Hacker News Reader

Agreed. It's especially egregious because this functionality can potentially endanger the lives of customers while opening up liability suits (not a lawyer, just guessing).

Anyone know how much it would've cost to keep google maps?

It's probably not just a dollar figure; the terms have to be favourable concerning user data etc.

The only way for Maps to get better is for people to report errors. If they release it alongside Google's version and no one uses it, no one will report errors, so it would never get better, and so on.

Just two years ago I had Google Maps send me a few miles in the wrong direction and plant me in the middle of an unfinished housing development when I wanted to go to a shopping mall. It was a mistake, I reported it, and it was eventually fixed. It's not as bad as getting stranded in the middle of a national park, but

a) It should be obvious that the middle of a national park isn't where a town is supposed to be, and

b) If it's not obvious because you are a tourist, maybe you shouldn't be blindly trusting your Maps app and only having enough gas to make it to town?

This is the worlds most valuable company with billions of dollars in the bank. You spend some of that money to make sure that things work. They aren't a start-up, and they have a very real brand to protect. That's the thing, this debacle was the very first time that devout Apple users en-masse looked at Android and went "Android does maps flat out better".

That's going to have real long-term consequences I'm not sure Apple even understands yet. For instance look at how quickly the tech crowd embraced Google now on the iPhone? The hole in Apple's armor makes it easier for people to accept that other things are also better. These things really can snowball, and when you're protecting a luxury brand that's a really serious issue.

You simply can't screw up what might be the most universally used feature (maps) on the entire phone. It's the one thing, next to maybe the dialer and messaging, that people interact with more than anything else. Screwing that up makes all of your polish, usability, and "coolness" irrelevant. Instead of arrogantly shoving crap out the door and expecting everyone to love it just because, maybe that's the time to invest that money and do the quality control you have to do to make it work. Hire 10,000 people to drive all over the world making sure you got it right. Google does something close to that (those Google maps cars improve the accuracy of their data ten-fold), and if you want to compete you should too.

Now you have to put the genie back in the bottle and hope the damage isn't long-lasting. It's probably going to be even more expensive and I'm not sure you can.

I'm not really sure what damage you're talking about, aside from posts from random people online badmouthing Maps. iPhone and iPad sales are still strong. Maps have gotten significantly better in just a few months (although I never saw a problem with it myself.) Everyone seems happy aside from people driving into an Australian desert they've never been to with no supplies— oh, and folks who need transit directions.

You can't expect any company to hire 10,000 people to work N amount of hours/day/years just so you can polish your app 5% more when that same polish can come from users submitting error reports. That's just nonsense.

Everyone seems happy aside from people driving into an Australian desert they've never been to with no supplies— oh, and folks who need transit directions.

Just to clarify, these people weren't driving into the desert, just into a town. The GPS took them 70 kilometres away and left them in a position unable to find a way out.

Anecdotal I know, but I have a chum - a big, big Apple fan - who has so far refused to upgrade to iOS 6 because of the maps issues. He also expected to buy the iPhone 5, but when it arrived it just didn't seem worth it. He's even given my SGS III appreciative looks. All this stuff is cumulative. Apple sales won't collapse overnight, but it is eating away at goodwill.

I'm in exactly that boat. I was planning on buying the iPhone 5 but when I heard about the maps problem it stopped me cold. I depend on Google Maps now for a lot of things like finding metro stops not to mention that I also use it when traveling abroad.

I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering going the Android route, especially since I think Google's OS and services are improving much more rapidly than Apple's.

That's the sort of reasoning a cost-conscious, penny-pinching, supply-expert executive would make.

A customer-centric chief obsessing about software quality, with $70bn sitting in offshore banks, would probably make a different one.

Everyone I've spoken with an iPhone to has had problems with Apple's maps and wishes they would put Google's maps back in. Most of Britain is affected in one way or another, even just to the point of missing a lot of detail that we previously took for granted.

I'm shocked apple hasn't made the "pin is at incorrect location" more prominent.

A very popular dining and shopping center in Atlanta shows up erroneously on my quiet side street. I flag down people in cars when I see they're confused and tell them about how to report the errors. Nobody knows it's there. 1.5 months of doing this and it's still not fixed.

In contrast when I reported my address at the wrong end of the street ( over a year ago ) Google fixed it in a week AND sent me a confirmation email. I want my Google maps back on iOS6!

Has there been a credible source that the decision to get rid of Google Maps has in fact been made by Apple? I always thought it had been Google's decision, but I never found a source confirming either.

Eric Schmidt has publicly said it wasn't Google's decision but that leaves open the question of whether they tried to force onerous conditions on Apple or not.