Since the release of iOS 13 last fall, Apple Maps on iPhone and iPad (but strangely not on Mac) has had a new feature called “Look Around” which is similar to Google Street View but much more fluid and immersive. Initially it included just San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. Then they added New York, Houston, and Los Vegas. But today it has been expanded to Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Boston.
For the Washington DC region they cover pretty much the whole area inside the Beltway.
To use Look Around, zoom in sufficiently on the map then tap the binoculars icon to the right. You can now navigate by dragging the map around, or if you tap on the Look Around pane it will expand to full screen where you can tap to move or drag to rotate.
You can also enter Look Around mode by tapping a point of interest on the map and then tapping the Look Around preview image on the info panel.
If you haven’t used Apple Maps in a while I suggest you give it a try. When it first came out in 2012 it was a joke, but Apple has spent a huge amount of effort in the past seven years, with a majority of those improvements coming through in the past year. One of my favorite recent additions is the indication of traffic lights and stop signs at upcoming intersections. It’s really nice to know ahead of time if The GPS is trying to make me turn left at a stop sign on Connecticut Avenue during rush hour so I can choose a different, more rational route.