[robomartin]

It is obvious that they have better data for certain parts of the world.

The problem with maps is that if your data is, say, 10% bad or inaccurate (whatever that means) and you are serving two billion searches per week you have to contend with tens of millions of unhappy users. Bad problem to have.

Will they fix it? Probably. How long? Someone far more knowledgeable of the challenges in mapping will have to answer that one.

For me and those close to me it is about the potential to break something that works very well right now. That alone is keeping us from upgrading software and hardware. It's the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" saying.

As for turn-by-turn. I live in SoCal. I rarely need it. When I do, I throw an old GPS I keep in the car on the dashboard and it works just fine. Most of the time (99% ?) I use Google Maps on my 4S.

[Tuna-Fish]

I've talked to people who have IOS6, and the consensus is that the maps are fine in California, and completely useless everywhere else.

In Finland, a guy I know got directions that told him to go through a road that hasn't existed for 6 years.

Also, most of the market for iPhone users are city-dwellers, and most of those don't own cars. Having good timetable/route planner for public transit is very important. As I understand, Maps doesn't work for that at all.

[mitchty]

I have had no issues in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I think you're overblowing things with your statement of "completely useless everywhere else". I've even compared the directions against a friends s3 with google maps and Apple maps did better at some local routing than google maps did for what its worth.

[astrec]

It places my house 150m out to sea, and puts a rehabilitation centre that doesn't exist at the actual location of my house. In my town, a suburb of Melbourne AU, the Apple product is completely useless.

[LargeWu]

I saw a news story in, I think, the Star Tribune with a picture of the new Maps app locating the Guthrie Theatre at its old location at the Walker. It hasn't been there for 3 years.

Admittedly, I haven't used the new Maps app, but only because I've avoided upgrading my phone to iOS6 solely because I've heard the new Maps is so terrible.

[chucknelson]

> maps are fine in California, and completely useless everywhere else

Our personal, relatively microscopic sample sizes are the problem with the sentiment on this. I've used them in Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and they worked fine for restaurants, turn-by-turn, etc.

As others have said, a combination of the vocal minority and the human race's love for drama is what's keeping this discussion alive.

[metamatt]

I just got back from a 2 week vacation to Ireland. I planned and executed most of the trip on the fly using Google Maps on my iPhone 4S (3G data is cheap in Europe, even for nonresidents on prepaid SIMs!) running iOS 5.

Just out of curiosity, after I got back, I upgraded my iPad to iOS 6 to see whether all the complaints I'd read about Apple's maps were legit. Then I went and looked up a bunch of the places we'd traveled or stayed in Ireland, to see if the new maps would have gotten the job done. Short story, it would have been a lot harder. In the spot checks I did, the roads are there, and in one case the driving directions are better than what Google recommended, but it mostly didn't know what I was talking about when I searched for businesses, like hotels we stayed at.

Google has amassed a huge amount of really high quality data, not just roads but also businesses and places, which nobody else has. I don't know if there's widespread appreciation for how hard this is and how hard Google's been working on it (one example, and I'm sure this article is slightly politicized and the timing of it appearing now is no coincidence, but still, it's mostly fact: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-go...). Hopefully Apple has the staying power to go amass the same data, but it's an uphill battle.

[ZoFreX]

The point here isn't whether or not you had a problem. There might be 100s of people reading that post and not replying because they did not have a problem. Without quizzing a representative sample of users, we can't figure out the size and scope of the problem.

[beedogs]

I'm pretty sure when your CEO comes out and says "yeah, we have a problem", that it's a pretty effing enormous problem.

[gutnor]

They do that on a regular basis, they did that last year after their pre-order page committed seppuku. They do that based on the scale of the public outrage, not really on the internal/technical merit.

People conveniently forget how Google Map, Nokia Drive, and all others let you down on a regular basis, and how much room there is for competition in that market. Street layout is mostly right in all apps. POI however is a joke in all of them. In the city of London, Google Map only has a fraction of the shops and there is no logic which one it has and has not. I does not have the Starbuck(!) in front of my job, but it has the clothes shop next to it and nothing else in the street. Nokia Drive keep sending me on farm/field trail when I'm in Spain. At the same place Google Map has random missing road or missing portion of road (those road have been there for 200+ years like the house built on it). I briefly tries IOS Map at the Apple Store and it has the correct layout but only label some of the road, making it equally useless IMO.

