Apple is allegedly crowd-sourcing its retail army to help improve iOS Maps, if a pair of reports out this morning are to be trusted. A pilot program, allegedly voluntary for employees, would have a team of ten employees at one store dedicate 40 hours of staff time per week toward manually examining melted bridges, street addresses that are off and other Maps inaccuracies related to their respective areas...
iDB discovered a week ago that Google is set to introduce street-level photography on the iOS platform in form of a web app in about two weeks. Today, The Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg made it a fact, claiming that the software is coming as early as Thursday, possibly tomorrow. The journalist had some hands-on time with the web app which includes both360-degree photographic street views and interior photographic views of certain businesses...
Consumer Reports, an influential U.S. magazine published monthly since 1936 by Consumers Union, gave Apple's iPhone 5 a thumbs-up recently but initially slammed iOS 6 Maps navigation ("we were disappointed"). Melted bridges aside, the publication known for its reviews and comparisons of popular products took both Apple Maps and Google Maps for a spin, concluding that Apple's offering is "certainly more favorable than comments and articles that we've been reading online"...
The song-a-day man Jonathan Mann can be funny as hell, even more so considering he's been able to write a song a day for more than two years straight without ever running out of inspiration. He's back at it again with a new song about Apple's mapping woes. If you like it, check out his birthday song to Siri from last week (part one from last year is here). Joy of Tech also has a nice take on what happens when Apple Maps meet Siri...
With last Friday's addition of 22 new countries, the iPhone 5 is now available in 31 major markets but many would still be hard pressed to buy one due to dwindling stock both in the United States and in other countries around the world. By all accounts, the iPhone 5 demand is off the charts, Mapgate be damned.
Matter of fact, quite the opposite is happening: demand for the iPhone 5 is surging as mapping woes don't appear to slow sales (though customer satisfaction ratings did take a hit). Looks like that CEO apology was a pre-emptive maneuver to smartly protect the brand in the long haul...
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...
Apple appears to be really determined to avoid having this Maps thing snowball into a devastating PR catastrophe which, by the way, already has tarnished Apple's reputation. Following yesterday's unexpected CEO apology and the subsequent recommendation of mapping services on the web as well as third-party Maps alternatives, Apple has made a subtle change in Maps wording.
No longer are Apple Maps being referred to as "the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever". Instead, the app's now about "a beautiful vector-based interface that scales and zooms with ease"...
iOS 6 Maps is stepped in controversy, but not everyone hates it, including yours truly. I've never personally experienced any navigation issues with the iOS 6 Maps app, and for me, it's a huge upgrade over the stock Google Maps app of yesteryear.
One problem that I do have with iOS 6's Maps, however, is how dumbed down the feature is on older devices. Devices like the iPhone 4 get left out when it comes to true turn-by-turn navigation and Flyover (3D) support.
As usual, the jailbreak community comes to the rescue with a new tweak that unlocks iOS 6 Maps on older devices. It's appropriately titled: Unlock iOS 6 Maps, and it's a free download on Cydia's Big Boss repo. Take a look inside for a video walkthrough...
Apple's really determined to right the mapping wrongs. In addition to posting a public apology on its web site and offering instructions on accessing mapping web apps from Google and Nokia, the Cupertino, California-headquartered designer of gadgets just posted a curated recommendations section in the App Store, listing third-party Maps alternatives for the iPhone and iPad...
It's easy to get carried away with Tim Cook's "we're really sorry" apology to customers over sub-par mapping experience in iOS 6. After all, everyone is holding Apple in high regard as the company has literally become a yardstick of quality for smooth, pleasing software folks actually love to use.
"If the hardware is the brain and the sinew of our products, the software is their soul", Steve Jobs once said. And when that soul is left in darkness, Apple's brand gets tarnished. We've seen it happen with MobileMe and it sure looks like history is repeating itself as iPhone customer satisfaction drops due to the Maps fiasco.
Or is it a fiasco? Like every misstep of Apple's, this one feels like it's been blown way out of proportion by click-hungry, bloodsucking media vampires (Antennagate, anyone?). iDB is curious to hear your thoughts on the Apple Maps situation so I've put together an interesting little poll embedded right below...
If there’s one thing we all learned from Apple’s Maps mea culpa, it’s that mapping the globe is a tricky business. It took the search giant seven years and tremendous manpower to turn Google Maps into the world’s most popular mapping service. Quick to exploit rivals’ weaknesses, Google once more outlined its mapping advantage today just as Tim Cook’s apology was making rounds on the web…
Apple's boss Tim Cook just issued a mea culpa on Apple's awesome Maps in the form of an open letter published on Apple's website. What's really interesting is that the issue which threatened to snowball into a PR catastrophe has forced Apple to advise customers to use rival services "while we’re improving Maps".
It takes a tremendous amount of public outcry to force Cupertino into such a defensive position. I imagine heads will roll as Cook gives Apple's mapping team a kind of dressing down Steve Jobs once gave to the MobileMe team ("you should hate each other for having let each other down"). No matter how you look at it, the Maps fiasco has tarnished Apple's reputation, at least in my view...