[grey-area]

When people say Maps is a "huge step backwards", are they actually using the product?

Where do you live? If you live in the Valley, I'm sure it's fine, in fact I'm sure it's great, but elsewhere in the world the map data is pretty bad, much worse than Google Maps. People aren't all complaining about turn by turn directions in the US, they're complaining about basic flaws in map data around the world. So yes, they are using it, and it is not great.

Both the satellite data and the map data is woeful in some areas, some of it is so bad that I'm surprised they included it at all. Here are some examples which don't compare favourably with OSM or Google:

"Brighton, UK", Satellite - a big UK city is so blurry you can't see streets.

"Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands" - ends up in the middle of the sea, and no roads on the islands at all.

"Colchester" - satellite shows clouds, in B&W over a UK city

"Senkaku Islands" - compare satellite with standard to see actual duplicates of these disputed islands in the vector map data.

"Puno,Peru"- in lake Titicaca

"Central St Martins" - a major London college which relocated last year is still shown at its old address. The new address, which has been a warehouse for many years, is shown as a park named 'King's Cross Central' which doesn't exist. If their data on major cities is this bad, consider how bad the rural areas will be.

This is a really hard problem, and frankly I'm surprised Apple tried to without an extensive beta and data collection period in order to bring their data up to scratch. Just to give you an example of the sort of advantage this hands Google - Last weekend I tried to find a postcode in central London, and it wasn't found (N1C 4AA, a relatively new postcode for a major new development, but visible in Google and OSM with lots of detail). A colleague with an SIII found it no problem. That kind of comparison is a big problem for Apple.

[alxp]

> If you live in the Valley, I'm sure it's fine, in fact I'm sure it's great

The Menlo Park public library is shown located on top of the train tracks in Palo Alto, so no.

[metamatt]

I think this is their "extensive beta and data collection period". Just using the entire iOS 6 customer base as the experimental set.

I think it would be kinda cool if they'd push the new maps as an app available for iOS 5, and if Google had their native iOS maps app ready, and the transition weren't so abrupt. I realize the mapping subsystem is baked in more deeply, with various APIs and libraries available to all apps on the system, not just a standalone app, but it would still be helpful to have the standalone apps. (If Apple Maps were available as a standalone app, that would facilitiate the "extensive beta period" you suggested without all the ire that they've attracted this way; and I really hope that Google Maps is coming back to iOS at some point real soon now.)

[grey-area]

I think this is their "extensive beta and data collection period". Just using the entire iOS 6 customer base as the experimental set.

If so that's an unfortunate abuse of their customers' trust, and will hand a big advantage to Google.

As you say there were many options like releasing a standalone test first to run in parallel with the google app, but perhaps because of hubris they were not explored, and so customers have had an unexpected downgrade on an app which is widely used.