So Apple announced iOS 6 at WWDC last week, and there's this thing that keeps nagging at me. You know how when you're using your iPhone to get somewhere and you just hit Maps and it just works? That's about to change in a big way.
They're replacing Google Maps with Apple's own mapping application. Just completely yanking out Google, building their own thing from scratch. Part of me gets it—Google Maps on iOS has always been a bit janky compared to what you get on Android. You'll search for a restaurant and get stale data, or the directions refuse to load. But still. Google Maps is what we've relied on for three years now. It's familiar. You know what you're getting.
The new Maps app uses their own data, their own servers, and they've been quietly buying up mapping companies and geographic data for years to make this happen. Tim Cook showed it off on stage, all the usual Apple pomp and circumstance. Looks smooth in the demos. Turn-by-turn navigation, 3D views of cities, Siri integration so you can just say where you want to go. I'll admit, the 3D stuff looked pretty slick. Seeing a 3D model of San Francisco from above, all clean and rendered, that was impressive.
But here's the thing that's actually bothering me, and I haven't seen a ton of people talk about this yet. Google paid to have their maps baked into every iPhone. Every single one. That was leverage, right? Millions of people using Google Maps on iOS every single day. Apple just threw that away. They're saying, we don't need you anymore, Google. We're doing maps now.
It's a power play. That's what this is. And I get it from a business perspective—Apple wants to own the entire experience, not have Google running navigation. But you have to wonder if this is maybe a step too far. What if the new Maps app isn't ready? What if it has bugs? What if the data is incomplete in certain areas?
Spoiler alert: I'm obviously skeptical. Apple has a pretty good track record with software, but maps are hard. Google's been working on this for over a decade. They've got satellite imagery, real-time traffic data, Street View cameras all over the planet. Apple's got what, data from buying TomTom and a few other companies? That's not the same thing.
The press releases and the stage demos are gonna look great. That's always how it works. But real-world usage, six months from now when someone's depending on Maps to get to a job interview and they end up in the wrong neighborhood because the data's wrong? That's when we'll know if this was actually a good idea.
What makes me the most frustrated is that this is a move born out of corporate ego more than anything else. Apple doesn't want Google having access to all that location data from iPhone users. Fine. I understand the privacy angle. But couldn't you have just worked with Google and fixed the problems? Maybe paid them more? You're Apple. You have more money than small countries.
Instead, you're launching Maps like it's some kind of grand new feature. "Look what we built!" Yeah, and we all get to be beta testers whether we signed up for it or not. Everyone who updates to iOS 6 in the fall is gonna have their Maps app replaced whether they like it or not. No choice. That's the Apple way, I guess.
I've been using Apple products since I got a MacBook in 2009, and I generally like them. But this move feels unnecessarily risky. Especially when the alternative was working with the best maps service on the planet.
We'll see how it goes. Maybe I'm wrong and it's gonna be fantastic. Apple usually doesn't ship half-baked stuff to hundreds of millions of users. But maps are different. Maps require perfect data, and perfect data isn't something you can engineer your way into having on day one. I'm watching this space. Closely.