Actually Apple does have a big part in it. They bring together all the data from Tom Tom, Waze, OSM etc as well as the two teams they purchased: C3 and Placebase into one coherent product.
It's amazing that Apple has nearly matched Google in some parts (maps, directions) and far exceeded them in others (3D).
Apple has not "nearly matched" google, not at all. Maybe in the US they have, but in New Zealand, where google is as good as any of the local street maps/directories, if not better normally, the new ios maps is atrocious. The places are now even worse too, because they're relying on Yelp, who don't have a presence here at all.
No, no, no. No problem with your opinion. You can love Apple if you want. I just struggle to understand how you and others can see Apple in the light that you do, and be blinded to all else. I mean, the value to me is the data and the fact it's online. The database itself. I have my own systems for manipulating the data the way I want it (I would think most HN nerds would have similar skills, but maybe not). That's just me. Others seem to love things because they are produced by some popular company. And for no other reason. I just can't really understand it. These are computers produced in Chinese factories. Getting cheaper everyday. Data can be visualised in myriad ways.
Actually Google should be the same as local street directories since that is where they get there data from. I live in Australia (hi, neighbour) and it is Sensis (Yellow/White Pages) who supply data to Google.
As for quality of maps it is about 80% as good as Google and has been getting noticeably better over time.
Actually Google and Apple have pretty similar systems for 3d maps. Apple are in beta with their new version for ios6, which will have slightly better resolution than (the current, been there for a while) Google Earth, but not hugely so. See for comparison http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/iphone-news/3d-maps-comparison-...
Nokia are producing similar 3d maps, although again slightly lower resolution than Google.
I think more importantly than resolution will be coverage. 3d maps of the centre of major cities are one thing, but the whole world is a very different challenge, and one we have no clear idea of a winner on.
I wonder if the iPhone 5 will have a bigger screen. The iPhone 4 screen seems very tiny compared to my Galaxy Nexus. What is the use of fancy 3d if the screen is tiny?
Their license used to be horrible for commercial use, but mostly because it was an extremely bad fit for a data collection, leading to lots of confusion over what was ok and not.
A better comparison for their current license would be the LGPL - as long as you keep your proprietary data separate from the OSM data, you don't need to release it but you still need to release any changes to the OSM data itself.
To be clear, the license has not changed yet. We're in the process of changing the license (and they recently announced [0]) that the next full-planet data dump will be under the new license, but it hasn't been switched yet.