NavList:

I'm attaching some absurd maps (and one not so bad). These are samples of the "standard" map view in various online mapping products: Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMap, and Apple Maps. The standard view (before applying user preferences --you have to dig down and "opt out" of Mercator, if you can figure out how) is the "global" Mercator projection ...except in Apple Maps (more on that exception below).

Of course Google shifted away from the Mercator projection seven long years ago! Remember that? I wrote about it at the time. I really don't like referring back to the NavList archives, but in this specific case I will since some of you acted with shock that I would say that the "Mercator projection is junk". I have, in fact, written about this multiple times over many years. Memories, huh? My posts on this topic from August 2018.

Wait, Google dropped the Mercator projection? Yes, but some time later --I don't recall when-- they "reverted". The globe-based projection remains available but it's not the standard option, at least not in the desktop views of the Google Maps website [and I just checked: the mobile app edition of Google Maps also defaults to Mercator]. It is not easy to switch to the globe view, so for most of the billion+ users of Google Maps, the globe view is now irrelevant. Why did Google revert? Well, call up Sundar Pichai and ask him... Please let me know if he answers.

Speaking of inscrutable Silicon Valley beasts, Apple supposedly switched to their globe-based view in their primary mapping app on desktop shortly after "Apple Silicon"-based Macs first appeared (late 2020). Presumably some engineering team suggested the change as a good way of showing off the processing power of this new chips and as a way of keeping up with Google. Checking on mobile, the iPhone version of Apple Maps also defaults to the globe view.

Although Apple Maps defaults to globe view, the change is somewhat superficial, and there are lingering signs of the old Mercator choice ...a Mercator hangover. If I open Apple Maps (on Mac or iPhone), and scroll east-west in the globe (spinning the globe left and right), there is no change in scale. Oddly, if I scroll north-south, the scale changes radically, zooming in at high latitudes. In addition, rather bizarrely, it is impossible to place a pin (mark a location) at latitudes higher than about 85°, which is a common cutoff in apps using the "global" Mercator projection... It's a frankenstein-ish globe with a Mercator brain implanted! What happened? did someone perceive a need for a giant Greenland even in the globe view?? Please, someone call up Tim Cook and ask him. Let me know if he answers.

Frank Reed

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