So I've spent the last couple weeks reading through all the iOS 6 details from WWDC, and I keep coming back to the one change that just bothers me. Apple's ditching Google Maps. Not gradually, not with options—they're yanking it out entirely and replacing it with their own maps.
Look, I get it. Google and Apple don't play nicely anymore. The whole Android thing has turned them into rivals, and Google gets priority treatment on their own platform. But maps? Maps is foundational. It's not some experimental feature or a cloud service that can be half-baked. If you're lost, your maps app better work, and it better work right now.
I tested the new Apple Maps during a developer preview session yesterday, and okay, it's not garbage. The interface is faster than Google Maps, and the vector-based rendering is legitimately smooth. But it's clearly not as mature. The POI data is spottier in some areas, and the turn-by-turn navigation feels less refined. And here's the thing that really gets me: they're killing off Street View. I use Street View constantly to preview places before I get there. Google built that over years. Apple's going to walk users right off a cliff and tell them to figure it out.
The timing is weird too. They're shipping this in the fall, and they're obviously not 100% confident or they'd be making a bigger deal about how awesome it is. Instead it just feels like a strategic move—take out Google's foothold on the iPhone, replace it with something good enough, and worry about refinement in point releases.
Some people are saying Apple will acquire mapping companies or license better data, and maybe they will. But they're not doing that before launch. iOS 6 ships in October with maps that aren't finished yet. That's a bet that iPhone users will accept a worse maps app in the name of Apple's platform independence.
I'm not even a Google fanatic. But I've been using Google Maps since its first week in 2005. I know its quirks and its strengths. It's absurdly comprehensive. The data is deep, the search is intelligent, and it just works. Apple's starting from behind, and they know it.
What really bothers me is the principle here. This isn't innovation. It's not Apple building something better and letting the product speak for itself. It's Apple saying: you don't get this thing you like anymore, because we have a problem with who's making it. Use our version instead, or use a web app, or just carry a paper map.
The worst part? Users don't have a choice come October. It's not like iOS 5 where Maps lives in the App Store and you can review it and decide if you like it. This ships as the system default. Millions of people will wake up with a half-finished maps app, and some of them are going to be genuinely frustrated. And Apple's betting that by the time iOS 7 comes around, they'll have fixed enough of the gaps that nobody remembers this awkward transition.
Maybe they're right. Maybe by next year the maps will be great and I'll look back and wonder what I was worried about. But right now, two weeks after WWDC, it just feels like watching a platform burn off a useful bridge because the company on the other side is their enemy. And I can't help thinking there's going to be some collateral damage before this thing stabilizes.