There's not much "edge case" about obsolete maps, misplaced businesses and addresses, etc.

It's great that it's working for you, but it's a bit annoying for you to just dismiss the trouble that many of us are having like that.

51% of the world currently lives in cities.[1] 79% of Americans do. The preferred mode of transportation in cities is public transit – a highly useful competency of the old Maps app in which Apple has replaced the UX of "here's how to get there from here" to "hey, go look in the App Store."

51% of the world. 79% of Americans "Edge cases," you say?

[1]http://www.globalhealthfacts.org/data/topic/map.aspx?ind=83

To be fair, plenty of American cities have crappy public transit. On the other hand, plenty of people in non-US cities absolutely depend on public transit because cars and/or gas are substantially more expensive (on an absolute basis and/or relative to the local standard-of-living).

FWIW the vast majority of the non-american citizens did not have mass transit on Google Maps either.

Turn by turn is completely separate from the complaints about Apple Maps. I'm sure they work great, provided that your destination is plotted correctly in their database.

As for edge cases, that's the point. You have to be able to trust a mapping application with areas which are unfamiliar to you. A maps app can only be useful if there's a high level of trust, and when you immediately see errors in Apple Maps (some of which are clearly the result of overzealous automation, like labeling "Airfield Park" as an actual airfield) that trust vanishes fairly quickly.

TIL the entire population of New York City is one gigantic edge case.

In my city the maps are perfect - in some areas better than Google. They've improved a huge amount since the first iOS 6 betas when whole roads were missing.

The business locations are not so great though. It's a big mish-mash of really old data and incorrect locations.

> Apple feels maybe a year behind in some respects and a year ahead in others, but definitely not 7 years behind.

I believe this comes from the fact that you had Apple's turn-by-turn. Is that actually better (or a year better) than Google's turn-by-turn navigation that's been on Android for so long?

What do you mean? Google has never had control over the maps app on iOS. The previous app was also written by Apple, just using Google's Maps API.

For all we know, Google could have released their own maps app only to have it blocked by Apple for providing "duplicate functionality" since Apple bans developers from even revealing if their app has been rejected.

Even if you're right, it's edge cases that companies should care about. People who are not edge cases will comply anyway and use whatever is default, whereas it's people who are edge cases most likely to switch to a competitor (possibly leading more people with them).

People just need something to complain about and this was the most obvious choice. I too have been using the new Apple Map app and have had no problems with it.

>The people most upset seem to generally be edge cases

I love it how you dismiss 99% of people and the globe as an edge case by your anecdote of it working well for you.

Let me take a guess, you live on the West Coast where Apple engineers live?

The OP's point is that this feels a lot like Antennagate 2010, where a large number of non-Apple users latched onto the fact that there was something wrong with Apple products, and complained louder than the actual Apple users. At this point, we can call all the evidence anecdotal until we see some hard numbers on how much map data is actually incorrect, and what actual percentage of the population is affected (I'm not holding my breath for that data, though).

I agree, though, that Apple rushed in prematurely with a new version of Maps -- either they screwed up big time engineering/management wise, or their hand was forced business-wise (I'm leaning towards the latter).

So putting the "outrage" aside for a moment, how well do maps work on your phone, and did you notice any problems so far?

Everybody I've seen complaining is an iPhone user upset that they've lost functionality.

To me, Google's tone at their pre-WWDC Maps event (and the effort they made to demonstrate things on iOS devices) doesn't seem consistent with the hypothesis that they decided to force Apple's hand.

Its entirely plausible that Google framed the map situation one way publicly, but another with Apple in private.

Possible, yes. But given the way many people criticized Google's tone at the time (nervous, etc.) it doesn't seem likely to me.

> The OP's point is that this feels a lot like Antennagate 2010, where a large number of non-Apple users latched onto the fact that there was something wrong with Apple products, and complained louder than the actual Apple users.

The difference here is that there actually was something wrong with the iPhone rather than people having a preference to using Google Maps. Apple is banking on turn-by-turn keeping enough people at by until they're able to squash the shortcomings.

We're only talking about a demographic of ~5B people and 63 countries, don't be so hyperbolic: http://theunderstatement.com/post/31855177665/quantifying-th....

From the article:

> The biggest losers are Brazil, India, Taiwan, and Thailand (population: 1.5 billion) which overnight will go from being countries with every maps feature (transit, traffic, and street view) to countries with none of those features, nor any of the new features either.

To be fair, Apple's Maps in Bangkok is actually pretty good. We never have Street View until a few months ago (and it only covers central part of Bangkok). Google Maps transit was never really good here since it only contains data from BMTA, traffic is possibly the only thing I truly miss.

This is exactly my point about the hyperbole. As if 5 billion people are wandering alone in the wilderness today because of a new map app.

To quote Steve Jobs, "Relax... it is just a phone."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the complaints aren't based on lack of those features, but very poor POI and mapping. How does one provide statistics on that without end users actively documenting every mishap?

My experience is the same as the GP comment—the maps are fairly decent—and I live in Toronto.

Are there problems? Yes. Will they get fixed? Yes. Does Apple have to do an OS update to fix these? No.

People are finding major problems because they’re looking for major problems. Apple has failed to clear the hurdle of "as good as" the old mapping data from Google, but for most people I suspect it will be "good enough."

I like your comment a lot because I often feel like Silicon Valley dismisses the Midwest (sometimes even including Chicago!) as an edge case / not important and that's in the same country even.