For Apple to cripple such a fantastic feature and leave themselves at the mercy of their arch-rival - whom they've been energetically suing - is baffling.
The maps themselves are provided by TomTom and in the UK and Europe at least they are very high quality, can't speak for the US.
The only thing I miss is street view. But I doubt that's coming back.
Map coverage of US campuses is also way down. Which makes a very small but vocal segment (US uni students) completely lose their mind over the issue. If you go to the apple/iphone subreddit, 9 out of 10 maps criticisms are US uni campus.
On the other hand, considering how those things work, I'd expect non-US locations to be just as downgraded as US campus (and testimonies in this thread seem to confirm it)
Now, by doing their own map, "crippled" or not, they're independent. They're less at Google's mercy than they were before.
If the Apple Maps app someday becomes as good as (or better) than Google Maps, this move will be seen as genius.