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1) In some ways they already do this by collating anonymized crowdsourced data (ex. the overblown debacle over the location cache and the subsequent discovery that they were crowdsourcing traffic data). 2) To my knowledge, this just doesn't happen at Apple for high profile launches like iOS, iPhone, iPad etc. While there are always going to be egos at play in any corporation, the executive team is very solid at Apple and struggles like that just don't get far. Apple demonstrated over and over again that they have no problem killing hardware and software that they feel they must for the sake of progress, or whatever, and you can bet that there's always a team with something at stake when they do that. 3) Given the thoroughness of focus on iOS at Apple over the last 5 years, and maps being a rather major change for a key functionality for iPhones, and any smartphone now really, this seems impossible. What I'm not clear on is why Apple didn't expressly announce the feature as a work in progress, or "beta", that is at the point that it requires real world usage and feedback to bring it up to the standards of, what are now, significantly more mature products. The Maps app in iOS5 really hasn't changed much since it's launch with the first iPhone while Android, etc. have been able to add features to theirs. My money is on licensing restrictions being the primary culprit behind this and given that Apple's license with Google was up this year, it just seems far too much of a stretch, for the sake of finding any kind of fault in Apple's diamond polished veneer, to assume that Apple had any other intention than wanting to improve the utility of a key mobile computing feature they were otherwise not allowed to do, or were not able to come to agreeable terms with Google when talking about renewing their license. It's unfortunate that it's so significantly lacking in accuracy, but I'm not entirely sure there was much they could do about that before launch beyond removing Maps entirely? |