> If you cannot go forward on the current path, and standing still is not an option, the only possible move is take a step back and find a new route. Simple as that. Painful, sure, but it had to be done sooner or later.
Of course, they have good reasons to make their own mapping infrastructure. However, working on it does not mean they have to release it before it's ready (and it clearly isn't). They could have used the old Google maps app for iOS 6 (maybe with some surface tweaks), while continuing to work on getting their own maps into some sort of reasonable shape. Maybe they would have had to pay inflated fees to Google or something, but they certainly have the money to do that in the short-term. Of course the Google maps app has its own issues, but people are very used to it; continuing to use it on iOS 6, wouldn't have taken people by surprise or generated such an enormous amount of negative press for Apple.
The other possibility is that they didn't realize how poor a shape their maps were in. If that's the case, it's far more worrying, because it means they're in way over their heads, and suggests that the effort required to fix things is likely to be enormous.
Apple is usually closed mouthed, and tends to adopt a position of "trust us, really, we know what we're doing." Unfortunately that doesn't work so well in a case like this where they pretty clearly don't know what they're doing...
I don't want to end up being the one defending the quality of iOS maps. I've been using it since iOS6 beta 1. There's been a lot of progress and other than the fun mishaps we are reading now, they are functional.
Are they as good as Google? Not even close, especially when trying to search for something specific (I think the dataset is not the problem, the search engine is). But I also wouldn't say that the product is not on a reasonable shape. It's comparable in accuracy with other maps solutions out there.
And we seem to be forgetting that Google Maps come with errors and funny gaffes as well:
They are just the standard, the bar we measure any other map service against. And thats good, because they are really fantastic, but I think it would be naive to expect Apple to launch something of that level of quality in the first attempt.
Of course, they have good reasons to make their own mapping infrastructure. However, working on it does not mean they have to release it before it's ready (and it clearly isn't). They could have used the old Google maps app for iOS 6 (maybe with some surface tweaks), while continuing to work on getting their own maps into some sort of reasonable shape. Maybe they would have had to pay inflated fees to Google or something, but they certainly have the money to do that in the short-term. Of course the Google maps app has its own issues, but people are very used to it; continuing to use it on iOS 6, wouldn't have taken people by surprise or generated such an enormous amount of negative press for Apple.
The other possibility is that they didn't realize how poor a shape their maps were in. If that's the case, it's far more worrying, because it means they're in way over their heads, and suggests that the effort required to fix things is likely to be enormous.
Apple is usually closed mouthed, and tends to adopt a position of "trust us, really, we know what we're doing." Unfortunately that doesn't work so well in a case like this where they pretty clearly don't know what they're doing...