I'm an Australian living in Japan and this absolutely is a game changer for me. If anything I would think it affects many other countries more than the US.
The iPhone predates the official launch of Google Transit and at the beginning didn't have many cities and so many providers have apps available.
That doesn't change the fact that Google Maps provides a complete, end-to-end solution for getting from point A to point B, using any combination of public transit options and walking.
For example, when I was in Japan, I was able to enter the addresses of the starting and ending points, and then get a list of travel options, with the total time and cost included for comparison. You can't get that if you're using a JR/subway-specific app.
Moreover, you can't just tap on an address in another app and have it take you directly to the Google Maps app anymore.
> The iPhone predates the official launch of Google Transit and at the beginning didn't have many cities and so many providers have apps available.
Yeah, and the original iPhone also didn't have any 3rd party apps. That doesn't mean it's acceptable in 2012 not to have 3rd party apps. It really doesn't matter what things were like before Google Transit launched. All that matters is the current situation, which is that Apple fucked up big time by allowing such a huge regression to get into a release version of iOS.