Make of that what you will, but my personal experience has been that Maps is actually pretty reasonable. In major cities it maybe isn't quite as detailed as Google maps, but then, you can always use Google Maps as a web app for that...
There are now entire countries with completely useless maps. Is that fair to iPhone users in those countries? Even in Canada and the USA, thousands of small cities that formerly had detailed maps were "wiped off the map" with this update. So while millions of people think things have gotten better, millions of people can also legitimately claim Maps is not just "worse" but completely broken.
For the people who live in cities with turn-by-turn navigation and 3D flyovers, hey the new Maps is great. Apple has sacrificed a product that was good enough for most people with one that is great for some and terrible for others. It's a tough decision for them to make, and they should have still used Google Maps app for those who are affected negatively since theres still so much time left on the contract with Google.
If they had given themselves a year where they made Maps available incrementally "by region" then they could have given themselves more time to test and refine the data and enticed users waiting in expectation instead of disappointing a whole bunch of them en-masse. Everyone outside the SF Bay Area could have looked on in expectation while us poor saps would look forward to the day.
I can see where you're coming from but I don't know if isolating map availability by region would work. Hyper-local travel is used in the majority of cases, but there are cases of regional travel too. What happens if someone wants turn-by-turn navigation from California to, say, Oregon, to attend a conference, weekend getaway, job interview, or just simply meet at a coffee shop in the new region? I live in Seattle, and often drive to Vancouver BC or Portland for weekends, just as an example.
IMHO, the real mistake here was setting expectations so that it would be lower and not affixing the "Beta" label to it (as was done to Siri.) Apple should also have, side from collecting data logs, ensured there's a more prominent feedback loop. As to your suggestion, I think a broader approach would work better, and perhaps work in layers of information, drilling down more deeply with richer details in regional pockets, one broad layer at a time.
No duh. It wouldn't "work" in the sense of excluding absolutely 100% of people. So what? From Apple's perspective, it would be fine if it worked just 85 to 90% of the time. The point is to avoid a massive amount of customer dissatisfaction.
> IMHO, the real mistake here was setting expectations so that it would be lower and not affixing the "Beta" label to it (as was done to Siri.)
No disagreement there. Doing both things would have been even better.
Huh? What kind of village in Alsace is not referenced on your Garmin Nuvi (or any kind of maps)? For example, all villages have a wikipedia page!
I've little reason so switch yet anyway.
My understanding is that when you submit your app to the App Store, Apple actually re-sign it with their identity instead, so I guess that theoretically they could remove resources from your bundle and then sign it again, before sending it to your device. But they don't do this.
That is correct.
> so I guess that theoretically they could remove resources from your bundle and then sign it again, before sending it to your device. But they don't do this.
But then they'd have to split the application into a dozen different bundles, and if the user uses iTunes to manage his device this dozen different bundles would then need to be downloaded as there's no way for Apple to know for certain which devices will be synchronized using that iTunes installation in the future.
Good point - I'd forgotten that some people still manage their applications using iTunes!
I'm also waiting for 6.1 at least to see how Apple Maps will evolve, I have no sense of direction whatsoever so I need maps to show me where I am, and Apple Maps still seems a bit too risky for now. It's possible to use the Google Maps site directly, but in my tests it's less responsive and the geolocation doesn't work as well as in the application itself.
> I heard somethings about Safari being buggy.. I didn't really want this either as I only really use my iPad to surf the web.
I've seen developer reports, but no reports of user issues. Quite the opposite, webkit's been updated in iOS6 so Safari is apparently significantly faster.
> I was concerned about the memory footprint. As I understand it app's now download retina resources whether you have a retina iPad or not.
It's always done that (ever since the release of the original iPad and the creation of "hybrid" iPhone/iPad applications), the version of iOS you're running is completely irrelevant to that issue: if you're running an application compatible with all iOS devices (3GS to iPad 3 at native resolutions) it may very well bundle 4 different copies of bitmapped assets (or even 5 for e.g. startup screens, since the iPhone 5 has a different resolution than the 4/4S). I don't believe iOS AppStore bundles have every been stripped. I'm not even sure they could be since they're signed (unless you jailbreak).