Piggy-backing on the ongoing Apple Maps drama, The New York Times gives us a couple interesting tidbits that help explain the origins of Google Maps on the iPhone. For starters, Apple never intended to put maps on the iPhone. It was a decision late CEO Steve Jobs made last minute, one that would cost Apple its reputation five years later as Apple rushed its own solution out of the door too early.
In a way, the report notes, Apple Maps continue on a string of Internet services missteps, with notable examples of the recently axed Ping social network for music, Siri, a controversial digital assistant, the MobileMe suite of web tools and recent iCloud outages.
These blunders expose Apple as a hardware and design-focused culture, which is more often than not a difficult match for online services on a world scale, where Google rules the landscape by a wide margin...
