Jobs had a tendency to do the latter. He would rarely admit Apple's mistakes verbally, but would correct the problem as swiftly as possible. This strategy (obviously) worked pretty well for Apple's bottom line, and it's hard to argue that it upset many customers.
Now, I don't have access to the information Apple does, but for this particular situation it seemed much less important that Apple make a apology vs. just improving the product rapidly. You apologize when people feel wronged, slighted, cheated, or otherwise emotionally distraught by your actions.
In this case, there are issues with Maps. But when Maps leads you to the wrong destination, do you feel emotionally hurt by Apple? In my experience, no, you realize the computer messed up and you look at the map and correct it. There's a certain level of tolerance people can have for this type of error they cannot have, for example, when their phones cannot get reception or drop calls due to the antenna.
Beyond this, this is a problem that can be rapidly fixed if Apple dedicated a massive amount of resources to it. As people use Maps, there is a ton of data being collected and lots of low hanging fruit being revealed. The first several months after launch will surely shake most of the major issues out.
Also, I'm absolutely stunned Cook would refer people to other apps (of their competitors!) instead. This is really a punch to the gut for shareholders (disclosure: which I am not) as it looks like they are admitting defeat and willing to concede mindshare for mapping applications.
A much better approach to solving this would be to acknowledge the problem, less apologetically, but more importantly, become transparent with the rate at which issues are being fixed. Publish some metrics that show how hard Apple is working on things being fixed. Push an update to the app that highlights these improvements. Make people realize Apple is putting all of its energy into addressing the problem, and that progress is being made each day.
Or, do what Jobs did, and just deflect criticism while the engineers fix the problems for a few weeks. Eventually everyone will forget about it, Maps will be the best mapping experience on iOS, and it will become a distant memory.
Knowing when to take these paths is important and IMHO it is not a good sign that Cook went down this road for this particular issue.