Recent updates in satellite map content lose highest zoom level in many US locations

One of my app development customers noticed his app is no longer displaying the highest zoom level of satellite imagery for many locations in the US. This coincided with an apparent update of satellite imagery for those areas, so it seems like there is probably a server glitch or something going wrong on Apple's end.


As an example, go to (32.34885,-95.45671) and try to zoom in all the way. If using a MapKit app, you'll see a blank grid at the highest zoom. I tried about 4-5 different third party apps on iOS 7,8,9, and they all show the same problem. A few weeks ago, when the satellite imagery was based on older content, this did not happen.


Oddly, if using the Apple Maps app, the same procedure results in slightly over-zoomed (blurred) tiles at the highest zoom rather than a blank grid (I can tell it's not actually getting to a higher numerical zoom level because it doesn't cross over into the next power-of-two tile content).


I am guessing we'll need to file a radar on this, but I wanted to throw it out to see if anyone else has noticed this. It seems to affect any third-party map app using MapKit.

Reported as bug # 22122978.


I was able to calculate zoom level in a sample app I made up, and it looks like satellite tiles at zoom level 19 are missing for many portions of the US.

Recent updates in satellite map content lose highest zoom level in many US locations
 
 
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