Not over privacy stuff (I don't trust Apple that much either), but because Apple maps just sucks. Unless things changed within the last 4 months, Apple Maps couldn't accurately navigate me from Custer State Park to Mt. Rushmore (which really isn't far).
Apple Maps sucks but DDG is also terrible (in languages other then En) and both make dubious claims about protecting customer privacy. So this is match made in heaven.
I have given up on Apple Maps long time ago and I have given up on DDG after many failed attempts.
I am using Qwant https://lite.qwant.com/ which is surprisingly good for general search terms and embarrassing for specialized search terms (like programming and such).
Interesting that Qwant says "the only search engine that respects your privacy" without giving any backing to that claim. I had to nav out of the "lite" URL, then navigate to "Philosophy" to see why their claim had any merit.
According to Wikipedia, they still pipe your searches through Bing except for FR/DE (though anonymized), and it's not who the backend search engine is there.
I am happily using Firefox, DuckDuckGo, and Apple Maps instead of their Google equivalents—even though I was perfectly happy with them for the most part—just to do what little I can to ensure continued competition in these spaces.
Yeah, Apple Maps isn’t as good as Google Maps in many regards. But it’s been improving, and it’s honestly not that much worse for the overwhelming majority of my use cases, to the point where I don’t even notice except a handful of times per year. And I can always fall back to the Google product if I absolutely have to.
I have found that I unfortunately have to frequently fall back to Google Maps. Which I don't actually like. Honestly it is more a disappointment in Apple. I would expect them to be able to get directions right for a well traveled path. Those two parks have a lot of visitors each year and frequently people will visit both in the same day. But Apple Maps wanted me to go a completely different way and I couldn't figure out how it was connecting.
Maybe things changed, but that wasn't that long ago. And we all know that once a product falls (and pretty hard), it is harder to recover.
Have you previously used OpenStreetMap? I'd be interested in hearing from those who have. I can say as a DDG user that presentation-wise I disliked what DDG was using before -- but from a direction-accuracy perspective I simply have no idea and would love to hear from others.
It's either great or useless, 100% dependent on your location.
Maybe 40% of my city is missing (top-20 in the US) including absolutely everything in my neighborhood other than a couple parks and churches. It gets my address to the correct block (between X and Y Aves) but that's it. Some small towns around me barely exist, others are absolutely complete.
You'll probably do ok in SF/NYC/LA/Chicago etc, but it gets really spotty beyond that.
OSM is really awesome in (western) Europe. I use it all the time. All new bike trails are in it. Even the trees in down town are in it.
It is even great for car navigation. I used the map data to navigate in tiny beach villages in Spain, for a round trip in Iceland and on several other occasions in western Europe. However, i only relied on the data and let my Garmin device create the routes.
I think OSM is a more natural, and even higher quality, match for DDG. I'm pretty surprised by this. Sure, Apple is pretty privacy concious too. At least they want their users to have that image of them. But OSM is on a whole different level due to their open nature rather than a black box with an API in front.
OSM is becoming pretty impressive too. Even smaller towns here in Sweden are decently mapped. A huge difference compared to just five years ago¹, far greater difference than since Apple Maps was launched as far as I can tell. Apple Maps launched in a better state, yes, but not in a good state, and I think it's been moving slowly since then. OSM launched in a minimal state but are moving forward like a maglev train.
I'll be fair in that I've never used it for navigation. But I have used it for looking up locations of places, and it never seemed bad. But I don't do that very often.
Not over privacy stuff (I don't trust Apple that much either), but because Apple maps just sucks. Unless things changed within the last 4 months, Apple Maps couldn't accurately navigate me from Custer State Park to Mt. Rushmore (which really isn't far).