"Our data experts performed an identical series of activities on Google Maps and Apple Maps that included searching for several US cities, addresses and airports and zooming in and out to locate specific locations. On Google Maps, the average data loaded from the cellular network for each step was 1.3MB. Apple Maps came in at 271KB – that’s approximately 80% less data! On some actions, such as zooming in to see a particular intersection, Apple Maps’ efficiency advantage edged close to 7X."
"However, it seems that even in Satellite View, Apple has considered data usage. Our tests found Apple Maps uses only half as much data as Google Maps for the same Satellite searches and views (an average of 930KB for a single page load on Google Maps vs. 428KB for Apple Maps)."
Whether you’re on the iPhone 5 using LTE or on not… that kind of reduction in data will certainly increase the responsiveness of Maps when you need it the most. I can say that in my use of Maps over the last two weeks it has been all but flawless and blazingly fast. I’m totally happy.
/via Walt Mossberg on Twitter.