Iphone Carriers

iPhone 5 went on sale today but the news was marred by the terrible reviews of Apple Maps popping up from around the planet.

Too many times in the past Apple have rejected features and functionality stating they are not ready for primetime. Remember Adobe Flash? Clearly Maps in its current form would fall squarely in the not-ready category and Apple should have waited to get it right before unilaterally replacing the well established Google Maps in iOS 6.

This tumblr blog is already filled up with user submitted images of missing, distorted and inaccurate data, and there are reports that Google have already submitted a Maps app waiting for approval with Apple.

This report from guardian.co.uk

Google, I hear from roundabout sources, is enjoying the bad press Apple is suffering. It would be surprising if its mappers could resist some schadenfreude, since they are very proud of their work; having it rejected wholesale must be galling.

Predictably Apple take no responsibility for the mess. While they haven’t yet accused users of holding the phone wrong, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD

“Customers around the world are upgrading to iOS 6 with over 200 new features including Apple Maps, our first map service. We are excited to offer this service with innovative new features like Flyover and Siri integration, and free turn by turn navigation. We launched this new map service knowing that it is a major initiative and we are just getting started with it. We are continuously improving it, and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get. We’re also working with developers to integrate some of the amazing transit apps in the App Store into iOS Maps. We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better.”

People can report  inaccuracies by tapping on the page curl on the bottom right corner of Maps which brings up a screen to capture feedback. Yes it is a matter of time before the problem is fixed. But in the short term Apple seem to be okay to let users suffer the downgrade.