I get tired of the redundancy. However, as specifically regards the maps story.
- Apple heavily markets its "refinement" and "excellence". They just shipped a product that blows.
- It's been about a year since Jobs passed. There was and continues to be much speculation whether Jobs was essential to Apple's performance (technical as well as financial). Well...
- Apple vs Google. The saga continues...
- Apple as monopolist. They may eventually get maps right. But in the meantime, they can more or less screw their users over in order to force this change. Remember, it took Microsoft "three revisions" to get many of its now well-regarded products to a performance point that induced large scale consumer acceptance. Is Apple playing that game, now?
- Lots of people apparently depend on maps, daily and heavily. They are rightly upset.
So... there's a lot going on with and underneath this story. In addition to the Schadenfreude.