegas ranking #1:

And though the Bay Area isn’t quite in the Top 10 (thanks Karl), it’s also among the sunniest parts of the U.S.:

Now what makes this all so interesting is that if we look at how Apple’s imagery collection vehicles first expanded across the U.S., we see that Apple targeted high population areas, like the Northeast, the Great Lakes, and California...

...but we also see that Apple seems to have targeted the sunniest parts of the U.S.:

And this gives us clues as to which areas Apple might release next...

In October 2018, Dante Cesa photographed a man who appeared to be collecting imagery for Apple Maps in Downtown San Francisco:

The photo was widely shared on social media and led to speculation that Apple had begun collecting imagery on foot.

A month later, Apple confirmed on its website that it was collecting pedestrian imagery in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. And then two months later, Apple started collecting in Honolulu, Las Vegas, and San Diego:

So when Apple first announced Look Around five months later at WWDC—with Honolulu, Las Vegas, and the Bay Area as the first locations—it seemed as if Apple’s list of collection areas was hinting at Los Angeles and San Diego as the next Look Around areas:

But this was only half right: instead of releasing Los Angeles and San Diego next, Apple released Los Angeles and New York:

And though Los Angeles and New York were released in September—Apple, according to its website, didn’t start collecting pedestrian imagery in New York until the next month (October):

The same thing happened when Apple released its next Look Around area, Houston:

Even though Houston was released in November, Apple wouldn’t start collecting pedestrian imagery there until February:

So it seems that Apple’s imagery collection website isn’t entirely reliable at signalling the next Look Around areas because Apple has released Look Around for areas that it hasn’t yet collected pedestrian imagery in.³

Then again, this has only happened for two of the areas that Apple has released:

So even though it isn’t 100% reliable, Apple’s list of pedestrian imagery collection areas is still the best signal we have for forecasting Apple’s next Look Around areas.

Given this, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Austin, Buffalo, Dallas, Denver, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle, and/or Tampa Bay seem likeliest to be next:

But as we saw with New York and Houston, there’s also a chance that Apple’s next Look Around areas aren’t yet listed on its pedestrian collection page.

We saw earlier that Apple has been prioritizing areas with high populations, high numbers of visitors, and consistent, sunny weather. So given these factors, El Paso, Fresno, Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, and/or Tucson might also be next.⁴

One of the things that makes Apple’s Look Around imagery so interesting is the kind of features that can be built out of it. Google, for instance, uses Street View imagery to help power its AR navigation feature, “Live View”:

And Street View imagery is so important to Google’s AR implementation that Live View isn’t available in areas without it:

If Apple eventually adds AR navigation to Apple Maps, it’s likely that Apple’s implementation will also be dependent on street-level imagery. In other words, Apple’s Look Around areas will likely be the first areas that Apple’s AR navigation feature will be available in:

Given that AR navigation’s primary use case is walking directions, it makes sense that Apple seems to be prioritizing imagery collection in some of the densest, most visited, and sunniest/warmest parts of the U.S. (i.e., areas where walking is more common year-round).

⚠️ UPDATE #1 | June 22, 2020

During WWDC 2020, Apple announced that San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami would be the first five areas with support for ARKit’s new “Location Anchor” feature.

ARKit’s “Location Anchor” feature appears to be enhanced by—and maybe even dependent upon—Apple Maps’s Look Around imagery for localization:

To place location anchors with precision, geo tracking requires a better understanding of the user’s geographic location than is possible with GPS alone. Based on a particular GPS coordinate, ARKit downloads batches of imagery that depict the physical environment in that area and assist the session with determining the user’s precise geographic location.

This localization imagery captures the view mostly from public streets and routes accessible by car. As a result, geo tracking doesn’t support areas within the city that are gated or accessible only to pedestrians, as ARKit lacks localization imagery there.

Because localization imagery depicts specific regions on the map, geo tracking only supports areas only from which Apple has collected localization imagery in advance.

While we don’t know when Apple’s WWDC sessions for ARKit were recorded, all of this seems to suggest that Apple had expected Look Around imagery for Miami to have been released by the time of WWDC.

⚠️ UPDATE #2 | June 25 & June 26, 2020

TechCrunch is reporting that Apple will release Look Around for Seattle on Monday, June 29th and for major Japanese cities “this fall”.

Interestingly, TechCrunch’s Look Around announcements were included in an article about iOS 14’s new “Refine Location” feature, which uses Look Around imagery to help determine user locations in areas with poor GPS signals (typically areas with lots of tall buildings).

If we look at all U.S. cities with at least 50 skyscrapers, we see an interesting pattern: all but one of Apple’s ten current Look Around areas appear on this list—and so does Seattle:

(The only Look Around city not listed above is Washington, which doesn’t really have any skyscrapers, except for the Washington Monument.)

All of this suggests that Miami, Atlanta, and Dallas might be the next Look Around areas released after Seattle. And it also helps explain why Apple has, up until now, only released the central parts of many metropolitan areas (instead of entire metropolitan regions).

It may be coincidental that Apple’s Look Around cities are the U.S. cities with the most skyscrapers. But if Apple is in fact targeting cities with large numbers of tall buildings, then it makes sense that it plans to release Look Around for major Japanese cities later this year:

Given that Apple is planning to expand its new map to Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom later this year, Toronto and London also seem to have higher likelihoods of receiving Look Around.

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1  Given that the current U.S. government “metropolitan” and “urban area” definitions break the San Francisco Bay Area into multiple areas, I’ve instead opted to use the U.S. government’s “primary statisical area” definitions, which I refer to as “U.S. Urban Regions”. ↩︎

2  This also helps explain why Hawaii was the first U.S. state completed by Apple’s data collection vehicles. ↩︎

3  Something else that might be going on here is that Apple actually did collect pedestrian imagery in New York and Houston before releasing them—but that Apple’s pedestrian image collection page wasn’t updated to reflect this.

The reason I mention this is because Apple seems to be missing other entries on its “Image Collection” page. For example, Apple Maps’s iOS apps indicate that Apple’s Look Around imagery of New York City was captured in “September 2019”:

And this seems accurate because September 2019 is when Apple first added a rainbow-like coating to the glass cube of its Fifth Avenue Store:

But if you look at Apple’s “Image Collection” page, there’s no record of Apple visiting New York in September 2019. So this suggests that Apple’s “Image Collection” page is missing data from around this time. ↩︎

4  Thus far, Apple has only shipped Look Around for areas where its new map was already live. So given this, we’ll assume that Apple’s next Look Around areas will be in the U.S. ↩︎