And as has been rehashed over and over, it was Apple's choice. They simply prioritized other things over Maps. Do not confuse not having a choice with choosing to wait until you were under constraints to make difficult choices.
it's a fair point, however, the way I see it, they had 2 choices: Release at iOS 6, release at iOS 7. We don't know when they actually started working on the new maps app. Choosing to delay for another whole year would have been a bigger mistake in my opinion. Apple Maps has successfully got me everywhere I've asked it.
Unless you are involved with Apple, we really don't know what choices they had. By all accounts their contracts with Google were set to expire, and they were in negotiations to renew. If those talks broke down and they did not have legal access to use Google data any longer, their hands were kind of tied.
You don't need to be involved with Apple to know they had choices. They knowingly relied on Google, and instead of planning earlier, they waited until the last possible moment to start putting resources into their own version.
They choose to rely on Google. They choose to enter those agreements. They choose to ignore maps for the first 5 years. They choose not to start planning to move away sooner. You act like they couldn't put any effort replacing Google until the last minute. It wasn't.
They screwed up and released a crappy product from choices they made. End of story.
Apple has acquired several mapping companies since 2009, so we can reasonably believe that they've been working on Apple Maps at least that long, and probably much longer. Perhaps even before the original iPhone release, given what we do know about Apple release schedules (they are generally long and drawn-out for new builds).
Waiting to release the original iPhone until 2015 when Apple Maps was absolutely perfect would have been a choice, but not a reasonable one. Bootstrapping with Google's service was quite logical, and proved to be very successful.
And Apple Maps really isn't that bad. Perhaps not Google Maps good, but better than what the iPhone had prior. It is still a major upgrade for iOS users, even for all its faults.