14 DAY TRIAL // Apple was no stranger to the errors in its new Maps application before launch, but decided to push forward with its public release, according to a handful of developers whose own apps have been crippled in the process.
Quoted by CNet in a feature story escalating the Apple Maps fiasco to new heights, one such developer said, “I posted at least one doomsayer rant after each (developer) beta, and I wasn’t alone.”
“The mood amongst the developers seemed to be that the maps were so shockingly bad that reporting individual problems was futile. What was needed wasn’t so much an interface for reporting a single point as incorrect, but for selecting an entire region and saying ‘all of this — it’s wrong,’” this person said.
Another seller of iOS applications said, “During the beta period I filed bug reports with Apple’s Radar system (notorious for being ignored), posted on the forums several times, and e-mailed multiple people within Apple’s MapKit team to voice our concerns.”
Apple only responded once, to the knowledge of a one developer. A representative for the Mac maker reportedly ousted that the issue was “well understood,” according to CNet.
However, the real problem was that Apple’s Maps errors would implicitly affect this person’s profits, as customers would soon upgrade to iOS 6.
“This has been a frustrating experience for us and we don’t care where the imagery comes from, we just would like our customers to be able to have the same experience within our app when they update from iOS 5 to iOS 6,” said this developer.
“Instead, the OS upgrade broke some of the features we built within our application despite being told that only the imagery would be swapped out.”
Apple, for its part, has released a public statement regarding Maps on iOS, apologizing for the occasional poor service and recommending alternatives from the App Store.