Apple CEO Tim Cook Apologizes For Maps App, Recommends Alternatives

TheBoat writes "Tim Cook has apologized for the company's Maps app in iOS 6. 'We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.' Cook said the company is continuing to work on the app, but recommended several alternatives in the meantime: apps from Bing, MapQuest, and Waze, or the map websites of Google and Nokia." This is unusual for Apple, but not unprecedented. Steve Jobs acknowledged reception issues with the iPhone 4 in 2010, but he wasn't quite so contrite about it.

Comments

Really bad in Canada

[jest3r]

In an effort to figure out how innacurate the data in my area is I did the following:
- Fired up Xcode
- Determined that Apple Maps uses the CLGeocoder Class by peeking at the iPhone's debug console in Xcode while doing live searches in Apple Maps
- Scraped an official list of towns and cities in the province of Ontario from the provincial governments website.
- Coded up something quick in Xcode to get the results of a couple thousand searches. Searches always included the province name to be more specific.
- Ran a quick analysis of the results - not perfect but enough to get a perspective on the matter.

This is what I found:
- 2028 cities and towns searched
- 688 are not even on the map! Error Code 8
- 551 are clearly incorrect (wrong country, street names that are similar to town names etc.)
- 389 were close but not good enough (for example turn-by-turn might send you off a bridge but you'll get rescued close to where you want to be)
- Only about 400 results were actually correct.

Actual results data here and methodology here for those interested: http://www.mtonic.com/applemaps/
(It's not perfect but gives you an idea of how bad it really is in Ontario Canada anyways)

Failure in reporting

[Andy Dodd]

Good job driving ad traffic to BGR, who didn't even bother to link to the original source:

http://www.apple.com/letter-from-tim-cook-on-maps/