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Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

Jon Gruber had a pretty good write up on this:

"But if the old agreement between Apple and Google expired in the first half of 2013 (which, again, my own sources familiar with the matter agree to be the case), that means the deal was set to expire halfway through the expected year-long life cycle for iOS 6. If Apple had stuck with Google Maps for another year they would have been forced to renegotiate with Google in a situation where both sides at the table would know that Apple either (a) had to agree to whatever terms Google demanded to extend the deal; or (b) would be forced to swap the mapping back-end of iOS 6 midway through its development cycle."

http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switc...

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That reads like an autistic kid or maybe OCD adult with a 'special interest' in trains explaining why a train crashed: "Company A always bumped the letter of the model number when releasing a new engine. Company B designated upgrades to their brakes by doubling the current model number. You can hardly blame Company C for upgrading the engine without upgrading the brakes when in the past Company C has always kept the numeric form of the engine model number + brake model number mutually co-prime."

It reads like an apologist apologising.

Gruber is a known shill who writes 50 shades of gray for Apple-fans.

I just want to know where "just works" went. Why should a consumer have to worry about contracts between corporations when all they want to do is use their phone to catch a bus, just like they have been doing for years?

To be fair: it's never worked like that. If you spent the 90's on anything but windows (or the 70's on anything but IBM), you saw the same nonsense. The best you get are brief moments of purity, where the growth of a new platform or environment is so fast that it makes more sense for all the parties to collaborate instead of compete. So in the first 4 years of the "post-iPhone smartphone" world it was nice, just like it was in the early days of the internet.

It's a maturing market now, and not so nice. We have to wait for the next disruption now.

I get that the real world doesn't work like that, but I feel like that is the reality that I was sold by their marketing. It is incredibly disappointing that they cannot see it realized.

I think Apple came to the conclusion that the iPhone is entrenched and will sell tens of millions regardless of not having new design, features like NFC or great maps. The "just works" mantra is easy to get lost when the iPhone is now a cash cow(like how Windows stagnated after Windows 95 till before Windows XP). I guess the focus is now on iTV or whatever else that's being cooked up while milking the cash cows for what they're worth.

Reminds me of Avis' slogan: We try harder because we're number two.

If that is the case the Apple is done for. Getting complacent like that means Apple is dead.

And I fear you may be right. This is not something Jobs would have allowed.

If John Gruber had not invented Markdown, he would be very high on my least favorite humans list.

Because he holds Apple in high regard?

Because he happens to fanboy for Apple? I can think of a lot better reasons to hate someone...

I think you give him far to little credit.

Oh, I don't haaaate him. I just find his opinions obnoxious, and it doesn't seem like people will stop listening to him any time soon.

He's extremely popular but also manipulates truths to tell fabrications and outright lies. I think anyone who behaves in such a manner is actively harming society by discouraging intelligent discourse. This type of behavior is seeping into many facets of life both big (politics) and small (mobile phones). He's basically FoxNews for Apple.

LOL, I agree. I subscribed to his RSS feed a while ago, and I flick through his headlines with amusement. He seems to get very offended if people diss Apple, and then happily reblogs similar nonsense aimed at Android or Windows 8 - classic partisan confirmation bias.

Occasionally he also posts something which is not "apple politics" which is interesting, so for now he stays on my list of subscriptions.

invented yes, but then totally neglected it (while retaining the Markdown name)

You'd have murdered him by now had you ever read Markdown.pl or run into its hundreds of bugs and corner cases

Did you read the entire article? I thought it made sense.

Google is adding features to it's own mobile OS maps app while withholding those features from it's competitor. Google offered to include the features in exchange for ads and customer data, two things Apple has always tried to minimize. Apple historically defaults to accepting the pain of adopting new technology too early as opposed to too late.

I was referring to the `they had to switch now rather than in 6 months due to a version number dance they are mystically locked into for no explained reason`.

Gruber is using a weird empiricism to defend everything Apple does. `They were locked into it because that is the pattern!` For instance, why couldn't they have released the new maps with the upcoming iPad mini release, buying a little more time?

Historically doing something one way doesn't mean you have to rush out a turd just to keep up a meaningless pattern. You also don't have to step over every crack in the sidewalk to avoid bad joo joo.

Gruber uses these little patterns in version numbers, release dates, etc. to make predictions about Apple releases and drive traffic to his blog. He has gotten so obsessed with them that he has flipped the entire utility of them and now uses them quasi-prescriptively in proclamations of what Apple has to do or had to do.

Patterns in numbers are just something he mentions on the side. I don't really read him for the predictions, but he's pretty good in that department. The headline is obnoxious, but the content is spot on.

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/09/28/told-you-so

Show me another blogger that was warning Apple they needed to get maps right back in May. That's why he gets page views.

I find it odd that many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates. There's nothing stopping two willing parties from updating an existing agreement at any time - as long as they can both agree. No senior exec at Apple would have ever said "Oh, dang it - if only the date was in a different location we'd be doing a different strategy"

> I find it odd that many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates.

The recent issue between Netflix and Starz will show you why it is a major focus.

As much as we'd like to ignore people/business issues, sometime they trump tech and social networking issues.

Yes jp but you've picked an extreme example. It was clear that was a monumental sweetheart deal. Netflix was never going to end that one day early because whatever came next was going to be multiple times higher. Apple could have, most likely did, say "Well we really want turn by turn and voice and you won't allow it. We need to bring those features to our phone. We have two choices - go out earlier than we want with our Maps or extend this agreement until XYZ date and give both sides time to continuing negotiating this." Google comes up with an amount and Apple decides which is the better choice. The date is a "forcing factor" to drive a commercial conclusion but not the immovable object that forces you to go out earlier than you want. Make sense?

I think your response shows pretty well why "many folks in this debate have focused on the exiting contract and its dates."

Thank you, I have been wondering what drove apple to act so stupidly.

I can easily envision Tim Cook doing this. The whole world is watching, and there is major ego on the line. The last thing on earth he'd want is for wall street to see that google had him by the balls.

Not that Jon Gruber is guarenteed to be right, but it certainly has the ring of truth.

Edit: Of course, if wall street were really paying attention, they'd see that apple behaved this badly because Google in fact had them by the balls. Thank god they're not the sharpest tools in the shed over there.

Every time I read something from aforementioned blog, I finished with a feeling of disappointment. No insights, no deep thought process, just plain apple-fanboyism.

Let me guess—you don't read aforementioned blog at all, do you? I don't see much apple fanboyism if any, but plenty of antiappleism and antigrubersim, which most often is based on zero research and analysis, just parroting some latest anti-Apple fad.

I think bhavin is saying that Gruber's blog posts are Apple fanboyism. I'm not sure how you could deny that they are at least generally favorable toward Apple.

This leaves only one simple question in my mind:

If it has come to Apple issuing a public apology for shipping a partly-baked replacement for an important core app, the old version of which they are still licensed to distribute for another year...

Why not put iOS 5 Maps in the App Store, and pull it down next summer?

> the old version of which they are still licensed to distribute for another year...

No, closer to 6 months.

Even if they put it up for another three months, that would buy them enough time to make some significant improvements to the iOS6 app.

How does that have anything to do with map providers other than google?

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