I feel like it would make more sense as a project template though. It seems like if I use this to start a new project, I need to clone the repo and then change a lot of classes to get started. Or am I missing something?
Alternatives are always emerging to even the most used frameworks. Every time I start a project it is a time to look and see if there are better ways to do things.
Also including frameworks that you will never use is bad practice. Most apps are not going to make use of MapKit. If you're not going to use it why bother bloating your project?
"At this moment iOS Boilerplate is just an XCode project. Is planned to be released as a true XCode template in a near future."