internally Apple calls it “Map Matching”; I call it “Snap to Road”.
I've noticed that Apple tends to give things vague-sounding names, and it's probably not by accident. I mean if my GPS had an option named "Snap to Road", I'd immediately understand its function. If it was called "Map Matching", I would be a bit perplexed.
To me, this feature seems like a horrible workaround for poor GPS accuracy, and doing it at the API level is just wrong. If an app reads coordinates from the GPS it should get the most accurate location possible (some concession could be made for pseudo-anonymising randomisation as a security/privacy option). If they feel the need to do some sort of "smoothing" on the data, then it must be an opt-in option, not obligatory.
Unfortunately it is not very descriptive, nor the term most GPS units use. The question that comes to mind when I see the phrase is "match a map with what?" Even the article you linked to begins with a pretty opaque sentence:
Map matching is the problem of how to match recorded geographic coordinates to a logical model of the real world, typically using some form of Geographic Information System.
That sounds like something far more general than "snap to road", which is what this feature is doing; nothing more or less.
I've noticed that Apple tends to give things vague-sounding names, and it's probably not by accident. I mean if my GPS had an option named "Snap to Road", I'd immediately understand its function. If it was called "Map Matching", I would be a bit perplexed.
To me, this feature seems like a horrible workaround for poor GPS accuracy, and doing it at the API level is just wrong. If an app reads coordinates from the GPS it should get the most accurate location possible (some concession could be made for pseudo-anonymising randomisation as a security/privacy option). If they feel the need to do some sort of "smoothing" on the data, then it must be an opt-in option, not obligatory.