So Tim Cook wrote us all a letter yesterday. Did you see it? Posted right on Apple's site, under "Customer Letter," basically saying sorry that Maps in iOS 6 is a mess and telling people to go download Bing, MapQuest, or Waze instead — or just bookmark the Google Maps website on your home screen like its 2009 again. Which, for the record, is exactly what I did about an hour after reading it.
I want to be annoyed that it took this long, but honestly Im a little surprised he wrote it at all. Apple doesnt really do public apologies. Steve never did, not like this, not with his name signed at the bottom and a promise that "we are extremely sorry." I read it twice because it didnt sound like Apple copy. Too plain. No adjectives doing gymnastics.
Anyway. Backstory for anyone who's been off the grid: iPhone 5 came out last Friday, I stood in line at the Powell Street store here in the city for about ninety minutes (not bad, honestly, Ive done worse for brunch), got my hands on one, and within about twenty minutes of setup Maps had already tried to route me to a Walgreens that a friend swears has been closed since 2010. Then it flattened the Golden Gate Bridge into this weird warped smear when I zoomed into 3D mode, like the whole thing had been left out in the sun. Ive seen screenshots going around of collapsed bridges, buildings sunk halfway into the ground, whole towns just missing labels. Some of it is very funny. Some of it is genuinely useless if youre trying to get somewhere you dont already know how to get to, which is sort of the entire point of a maps app.
The letter lists out where to go instead: web apps for Google and Bing maps, or native apps from Bing, MapQuest, and Waze, until Apple "improves" their own thing. No mention of when a real fix lands, and definitely no mention of Google shipping their own native Maps app for iOS, which I have to assume is coming eventually because Google would be foolish not to make it. Until then Ive got the Google Maps bookmark pinned to my home screen and it opens in Safari and its slower and it doesnt do turn by turn and I hate it a little, but at least it knows where Walgreens actually is.
Heres my actual opinion on this, not just the recap: I think Apple rushed it. Not "engineers made mistakes," everyone makes mistakes, but a strategic decision from way up top to yank Google off the platform before their own replacement was anywhere close to ready, because they didnt want Google holding that kind of leverage over iOS anymore. That's a business reason, a totally understandable one even, but it's not a user reason, and this week it was users eating the cost of it. Cook's letter reads like damage control written by someone who knows the decision itself wasnt wrong, just the timing. I dont think thats dishonest exactly. I just dont think its the full story either.
Small tangent, not really related: Ive also decided I dont like Waze's voice prompts. Everyone keeps telling me to switch to it permanently, how it's crowd-sourced and knows about traffic and cops and whatever, and I get why people like it, but the lady's voice sounds like its coming through a tin can and it startled me at a stoplight on Tuesday badly enough that I yelped a little in the car. Alone. That's on me, not Waze, but Im mentioning it anyway.
I dont think this is the end of the story by a long shot. A letter is easy. Fixing millions of map tiles and points of interest is not, and Ive got a feeling well be making fun of a mislabeled landmark again in a month, then two months, then probably still around the holidays. For now my home screen has four map-related icons on it, which is one more than any phone needs, and Im just picking whichever one seems least likely to send me to a Walgreens that doesnt exist.