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Apple Axes Head of Mapping Team
New submitter drkim writes "'Apple has reportedly fired the head of its mapping team following software glitches which annoyed customers and rained mockery on the company.' Mr. Williamson promptly left Apple headquarters in Antarctica, and walked to his home in Middelfart, Denmark."
Nerval's Lobster adds: "Cue is also 'seeking advice from outside map-technology experts' as well as 'prodding maps provider TomTom to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple.'"
I was a frequent user of MapQuest when Google Maps appeared and for a good while there were glitches with Google Maps just like Apple is experiencing so I stuck with MapQuest. Google Maps are only as good as they are now because of all the time invested but even now they get it wrong. I was visiting a friend in Alabama and Google put his street address two miles away from the actual location.
The major loss with Apple Maps is the lack of public transport directions and for that reason alone, Google Maps needs to return. Until then, my phone is staying on iOS 5.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
It would have been wiser to let it mature a bit more like Google did.
Huh? Google maps was full of errors and omissions when it came out. It improved over the years.
No, scapegoat did not start with the Greeks. Scapegoat comes from the book of Leviticus where a goat was designated to be cast out into the desert as part of atonement for sins. The Greeks actually used a cripple, a beggar or a criminal for the practice you are thinking of, not a goat.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Google offered to do turn by turn navigation for the inclusion of google branding. I don't think it's unreasonable to be expected to give credit to a company who's product is contributing one of the most useful software features to your phone. Apple is just trying to position themselves to defeat Android. It's too late, and they've come to a desperate point where they're trying to do things they aren't currently capable of.
I can't recall too many high profile firings during Steve Jobs tenure
You mean like Mark Papermaster over the iPhone 4 antenna issues? Or the Mobile Me team lead?
Oh.
Has everyone here got some kind of amnesia? Because Jobs stories are rife with him firing people that displeased him. The current firings seem quite mild by comparison.
Oddly people now seem to think Apple under Steve Jobs was some kind of perfect mecca of products without issues and never an employee fired. That was never the case, but Apple Haters sure like to claim it was.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Android had built-in turn by turn for years; not only could Apple not provide it in iOS, but developers could not write apps that provided turn-by-turn directions on top of the built in iOS mapping framework (it was against Google's TOS). So the whole platform was limited for years by Google restrictions on not just what Apple could do, but what any developer could do.
do you think a company should get paid for the software they develop and the services they offer? apple didn't have turn-by-turn navigation because google refused to offer it, it's because apple wouldn't meet the licensing requirements. as far as any of us know and has been reported, the main sticking point was apple refused to have (more prominent) google branding on the app.