Google has promised this already, and it should be out relatively soon. It's not clear what all will be in it, though.

Apple Maps is a regression in certain areas (public transit, as noted above), and advances others (the turn-by-turn experience), so it's a mixed bag.

At the end of the day, most of these things are reconciled through the app ecosystem: if you are heavily dependent on public transit, Google and other app providers support you well. If you're a driver, Apple and TomTom provide worthy solutions. And so on with walking and biking directions. We, as consumer, get choices and it's relatively easy to switch between them.

Do you have a source for Google's promise of a new iOS maps app? I can't find anything.

That said, even if they do submit one immediately, I'm afraid Apple will tie it up in review for a month or two to allow their version to gain a userbase. I know if a Google version were available upon upgrade to iOS 6, I'd download it immediately. Transit directions are a must-have feature for me.

What is better about the iPhone's turn-by-turn? I've never used it, but I am really happy with Google's Navigation on my Galaxy Nexus. It's always been accurate and responsive, it starts up much quicker than the standalone GPS units I've seen (small sample size), and the voice sounds much more natural.

It's the first time they've had it. There isn't turn-by-turn on the iPhone currently. But if they have issues finding addresses in general how good can the turn-by-turn really be?

> advances others (the turn-by-turn experience)

I hope you're not talking about the "fly around" view when turning a corner, because that is the most useless feature I've ever heard of for turn-by-turn navigation. NO ONE should be looking at their phone while making a turn.

To me it would almost make sense for them to not add their google maps application so that it would make them, like mtalantikite consider switching to Android. I don't know why Google would have much of an incentive to improve iOS when it has it's own operating system to sell.

I think you are forgetting that Google doesn't sell its OS. The point of Android is to enable more eyeballs to their products since eyeballs = ad dollars. So Google will do whatever they can to get users on the Google platform (which is exactly why Google+ is great on iOS).

Maps has a huge local revenue opportunity for Google. It has user intent, most of the searches are commercial, you know the user's tastes and hangouts (through past searches), and the user is addressable (since they are close to the item of interest). This means high CPC rates (or equivalent) if you can deliver a real ad product. Thus, I'd bet pretty strongly that a maps product will be coming to iOS since Google would hate to risk losing those valuable eyeballs.

Because they'd still get advertisement money from sponsored listings vs. no advertising money.

youtube app just came out, and g+ has been pretty spiffy..

Would Apple even permit it? Last I'd heard they were pretty gung-ho on the "No apps that do the same thing as stock apps" thing.

I think they relaxed that restriction long ago, hence the variety of browsers, email clients etc available.

I was under the impression that things like browser apps are still just wrapping UIWebViews and such. I know this is the case for Chrome - the (heh) chrome is different, but the browser itself is the iOS stock. Is it a technical restriction rather than a philosophical one?

Both. Apple has a restriction on 'executing' downloaded code yourself (javascript).