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.
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.