Apple Maps issues are still making the rounds today, but it seems that while the tech press is having a field day with any nugget they can dig up that suggests Apple dropped the ball, the general public is actually out using Google Maps and the majority of users haven’t been bothered by issues at all.
Yesterday CNET published a report that suggested that six different developers went on the record and indicated that they contacted Apple and warned them of problems with the new iOS Maps application after Apple released the first pre-release version of iOS 6 back in June. One developer in particular went on the record, although only after the site agreed to reference his words anonymously.
Developers stated:
During the beta period I filed bug reports with Apple’s Radar system (notorious for being ignored), posted on the forums several times, and e-mailed multiple people within Apple’s MapKit team to voice our concerns … The mood amongst the developers seemed to be that the maps were so shockingly bad that reporting individual problems was futile. What was needed wasn’t so much an interface for reporting a single point as incorrect, but for selecting an entire region and saying ‘all of this — it’s wrong.
So on one level we have developers who warned Apple of tremendous problems. There’s no denying that some problems exist with Maps. In fact, I’ve already gone on record stating that my first experience with the application once it went live was a terrible one. Maps told me that I lived a couple dozen kilometers from San Francisco. I live in Ottawa. That’s in Canada. An actually distance of 4,677 km. So, yes, Maps has bugs. But, the real question here is whether or not users, you know, those people roaming around the country, are having huge problems with Maps. From the sounds of it, the majority of Maps users aren’t having problems at all. In fact, they’re barely noticing problems.
The results of a new survey from Blumenthals (but only comprised of 168 responses) shows that 74 percent of the respondents find that Maps works fine for them. The number jumps to a staggering 91.2 percent if we include the category “It’s annoying but not a deal breaker.” In other words, just 8.8 percent of respondents had a real problem with Apple’s new Maps application, selecting either “It might affect my future buying decisions” or “I won’t ever buy another iPhone.” That’s hardly numbers that corroborate the apocalyptical hyperbole we’re seeing from the tech press these days.
The reality of the situation is quite simple. The average person is getting along just fine with Maps. Maps has bugs to work out — it’s obvious — but it works just fine in the majority of situations.
Those scratches on the new iPhone 5 on the other hand, now those are a REAL problem.
