I’m often struck by how poorly Google and Apple Maps work as substitutes for an atlas. They focus on roadways, and while they can show you the physical appearance of terrain, they do a poor job of putting names to both physical features - mountain ranges, rivers, valleys, seas and bays - as well as human names for regions.

Apple Maps tries a little - I can zoom out over the US and occasionally it tries to write ‘Appalachian Mountains’ along the length of the range, for example - but it pops in and out as you zoom and scroll and actually getting a view where the whole name is visible is difficult. Sometimes it labels the ‘Gulf of Maine’. Sometimes it labels it ‘Fox Islands Thouroughfare’.

Google maps as you zoom out just keeps showing the road networks with no hierarchy of importance (the interstate network doesn’t stand out from the dense grid at all) and at some level just labels states and countries. It has. Interest in labeling large scale geographical features at all.

Try picking out a good view on one of these maps that lets you trace the course of the Mississippi River and pick out the major cities along the route. It’s just not something you can accomplish with these maps.