EDIT: I forgot that Siri hadn't come out yet; I suppose they did jump ahead of Google, but not with a product good enough to corner the market.
> I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.
The primary strategy appears to have been to use IP courts to make Android undistributable rather than competing directly, as Apple have no interest in capturing the bottom 90% of the mobile market. The Oracle v Google case is probably part of the same campaign.
It's such an obvious strategy, but oh well..
That's just a war in the mobile device space. If they really wanted a "holy war" they'd have started a Search Engine and massively discount the ads in exchange for exclusivity. That would be the equivalent of Google entering the space where Apple made all their money.
That said, it's an uneasy win. Google Maps might tempt me back when they ship a speed limit indicator; that's a great feature.
By brain-dead I mean things like instead of simply turning left onto the street the destination was off of it went a few blocks past before turning left, which resulted in backtracking. It was bizarre. Google maps had no issues with the same route.
My GF uses Apple Maps regularly because Car Play forces her to and she complains it doesn't work that well. She will always use Google Maps instead when she's not using Car Play. Apple Maps seems to be in the "good enough" category still, rather than being actually good.