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I like how Apple Maps got us right to the acute care clinic we were looking for this AM. Oh wait, it took us to a trailer park. Not joking.</p>
— matt buchanan (@mattbuchanan) <a data-datetime="2012-09-20T15:29:45+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/mattbuchanan/status/248806159425863680">September 20, 2012</a></blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.neowin.net/news/ios-6-release-day-for-what-when-and-how-to-get-it">Apple launched iOS 6</a> for its family of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices on Wednesday. One of the biggest new features of the mobile operating system is the new Maps app, which replaces the well established and well researched Google Maps app.</p>
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While Apple's Map app has some cool features, including 3D city maps based on real photos for some locations, it is also being slammed for lots of seemingly obvious mistakes.</p>
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/09/20/apples-ios-6-maps-app-fails_n_1899603.html#slide=1546585">The UK edition of the Huffington Post</a> has listed some of the more glaring errors in the iOS 6 map app. One of the biggest is not showing Stratford Upon Avon, which is the birthplace of a little known playwright called William Shakespeare. Other errors include showing stores on the map that have been closed for years and labeling a 35 acre farm in Ireland as an airfield.</p>
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Awareness of the issues&nbsp;is continuing to spread far&nbsp;beyond the tech community and into the top&nbsp;headlines of major news outlets. News of the problems faced by Apple's new mapping software has remained the most read article on BBC News for much of the day.</p>
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<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57516718-37/apples-maps-app-slammed-over-missing-cities-and-other-mistakes/">News.com reports</a> that Tom Tom created some of the data for Apple's iOS 6 map application (<a href="https://twitter.com/panzer/status/248809116728975360">among a dozen or so companies</a>). A statement from the company said, "We are confident about our map quality, as selling 65 million portable navigation devices across the world and more than 1.4 million TomTom apps for iPhone in the past two years reaffirms this quality."</p>
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<strong>Update</strong>: The Tumblr site, <a href="http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com">The Amazing iOS 6 Maps</a>, has been busy collecting user-submitted images that show Apple's lack of quality control over the images in the map application. Here is one example, which shows the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, one of the most well known landmarks around the world, that's warped beyond all recognition in the iOS 6 map app.</p>
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Here's another example, showing a building on the University of Chicago campus that looks like it's been melted in a big microwave.</p>
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Source: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57516718-37/apples-maps-app-slammed-over-missing-cities-and-other-mistakes/">News.com</a> | <em>Image via Apple/Huffington Post</em></p>
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Apple has a maps problem.

The major new feature of the company's new iOS 6 mobile operating system is a new mapping module developed by Apple itself — a replacement for the Google-supplied maps that have been standard on the iPhone since it debuted in 2007. It is a change borne not of user demand, but of corporate politics: Google's Android platform is the biggest competitive threat to the iPhone, so Apple is cutting ties with Google. iPhone owners might have loved Google Maps, but Apple has no love for Google.

"IT'S GOING TO BE MESSY FOR THEM."

Unfortunately, Apple's new maps are simply not as good as Google's. The release of iOS 6 yesterday was immediately followed by users complaining about the new maps, which lack a significant amount of detail and omit public transit directions. Access to high-quality maps is a critical feature for modern smartphones, and Apple's decision to swap out Google Maps is a rare example of the company openly placing its own interests above those of its customers. "There was no problem to solve," says Rene Ritchie, editor of iMore. "They're going to get hammered by mom and pop who want to find a store. It's going to be messy for them."

The problems are particularly bad outside of the US. Map detail might be lacking in some American cities, but ()London, Beijing, and Tokyo are virtually blank, and several major landmarks are labeled inaccurately or wildly misplaced. Satellite views are on par with Google in the US; internationally, they may well be obscured by clouds. "It's national news" in the UK, says Verge senior editor Tom Warren. Politicians have seized the controversy to puff themselves up: Ireland Minister for Justice Alan Shatter issued a statement saying he was concerned that a 35-acre garden and farm called Airfield in his district had been mislabeled with an airport icon. "Clearly the designation is not only wrong but is dangerously misleading," said Shatter. "I have arranged that Apple be informed of the error and requested that it be urgently corrected."

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY? GONE. THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE? OBLITERATED.

