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Apple renditions of classic landmarks

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You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! MELTING! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Oooooh, look out! I'm going! Oooooh! Ooooooh!
 
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AFAICT Apple Maps is using Open Street View....talk about being cheap. Surely the mighty and rich Apple could have easily acquired say TomTom or Navteq? That's what they usually do, when they need something.

Steve is no longer at the helm of Apple and the corporate bean counters are in control? ..and now there's rumours of easily scuffed black iPhone 5s. Tim Cook is not going to be another John Sculley(Pepsico > Apple) is he?
 
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I was wondering if anyone recalls the early days of Google Maps and how it did compared to iMap. I do recall a few errors in Google Maps over the years, although nothing as drastic as what I have seen with iMap. I've only been using Google Maps for a few years and I believe it has been pretty mature when I started using it.

Google typically releases things like Gmail and Maps as a beta. Some of these will stay in Beta for years before they finally say it is ok. They also started out small. The first version of Google Maps didn't have things like satellite view or street view. The first version on Android just had car navigation. They've built up to a solid working application over the years and then they add features as they go.

What Apple tried to do is jump from nothing to a full version of maps to rival Google Maps. They could have waited on Fly Over, POI's and satellite overlays until it was polished enough to offer everyone, but they didn't. They did exactly what they have always accused everyone else of doing. They released a product that was not as ready for prime time as they claimed. AFAIK, any updates for this may require a full OS update instead of an app update.

Maybe it will work better on the 5 or maybe slower data speeds mess up the pictures. Who really knows. The big thing is that a lot of people said that Jobs was the creative mind behind Apple and were concerned that his death would spell the end of the company. While I don't think that is the case, this is a sign that things are not going to be the same. As others have said, this would never have happened with Jobs still in control.
 
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Google typically releases things like Gmail and Maps as a beta. Some of these will stay in Beta for years before they finally say it is ok. They also started out small. The first version of Google Maps didn't have things like satellite view or street view. The first version on Android just had car navigation. They've built up to a solid working application over the years and then they add features as they go.

What Apple tried to do is jump from nothing to a full version of maps to rival Google Maps. They could have waited on Fly Over, POI's and satellite overlays until it was polished enough to offer everyone, but they didn't. They did exactly what they have always accused everyone else of doing. They released a product that was not as ready for prime time as they claimed. AFAIK, any updates for this may require a full OS update instead of an app update.

Maybe it will work better on the 5 or maybe slower data speeds mess up the pictures. Who really knows. The big thing is that a lot of people said that Jobs was the creative mind behind Apple and were concerned that his death would spell the end of the company. While I don't think that is the case, this is a sign that things are not going to be the same. As others have said, this would never have happened with Jobs still in control.

But Apple did say it's a "Work In Progress"!!!

One would think that if it was a 'WIP' that one would not make it the sole option. I think it would have been wiser to release it as an app in the App Store so users could contribute to the bugs. And also wait 6 months to clean it up.
 
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But Apple did say it's a "Work In Progress"!!!

One would think that if it was a 'WIP' that one would not make it the sole option. I think it would have been wiser to release it as an app in the App Store so users could contribute to the bugs. And also wait 6 months to clean it up.

Making it the only option is what blows my mind. It makes no sense at all. As far as releasing it as an app, Google made that same mistake in the beginning. I'm amazed that Apple didn't learn from it.
 
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It's all about the data. Tons and tons of data. Google loves to process it and it's not easy to do, especially since there are real-time changes (traffic, businesses that come and go, etc).

The least Apple could do is allow 3rd party apps to become the default. I can make Safari the default web browser on my PC and that's run by 'evil' Microsoft.
 
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Is this all because the late Steve Jobs no longer at Apple? He'd have probably said to the dev team.. "This is crap, you're all fired!", and I believe he could be ruthless like that.

Sometimes the most important thing is not to say yes to new ideas but to always say no to the bad ones. And I have to admit, Jobs was pretty good at saying no.
 
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