Apple Navigation protocol - are there any better options?

[Julian Thompson]

I've been casually studying the way the iPhone routes a journey. It seems to link the major roads of cities together to form the route. It definitely tends to prefer city ring roads to circumnavigate a conurbation and put you on the way to the next large city.

I have noticed it does not, ever, use small roads to save time (I presume this is as a reaction to the old days of trucks trying to go down lanes) and the way that the smaller roads were getting busy because of sat nav's all properly working out the true "shortest route" - back in the early days of Nav the "shortest route" was actually a function.

Do any options exist which combine the modern way of taking traffic into account with the ability for it to consider using all the smaller roads to create a fast but short route?

[rfn]

I use Waze and I would think that does what you are after. It gives you 3x routes and often picks the shorter routes.

[captain_cynic]

Google Maps takes expected and reported traffic into account, will route you around roadworks and even recommend a longer route that is expected to be faster.

Given how terrible and inaccurate Apple Maps are, I don't understand why anyone would use it for anything.

[A900ss]

Apple maps sticks to the big roads.

Waze will take you down tiny roads to save 3 seconds

Google maps is the happy invetween IMHO.

(PS - Apple maps have improved beyond all recognition in the last 18 months or so and is easily better than Google Maps for closed roads)