Even Apple's highly-touted 3D "flyover" feature is somewhat broken: it frequently displays comically distorted images that look like major landmarks and structures have been destroyed. The Statue of Liberty? Gone. The Brooklyn Bridge? Obliterated. Twitter users quickly started collected examples using the hashtag #ios6apocalypse, and a Tumblr called The Amazing iOS 6 Maps quickly filled up with examples of bad data. Apple's 3D maps make for "a great commercial," says Ritchie. "But they're nowhere near as useful as Google's Street View."

To be fair, Apple's new maps are starting at a disadvantage with users: Google maps are the industry standard, and users are familiar with their quirks and limitations after years of use. Head-to-head, both Apple and Google's systems have similar issues: searching for a Lexington Avenue location while in Manhattan brings up a Brooklyn street in Apple's Maps, while Google first found a result in New Jersey. Searching for a specific restaurant or shop will usually work in either case — especially if a city name is also entered — and both maps do well when searching general terms like "Italian restaurant" in a well-populated area. When a search goes wrong, it's often equally wrong on both, even if the results are different. But Apple isn't doing itself any favors, either: a search for "Apple Cube" fails to find Apple's iconic Fifth Avenue store in New York.



"IT TAKES A LONG TIME AND EFFORT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS RIGHT."

Why all the bad data and broken features? Building maps is extremely difficult — there are only a handful of mapping data providers in the world, and they've all been gathering information for years. Sources tell The Verge that Apple began work on the iOS 6 maps system nearly five years ago — not coincidentally when Google launched Android — and the company has had to buy smaller mapping companies and piece together maps from several vendors to even get this far. That's why the US maps are better than the international ones: Apple's using TomTom data in the US, but other services abroad. It's a patchwork, and the rough edges are clear compared to Google's offering. The search giant has been refining its maps for years now: not only has it been running its quirky StreetView cars all over the world, it's been collecting location data from millions of iPhone and Android users to gain even more precision. Apple's just getting started.

"It takes a long time and effort to figure out how to do this right," Google maps VP Brandon McClendon told The New York Times yesterday. "Experience is important." Other companies of Apple's size aren't even trying: Amazon simply signed a deal to use Nokia maps on its Kindle Fire devices.

Apple's piecemeal approach to mapping is evident when simply browsing the map: instead of including locations directly on the map like Google, it uses an overlay of data from Yelp to show restaurants, gas stations, or bus stops. This is often beneficial: you can tap them directly to see Yelp ratings or head to a detailed address page. But Yelp is crowdsourced, and the results can seem random. In New York or DC, there's not a dramatic difference between Google's annotations and Apple's icons, but in many rural areas Apple seems to only place a handful of icons even when more are discoverable by searching, undermining its promise of a better browsing experience. And Yelp, popular mostly in the US, doesn't seem to have been replaced by similar tools in other countries.

THE LOSS OF MASS TRANSIT DIRECTIONS IS A MAJOR BLOW

And Apple simply didn't have time to match other Google features: the loss of mass transit directions is a major blow. Google Maps Senior Product Manager Manik Gupta told us that Transit "became an integral part [of Maps] very soon after it launched. It’s a very typical use case. Especially if you’re a city-dweller, living in Europe or Asia, where you have a very good Metro system... look at Tokyo. The whole city runs on transit." Selecting the familiar bus icon in iOS 6 when searching for directions now brings up a list of local transit apps that are either installed on the phone or available on the App Store. If the app is installed, Apple can feed it information, ideally minimizing the extra work. But while transit apps have come a long way over the past few years, they still can't replicate the fluid integration of bus, train, commuter rail, and foot traffic that Google offers at its best. And transit apps are often local to individual cities, meaning you may have to install multiple tools with multiple interfaces if you travel.

Apple's new maps do have some benefits — especially in larger American cities, where Apple's software can claim rough parity with Google's app. Apple maps don't have annoying features like sponsored listings and ads, and the company now offers free turn-by-turn navigation, a feature Google has long offered on Android phones. But those are benefits that only shine in the light of a great core maps experience, and most users appear to be willing to accept a few ads in return for solid, reliable data.

It is a precarious position for Apple, which is on the verge of an all-out media blitz when the iPhone 5 goes on sale tomorrow. Unlike years past, iOS 6 has few major features besides the swapped-in new maps — there's no headline-grabbing feature like Siri or multitasking or AirPlay. "Maps is a non-trivial effort," says iMore's Ritchie. "It took a lot of time that they could have used for user-facing features."

