[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.