Take a look at these screenshots of maps on my iPhone 4, running iOS 6:
On the left, maps.google.com, made mobile. On the right, Apple’s new Maps app, which comes with iOS 6. The location in both cases is Harvard Square, not far from where I am right now.
Note how the Apple app not only lacks the Harvard Square T stop (essential information for any map of this type), but traffic information as well. (Not to mention a bunch of other stuff, such as landmarks and street names. (Neither is perfect at the last two, but Google is way better.)
This is beyond inexcusable, especially now that it’s going on two months since Tim Cook apologized for Apple’s Maps fail and promised improvements. How hard can it be, just to add essential subway info? Very, apparently.
I go a bit deeper in this response to this post by Dave a few hours ago. To sum it up, I think only two things will save Apple’s bacon with maps. One is that Nokia/Navteq, Google and others provide maps on iOS that are better than Apple’s, saving Apple the trouble of doing it all. The other is crowd-sourcing the required data, simply because Apple by itself can’t replicate the effort both Google and Nokia/Navteq have put into what they’ve already got. But with the rest of us, Apple can actually do better. It’ll take a sex change for them to un-close their approach to mapping. But they’ll leapfrog the competition in the process, and win loyalty as well.
[Later…] Here is a screenshot that helps enlarge some points I make below in response to Droidkin’s comment:
Note how dim, dark and hidden the small print is here. “Data from TomTom, others” goes to this list of credits. Also “Report a Problem” is simplex, not duplex, far as I know. You can tell them something but it’s like dropping a pebble into the ocean. Who knows what happens to it?
Leave a Reply