"IOS 6 IS MOSTLY ABOUT APPLE — THEY WANTED TO GET GOOGLE OFF THEIR PHONE."

That means Apple won't have much else to lean on as it begins to market the new iPhone. "Maps is definitely the highlight feature of iOS 6," says Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research. "We can expect the new maps to be a signature feature of Apple's new iPhone ads." It's also an interesting opportunity for Google: the company was widely expected to release its own maps app for iOS to coincide with the iPhone 5, but as of yet it has said and done nothing except quietly remind people that Google maps are still available and being updated on Android.



Ultimately Apple created this problem for itself. Ritchie is blunt in noting criticism that Apple's new iPhone 5 and OS feel like iterative updates to previous products. "iOS 6 is mostly about Apple — they wanted to get Google off their phone," he says. That's been accomplished: Google Maps and YouTube, beloved by users, are both gone from the default iPhone homescreen. The real question is whether these victories for Apple are victories for its customers.

Kara also asked whether Apple was going to remove Google from the iPhone:

No. We want to make better products than them. What I love about the marketplace is that we do our products, we tell people about them, and if they like them, we get to come to work tomorrow. It’s not like that in enterprise…the people who make those decisions are sometimes confused. Just because we’re competing with someone doesn’t mean we have to be rude.

-Steve Jobs, All Things D8 2010

Apple (AAPL) became the most valuable company in the world, in part due to the meticulousness and perfectionism of the late Steve Jobs. Jobs earned the trust of millions of users that Apple products not only work out of the box, they work well.

Steve Jobs was well known for being extraordinarily demanding of his subordinates to ensure perfection in the products before they were released. If an imperfection could have been humanly prevented, Jobs prevented it. Because of his penchant for perfection, Jobs was not very popular, some even called him a jerk. The kind of fortitude Steve Jobs had for perfection seems to have evaporated from Apple.

In the just released iOS 6 Apple ditched Google (GOOG) Maps and replaced it with Apple Maps. The graphics and 3D rendering in Apple Maps is a thing of beauty. However, there is one problem – Apple Maps do not always work.

Angry users are flooding the Internet with complaints. Most of the complaints are coming from Europe and Asia. It appears that Apple worked hard on all of the ancillary items in Maps but forgot to perfect the main purpose of Maps – helping users go where they want to go every time without problems.

If Steve Jobs was alive, would he have introduced Apple Maps with rough edges? Did the meticulousness that went into Apple products die with Steve Jobs? Has Apple squandered the trust of users built up by Steve Jobs over years in one swoop?

These are the important questions for Apple investors to ponder.

The source of Apple Maps is TomTom. TomTom has been a reliable and reputable provider of GPS data for years. It appears that the problem is not in the foundation to the app which was provided by TomTom, but with how Apple created the app.

It is not atypical for a major new app to have rough edges. However, Apple is not a typical company. Apple’s persona is that its products work without glitches.

The Map fiasco is especially troubling because Apple has been heavily touting it.

These days my focus is on generating high risk adjusted returns for my hedge fund and my subscribers. If I were still in my previous life of consulting with CEOs, and Tim Cook were to hire me, I would have advised him to take a page out of Microsoft’s (MSFT) book. Microsoft does a good job of making alpha and beta versions of its products widely available to flush out the bugs. If Apple had adopted this approach on Maps, it would not be facing this problem now.

As a full disclosure, I am utilizing beta of Microsoft Office 2013 and enjoying it.

Interestingly, Nokia (NOK) has a very strong Maps offering which is part of Windows Phone 8. Is there anyone awake at Nokia headquarters to take advantage of the gift Apple has handed Nokia on a silver platter?

This is the kind of data that goes into the ‘change screen’ of my model. Accumulation of dozens of different factors including the one that is the subject of this column has reduced the probability of Apple reaching my target of $1000 to only 58%. In contrast when we first accumulated the full position in Apple stock at $131, my model was consistently showing a 90% plus probability of the stock doubling. My regular readers may recall that the previous published probability of Apple reaching $1000 was 60%.

Those Apple bulls who have completely dismissed the fact that Steve Jobs is no longer at the helm of Apple may want to take notice of the Maps fiasco.