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.'"

Comments

Re:Was it justified

[Edgewize]

No. Failing to deliver a quality product isn't the problem. The problem is if you promise to deliver a quality product, and then you fail.

It seems to me like Apple wouldn't have made the switch right away on iOS 6 if they weren't confident that the software was ready. Someone had to stand up and say, "This is ready" or "This is not ready". If Mr. Williamson was in charge of it, and he told his bosses with confidence that it was ready, he should be fired. That's pretty straightforward.

Re:Lessons

[MachDelta]

Apple shot themselves in the foot on this.

Option A) was to negotiate with Google (which they did) and accept paying more money and letting Google put their logo somewhere (which they didn't).

Option B) was to to let it ride with no navigation (their contract with Google for just map data still had a year or two left before renewal) and work on their own map/nav system in the meantime, launching it when it was ready or the contract was up.

Option C) was to abandon common sense, drop Google because they are evil, and quickly roll their own "superior" map/nav system on a greatly accelerated timespan. And pray that it's not a horrible, brand-damaging mess. Oops!

You forgot option D

[dutchwhizzman]

Option D: They could have straight forward have bought Tom Tom and use their application. TomTom's own devices that use the same map information had no trouble navigating where Apple was leading you nowhere. At the current share price it would be affordable for Apple to buy it and it would buy them an entrance into the dashboard of several large brands, that are already using built-in TomTom navigation devices.