IOS 6 Maps might be hazardous to your health
the.taoofmac.com
the.taoofmac.com
BTW can't iphone users just bookmark maps.google.com as a "webapp" in the meanwhile?
Erm... the article recommends doing exactly that.
It can also be set as a homescreen "application", and in facts prompts you to do so when opened on an iphone.
What would be very interesting for me to understand are the internals of the iOS 6 decision. I am, of course, not talking about technology but rather the business and strategic decisions that led to this.
One could certainly not say that there were quality problems with Google maps. That, particularly today, is self-evident. Why was Apple so hell-bent to jettison Google?
Was it out of fear of the mounting competition in the Android space?
I can understand this, of course. The problem is that you don't complete with your competitor with a product that is inferior to theirs. If anything, the barrier is, at a minimum, to be equal in features and experience to your competitor. And, in reality, you probably need to have a few things on top of them to boast about. In Apple's case, did they think that the 3D view was such a feature? They couldn't have! They are smarter than that. Right? It's puzzling.
Today we understand the value in seeking customer engagement and buy-in BEFORE taking-on, developing or deploying a major product. We know that. I think Apple knows that. How was it decided that iOS 6 maps would clear the Google Maps barrier? Did they actually show it to people? Who? Where? There seems to be clear evidence that this really wasn't widely vetted. How else could one explain airports showing up in rivers or the myriad of funny-yet-sad examples out there.
My curiosity is one of understanding the business process that led to this. From the vantage point of a startup these kinds of moves are suicidal. Apple is likely to survive it. Although, surviving it might mean taking a step that I am sure they don't want to take. Give people what they want: Google Maps.
Prior to this the most prominent example I had of corporate suicide was the UPS "What can brown do for you?" advertising campaign. There I stood in complete disbelief watching a company with a hugely recognized name and service spending millions to actually bifurcate their image and drive name recognition towards a new "brown" identity. Not only did they choose a generic term, but the jokes about what "brown" could do for you when a shipment went wrong were just too funny to ignore. It looks like someone kicked the CEO in the ass and they actually got back to marketing the brand everyone already knows. It was simply unbelievable, just like Apple's move with maps.
I don't know if it is fair to say that Apple has lost its way. Probably not. However, one has to raise questions when a bad decision of this magnitude passes through the company without someone setting the brakes with a clear-minded "We are not ready for this yet".
If it is true that maps are very hard to do well (I don't know maps), then it is beyond obvious that this is not something that can be fixed in six months. The last thing you want to do is make it impossible for your customers NOT to think about your competition. Prior to the iOS 6 maps issue the average iPhone customer probably ignored the entire smart phone ecosystem past Apple. Today you have people making comparisons. What can "brown" do for you?
It goes both ways. There's a possibility that this is a gambit from Google, either to cripple iOS in favor of Android or to simply extort higher fees for Google Maps.
I think the software user experience of iOS Maps is actually better than Google Maps, from the visual design of the maps to the 3D flyover mode to the turn-by-turn directions. The problem is the data. We've seen Apple underestimate how hard some problem are before--MobileMe was Apple underestimating how hard cloud stuff is, Ping was Apple underestimating social. I think Apple just underestimated the problem of map data.
The good news is, the data problem actually can be solved with cash. Design and software problems can't.
Point of interest-wise, I think Google has way more data, and it also seems to be more up-to-date, but still, Apple has tons of (correct) data that Google does not show.
Ultimately, moving away from Google data was a given - it would be a strategic mistake to have a competitor control one of the key elements of your platform. It appears that for one reason or another, this changeover occured too early.
I'm also curious why Apple didn't source more of their data from OSM. In my experience and use cases, the data there is significantly more detailed than Google's (YMMV).