Apple was warned that its Maps app was awful ahead of launch, but dumped it on users anyway
The Maps app in Apple’s (AAPL) latest version of iOS 6 is pretty terrible. We all know this. In an interesting turn of events, however, it looks like a number of developers told Apple back in June that its new mapping solution was awful, but the company decided to ignore their warnings and launch the shoddy Maps app anyway without making significant improvements.
Speaking with CNET under the condition of anonymity, six separate developers recounted warnings given to Apple stating that its new Maps app in iOS wasn’t up to snuff, and the warnings date back to June when the first developer beta of Apple’s iOS 6 software was released.
“During the beta period I filed bug reports with Apple’s Radar system (notorious for being ignored), posted on the forums several times, and e-mailed multiple people within Apple’s MapKit team to voice our concerns,” one developer told CNET.
“I posted at least one doomsayer rant after each (developer) beta, and I wasn’t alone,” another developer said to the site. “The mood amongst the developers seemed to be that the maps were so shockingly bad that reporting individual problems was futile. What was needed wasn’t so much an interface for reporting a single point as incorrect, but for selecting an entire region and saying ‘all of this — it’s wrong.’ ”
Proceeding with a less-than-ideal strategy after receiving stern warnings didn’t work out so well for Apple rival Samsung (005930), so let’s see how it pans out for Apple.
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