We are planning a trip to Japan with Google Maps right now. It is convenient only because of its interface - but really kinrin (something like that) is incredibly better at showing stuff that matters.

[epo]

Well, it's a pretty high profile problem, which it is.

[microtherion]

When you ask for transit directions, you get presented a selection of 3rd party apps from the app store to give you directions, and those directions are then integrated with Apple Maps.

The app I used, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/transit-directions-public/id5... was pretty bad on iOS 6 launch day (with instructions like "take a bus", without mentioning the line), but a week later improved to be perfectly usable here in Switzerland.

[stephencanon]

> I've talked to people who have IOS6, and the consensus is that the maps are fine in California, and completely useless everywhere else.

I haven't had any trouble at all with them here in New England, FWIW.

[eropple]

I have. Boston's and MetroWest's road maps are fine but points of interest are totally crap.

[crag]

No problems in South Florida (Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Palm Beach) either. Last I checked we are outside California.

Don't make generalized statements unless you can back it up with data.

[bobwaycott]

> the consensus is that the maps are fine in California, and completely useless everywhere else.

I've had no issues since I started using the beta around the Southeast US. I've used it from Tennessee to Florida, with turn-by-turn directions around the Atlanta area, to Orlando, all over Disney World, and more.

Let's not contribute consensus where consensus isn't due.

[kul]

It couldn't find 8 California Street in SF for me.

[justincormack]

transit directions never worked outside the US.

[kalleboo]

Except for the other 40+ countries where it works http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/transit/text.html#mdy

[yesbabyyes]

Here in Sweden, Google Maps have transit directions for buses, subways, trams and boats in at least the three major cities.

[rnadna]

They worked in Nova Scotia, Canada.

[alexsb92]

Same goes for Toronto (GTA), Kitchener, Waterloo, Stratford, Ottawa, Niagara in Ontario, and Montreal and Quebec City in Quebec.

[dubcanada]

The transit app works awesome and is a bit easier to use then Google maps.

[anabis]

They work on iOS 5.0.1 in Kyoto, Japan.

[damncabbage]

Worked (and still working on iOS 5) in Sydney, Australia. There are posters up everywhere advertising the fact.

[swah]

Works perfectly in Brazil (no buses though)

[bunderbunder]

> 10% bad or inaccurate

Or even 0.1% bad.

I recently had a family member (who doesn't use a smartphone) call me up to ask if I could recommend a brand of print map to her. After just one instance of getting lost due to a mislabeled road in her atlas, she was ready to jump ship on a brand that she had probably been loyal to for decades. All over an error that was probably insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But to her it meant an hour's worth of lost time, confusion and wasted gasoline, and it was very significant.

[barista]

One bad experience can change the perception.

Interesting snub at Google by recommending Bing maps over Google :)

[tlack]

That may have just been because they want to emphasize a native mobile app rather than HTML5-based mobile experiences, and Google has not yet released their own native maps app for iOS.

[blhack]

Are you sure about that? Doesn't google have a maps application that is pending approval in the app store?

[reaganing]

No, it's still being built and is probably months away[1]

[1]: http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/25/3407614/apple-over-a-year-...

[metamatt]

Actually, the open letter also recommends Google and Nokia maps, via their websites (because native apps don't exist).

BTW: Am I the only one that thinks it's fishy that Google's claiming (a) they only had 3 months notice of this change and (b) 3 months isn't enough to produce their own iOS maps app? I don't believe either of those claims.

[icarus127]

Why would it matter? If they decide to not release a maps app at all that would be their prerogative.

[robomartin]

> the consensus is that the maps are fine in California

I'm in So. Cal., we happened to be visiting friends in Valencia. We were going to meet at Valencia Mall. I searched for "Valencia Mall". I sent us a mile or two away from the true location.

Google Maps got it right.

Based on this single data point I would venture to guess that, no, things are not fine in California. If it can't find the major shopping mall in a city like Valencia I don't even want to know what else it might screw up.

One of the issues with maps is that people have come to rely on them for all sorts of things, even emergencies. Nobody uses the yellow pages or print maps any more (well, some do). Imagine searching for the local hospital in an emergency and being sent to the wrong spot. This stuff is important. It's not a toy any more.