I can’t now remember why I wanted to look up St Davids, the very small cathedral city (with a very small cathedral), on my phone but, with the most recent software update and accompanying Apple Maps update, it proved impossible.  It simply didn’t recognise it as a place and tried to send me to St Davids in Scotland, various St David’s Roads or other places and, in the end, the only way I could do it was by adding ‘Cathedral.’  Then, it so happened that we were driving in the vicinity when we were in Pembrokeshire, so we took a short detour and went there, which reminded me to do a bit more searching about on the map app.

And it’s pretty awful.  For a start, when you put in a place name, you’d think that the town, city or even village that you type in would be the first place you’re offered.  It isn’t necessarily .  I typed in a local village just now.  To be fair, the village school was the first suggestion (and it’s nowhere near the centre of the village) but the place itself was fifteenth.  Lots of roads and a few businesses, some of them nowhere near the place, came before it.  I’ve typed several other place names and it seems quite random.  Sometimes, the village is first and sometimes a road leading there, often several miles away, comes before it.

Then, I tried searching for a route from one place to another.  This used to be an option.  For example, say I was planning to visit two separate friends, one after the other.  I know the way to each but not how to get from one to the other.  So I’d look for directions, not from here to point A but from point A to point B.  This had been straightforward, but not now – I haven’t worked out how to do it yet, if it’s possible at all.  It only offers me how to get somewhere from where I am already.

So I’ve downloaded a different map app onto my phone (which can be used offline, so is more useful anyway) and I went to leave a review on the Apple Map app.  But it isn’t possible to do so.  You can give feedback from within the app, but it’s not public.  I’ve a feeling they know it’s not very good.  But why, for heaven’s sake, make it worse than it used to be?