[matwood]

Exactly. There is no way Apple could wait until feature parity which still may not ever happen in some areas. There comes a point where they have to get what they have out the door and continue to iterate. One could argue Apple released too early, but it was going to be bumpy no matter when they released.

[Wowfunhappy]

> There is no way Apple could wait until feature parity

Why?

A startup would eventually need to start generating funds, or at least prove themselves in the market to convince investors. But Apple? They could have kept Maps in the oven for another five years if need be. Similar to how they secretly kept Intel builds of OS X in their back pocket for years.

[robenkleene]

The blog post I linked to above specifically addresses this (https://daringfireball.net/2012/09/get_the_fainting_chair). The specific consequences of delaying Apple Maps would have been either:

1. Not having turn-by-turn directions on Apple Maps, arguable the single most important feature for a mapping app.

2. Share more of Apple users data with Google in order to support Google Latitude. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Latitude)

So we have two choices: Not have the single most important feature in a mapping app, or violating one of the basic tentpole features the iOS brand, user privacy. So obviously they went with the third option, launch their own mapping service despite its flaws, and I've never heard a convincing argument that that wasn't the best choice.

[Wowfunhappy]

Oh, that's interesting—their deal with Google was about to expire!

Still—could Apple not strike deals with other vendors? It's not as though Google was the only game in town, especially back then when TomTom was a much bigger deal. At minimum, they could have used their leverage to negotiate with various players—Apple is good at that.

Nokia in particular had a fantastic mapping app, with turn-by-turn directions that worked really well on my N9. They still sell access to this API today: https://www.here.com/

I'm really not convinced that rushing an in-house app out the door was the only possible option.

[aloer]

Because Maps most likely needed user feedback and crowd sourced data collection to be improved. The longer the wait the bigger the gap to Google Maps that had been live for many years, happily collecting data about what streets are open, where the stores are, how the traffic works in a certain locations and so on

[Wowfunhappy]

Could Apple not collect data while users were using their iPhones normally (possible inside of the Apple-written, but Google-API-based maps app)?

Explicit user feedback is harder to gather, but I didn't realize Apple Maps leaned so heavily on that. I've certainly never submitted anything...

[matwood]

> Similar to how they secretly kept Intel builds of OS X in their back pocket for years.

I had a G4 PB and then an Intel MBP. The transition was better than expected, but certainly not without bumps. In a lot of ways, it was similar to maps in that to really finish they had to get it out the door.