Cupertino promptly addresses glitch that left motorists stranded in the bush

Dec 11, 2012 10:09 GMT  ·  By

Following widespread coverage of a new problem with its mapping services, Apple on Monday commissioned some adjustments to its Australian maps.

Apple this week fixed a glitch in its iOS Maps application after reports broke out that several motorists got stranded in the Australian wilderness seeking Mildura, a town in the state of Victoria.

Because of the scorching heat and lack of water in the area where Apple Maps said Mildura was, Police deemed the glitch as “potentially life-threatening.”

The Guardian now confirms that Apple has since updated the given location pinpointing Mildura where it should be – in the state of Victoria.

A reporter at the local Sunraysia Daily said “There's no water, and you can get bogged down in the sand,” referring to the arid area to which motorists had been misled. “Temperatures go up to 46 degrees,” he said.

Moreover, cell-phone reception is poor in these wild areas of the country, making it even more dangerous to get lost.

In a recent interview with the NBC, Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly stated that he would put the weight of his company behind fixing the flawed Maps application in iOS 6, which replaces the old Google Maps.

Introduced in September with the iPhone 5, Apple Maps has attracted considerable criticism because of numerous graphic glitches and an inaccurate database.

The issues emerged from day one but it wasn’t until late October that heads started to roll in Cupertino because of the increasing number of reports criticizing Apple Maps.

After firing iOS Chief Scott Forstall, one of the most prominent figures in the company, CEO Tim Cook put Eddy Cue in charge of Siri and Maps under “online services,” a single group within Apple which also handles the iTunes Store, the App Store, the iBookstore and iCloud.