The alternatives are almost the same as when it launched. Even having those. How many are having real problems or just hating because is the new fad?
I end up at a run down strip mall with no Verizon store in sight. So, I load up Google maps is Safari, and it finds and takes me to an actual Verizon store about 3 miles away.
So yes, people are having actual problems with Apple maps.
Let's just all remember that the old maps app was not flawless.
Using the Google Maps app, this never happened to me in hundreds and hundreds of routes.
Using the ios6 maps app for the first time, to locate a verizon store to go and order my iphone 5, it failed to find a Verizon store I knew was there from previous research. I had to settle for mapping the street and finding the store myself.
I'm not saying the old maps app didn't do that to you, just that the rate of that sort of occurrence, given the evidence I've seen, was much lower in ios5 maps than it is in ios6.
I still think the new Maps has notable issues from everything I've read, but Google-based Maps was by no means perfect.
How much of this is the self-selected sample of those who are irritated enough to complain? Data is not he plural of anecdote.
Maybe they should have released Maps as a downloadable app. Maybe they should have waited another year. Maybe they should have... They didn't and outside of transit* there is nothing that is absolutely terrible about the app. It's immature, sure, but it's not the worst thing to happen to the international community since the invention of the atomic weapon.
* If you know any objective-c and are complaining about the lack of transit options, contact your local public transportation authority and develop an app on your own.
- I am still waiting to get a correct location when searching by post code. - Searching by the street name sometimes gives me that same street name somewhere in the USA even with the GPS on and map centered on my current location. - I was in Holborn centered on my location, searched for a Nando's, it told me to go up that same street. Turns out it was down, wrong location for that Nando's. - It is much more difficult to differenciate between an underground and a rail station since they look almost the same unlike Google Maps or Bing Maps.
I have been using Google Maps mobile web app and the Bing native app with good results. Still a step backwards because both are much slower than the old Maps.
So yes, people are having real problems.
Small edit: I don't trust the new maps data anymore, that's the biggest problem though.
This isn't some hypothetical problem, this is going from maps I use all the time with success, to maps that have become vastly less useful.
To me it's much better that "this product is shit" than "ah it's apple, what do you expect?".