We have given Apple so much money THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH IT. They have $120B in the bank, more cash than any other company has ever had. They can buy very famous companies for cash, like Cisco, Dell, Facebook, etc, and even banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, etc. This is a crazy amount of cash, and they are clueless as what to do with it.
I know what I would do, I would throw some of that money to improve the quality of my product for the sake of my hundreds of millions of customers. I would admit defeat, and I would pay Google for a license in perpetuity for Google Maps to be on iPhone. I would engage in some sort of rev/data share with the Maps app and throw them a few billion. Win-Win-Win for everyone.
Sure, maybe Apple doesn't extract every single red cent from the deal, but money is of secondary or tertiary importance here. Their money is already relatively useless sitting in a bank account making 0% interest. And sure, maybe they left money on the table, and maybe Apple overpays and gets the short end of the stick for once, but it's called taking one for the team. Customers get the very best maps technology and a permanent agreement to always have access to it, and Apple can stop being distracted by one of the most important aspects of a smartphone experience, which is location services. They can continue innovating in things that will make them money, like newer designs, etc.
How can you possibly say that? How was Android 1.0 compared to what it is today? Or Windows 1.0? In your view no one should start anything if they aren't immediately good at it.
What should be questioned is Apple's dedication to Mpas. If they're not interested in creating a high-quality mapping solution then they should give up.
What Apple should do is buy a company to provide the mapping solution for them. The same goes for Nuance. Core technologies of your OS should not be left to a third party.
A few bugs here and there is understandable, of course. Any honest person looking at the situation knows that Apple's Maps app was not just a matter of a couple semi-serious bugs; it was practically unusable for a large portion of people, and it's an application where unusability could create real safety issues. Completely unacceptable handling on Apple's part. They could have pushed it as a "beta" or "preview release" or other "help us work out the bugs" thing, but they decided to force all users to engage it as their only maps experience. Apple is responsible for this severe oversight in judgment.
no, the CEO has a fiduciary obligation to the shareholders to increase the market value of the company. If that is through implementing better features then fine, but don't think for a second they would do it for the "greater good" or some principled and un-business like reason.
Things evolve over time, you have to give it a bit of running room to see how things shape up before you simply label it a failure. Besides, competition breeds innovation and innovation is great for the consumers.
They already have Google Maps, and the money.
It's a wonder a human being ever found a hospital before Google saved the human race from it's own helplessness!
If you don't have a map, you might ask a local for directions or take a cab if you're in a hurry to get somewhere that you don't know the location for. If your map is wrong, you are more likely to actually end up in the wrong place -- and then become that much more confused and make poor decisions while trying to find your way without it.
The proper response to bad search results is not to talk about how you can still manage just fine with paper maps, unless you're implicitly proposing that we give up on the electronic maps completely.
Once there's an alternative, it's a flame-debate, where each side gives itself a pass. Controversy drives page views. Nobody wrote about how bridges mapped to 3D terrain in Google Earth, but we get a Tumbler of iOS 6 3D bridges examples.
A smartphone is not a replacement for common sense. In Apple Maps, you can clearly look at your destination and say "Hmm, wow, that doesn't look like sprawling medical complex, perhaps this tiny out of the way building isn't a hospital".
People have been misled by Google Maps and MapQuest and Tom Tom for years and years. How common are stories of people driving off of cliffs or other such nonsense because a GPS said so?
Yes, Apple Maps isn't perfect, but it's a long shot better than Google Maps and MapQuest were six months into the product, and is actively providing superior maps to the baseline of a decade ago, or even five years ago.
But aside from that there's also the lost-time factor. If Apple Maps misleads me far more often than other products (which it does), then I waste far more time (and gasoline) using it. That is a real problem with it, and one that cannot be answered with "ALL Mapping data is imperfect".
As for Apple Maps being better than the baseline from five years ago, is there a way for that statement to be useful that doesn't require access to a time machine?
We've really only had mobile mapping for about 7-8 years now, it's amazing how quickly people have forgotten how to get places without it.
The question is not what they did BEFORE the smartphone, but what they do now. What they do now is to use the maps application that came with the device they bought.
There is a lot to it and to make such a blanket claim with nothing to back it up is pretty weak. The questions were meant to point this out.